I can sound<\/i> evil, but when sounding evil is accompanied by a pleasant grin… yeah, that doesn’t work so well on camera. At least that’s what I was told this afternoon.<\/p>\n
This little saga started a couple weeks ago when Walden Entertainment sent out a notice that on May 15th, they would be holding a mass audition for people who wanted to take part in the upcoming 48 Hour Film Project. It’s a fairly simple process, really.<\/p>\n
Friday, June 10th:<\/b> teams are given a name, prop, line of dialogue and genre for their movie.
\nSunday, June 12th:<\/b> 48 hours later, teams submit their movie.<\/p>\n
Okay, so maybe it’s not that simple. The teams can’t do any writing, filming, sound work, etc. before June 10th, but they can do things like put together teams and find people they want to cast. Thus, Walden’s mass audition. I decided to throw my hat into the mix this year, so I was told to show up at 2:03pm. (It turned out that just over half the people who replied to the notice actually showed up, so I had some leeway there.)<\/p>\n
When it was my turn to audition, I walked into a conference room that had about ten people sitting at tables and two cameras pointed right at me. I was supposed to give a one-minute monologue, so I trimmed down a section of something I did back in high school for Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?<\/i> Basically, it’s a priest telling grade school kids about the dangers of keeping dirty pictures in their wallets. (I could write out the monologue, but without the vocal inflections and actions to go with it, it’s just not the same. Especially the part about getting run over by a truck.)<\/p>\n
They liked it (yay, me!), then some of them proceeded to ask me questions about my acting experience (stage and screen), am I comfortable in front of a camera… that’s when I chuckled and told them about being on Beauty and the Geek with cameras in my face all the time. During the course of that questioning, I was immensely thankful that I was wearing jeans so they couldn’t see that my legs were shaking.<\/p>\n
Why? I wish I knew. I felt comfortable and confident in front of everyone—not like when I was being interviewed by a group of 20 people that included Ashton Kutcher—but my muscles apparently didn’t believe what my brain was telling them. ‘Tis passing strange.<\/p>\n
Anyway, once they were done asking questions, I left the room and went out into the lobby of the building where they were checking people in. I knew some of the guys there, so I sat down and chatted for a while until one of the women from the conference room walked up to me. As soon as she got there, my phone buzzed to tell me I got a text message… from her.<\/p>\n
She didn’t know I was still around, so she had written me a message asking if I’d like to join their team and they’d love to write for me. Sweeeeet… It turned out that she and the team’s director had seen my picture in the audition list and were already considering me. Once I walked into the conference room with such energy or swagger or whatever she called it, they didn’t really care about the monologue. Sweeeeet…<\/p>\n
I gave her my contact info, she told me she’d send out an email soon with more information and my afternoon was complete. Life was spiffy.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to today. The team name is “Respect the Thing” (a Dr. Who reference) and they set up a meeting to introduce themselves, get all the actors together, have them work in front of the camera to see what they’re capable of (and not capable of) and get a general idea of who they can use for what when the scriptwriting starts.<\/p>\n
One of the coolest parts of the day: walking up to the door of the building and seeing Michael Morningstar, one of the other actors from Mind Over Matt<\/i> standing there, waiting to be let inside so we could get out of the pouring rain. Dunno if we’ll be on camera together, but the fact that we’re on the same team is pretty sweet.<\/p>\n
So eventually, we got the full group together, about 20 people, 15 of whom would be in front of the camera during the course of the project. Before introductions, they explained that the group had been together for a while now—not just doing the 48 HFP—and considered themselves a bunch of geeks. “Typecasting!” (Well, that’s not what I really said, but I told everyone that I officially held that title after being on TV).<\/p>\n
After intros and learning (and quickly forgetting) everyone’s names, they had some scripts printed out for us to read. Some of those scripts suuuuucked<\/i>, which was why they never bothered producing them. Still, it was material to work with, so they were passing out different scripts and sending people to the front of the room to get in front of the camera and work their acting mojo.<\/p>\n
My mojo… it sure wasn’t there for the first scene I did, but that was a crappy scene (or lots of scenes) in general. Too many people saying too few lines. Plus having five people trying to move around in a small area doesn’t work well. The second one? Hell, yeah…<\/p>\n
I had the chance to read the script for a couple minutes beforehand, then went up with one of the girls and nailed it. Well, mostly<\/i> nailed it. The problem: no evil smile. I had no problem shouting out, “Your father was a weak-minded old fool!” A sinister grin? Couldn’t do it. They had us do the scene a second time: she did better, but I couldn’t pull off “more evil.” Still, it earned us applause from the group, so I wasn’t gonna complain.<\/p>\n
Cute moment of the day: Gypsy, the director, explained that the character I was playing was a necromancer (i.e., practitioner of the dark arts, likes to summon the undead, drain the lifeforce from enemies and what not). The girl standing next to me looked at him for a moment, then said quietly, “Necrophiliac?” I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t keep from smiling when I told her it was a dark wizard. That<\/i> probably wasn’t an evil smile, either.<\/p>\n
I actually felt kinda bad for the guys going after me—when the first guy does really well and you do… not as well, you get mercy applause. (Been there, got that, felt crappy.)<\/p>\n
There was more script reading amongst the group and some improv stuff after that. For example: “Shawn, you’re God (Yeah, but what role do you want me to play?), she’s an angel who’s been causing havoc on Earth and you want her to stop, but she’s nice and sweet and you’re not that upset, etc.” In the middle of the scene, the director would send someone else in unexpectedly—first, it was Jesus, then the devil and so on. It was interesting and fun at times and I think a couple people got kicked in the stomach by accident. At least I’m assuming it was an accident.<\/p>\n
And that was pretty much it. They’ll be in touch as the project gets further along and we should be ready to shoot until 5:00 on Saturday morning if necessary. Sounds like my regular sleep schedule. And then we left the dark conference room and walked toward a bright glass door. It was pouring rain when we walked inside; the sun was shining when we left the building. Life was spiffy.<\/p>\n
[That’s the end of the story, but I also want to send out my condolences and best wishes to the people in the Twin Cities who got hit by the tornado this afternoon. While I was reading scripts, they were having their houses and neighborhoods torn apart. It could be a long time before their lives are spiffy again, but I hope the healing process starts soon.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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