This is one of the first scenes I shot (on my stills camera - Canon Powershot S3IS) just so we could see Anna Brockway moving around on screen.
There was very little direction per se. This is how I like to work. With a blank female character. Then, very slowly fill her in (so slow that any decent completion guarantor would close us down during rehearsal).
Phil & I did a location recce today for next week’s shoot. You can see the stills here. I’ve uploaded this info to give Lauri, Phil and the actors a sense of how this film is going to come across visually. With low-budget stuff, you kind of have to go with what’s there as there’s (usually) a lot of dialogue to take the place of interesting viscerality (not a bad thing). Read the rest of this entry »
On Thursday I get to audition Mum for the role of, well, Mum in the film. I’m so pleased about the way all this is all turning out. The script idea is awesome and, unlike its much-more-expensive cousin, Beware The Stingray, it’s an easy film to do. Phil and I decided to make this without money because we want to get back to why we’re in this business. Mum is a poor me kind of person who is in and out of hospital. She sees her live-in daughter as a burden. Not my Mum - the character! This should be fun . . . Incoming!
Despite my busy days earning the much coveted Australian dollar, beavering away on websites and marking student work, Phil (god bless his little cotton socks) has been forging a draft of the new script. We are only going to 1st draft on this as the film will be improvised by the actors. We feel we have a pretty strong storyline and 3 talented female actors ready to go. There are no men in the film - other than those heard on telephones, background TV and radio. This is strictly a Women Only venture. We have even solicited the services of a talented experimental musician Lauris des Marais who has agreed to score the soundtrack from her Boston hideaway. As the winter months approach, I , for one, am very much looking forward to how all this will turn out. Bring on the rain (I hate HD video sunlight).
Well. This will be interesting. We’ve started shooting some mini non-character test scenes to see what the two Annas - Anna Brockway and Anna Bennetts look like during moments alone. I’ll YouTube the best of these sequences as soon as a I get a couple of spare hours. But we’ve also had the weird idea of auditioning Mum to play the part of the two Annas’ grieving mother. I’m going around there next week with Anna Bennetts to see how play go together in an improvised scene. I might also have Anna interview Mum and see how that goes. I’ve done this before - with my Gran and it worked out really well. So - we’ll see abou this hair-brained idea.