Bonny & Clyde Production Journal

We’ve started locking in rehearsal and shooting dates for the coming month.

While the characters are mostly written, we do want the actors to tune their characters themselves to a certain degree, but because there’s no script, there’s no need for script rehearsal time. This leaves us with just a couple of rehearsal sessions to jam out what’s left of the characters, and then straight into shooting in mid-August.

We’re in a bit of strange place at the moment, having shot some great footage at the audition, and now waiting until the first shooting day to see how it will eventually look. We have our cast, our story arc, our characters and episode narratives, or what we’re now calling Chapters, to distinguish them from the smaller episodes released on the web, and we’re now just scouting for locations, props and costume.

One of the big problems we’re going to have, which you don’t have in a traditionally scripted production, are lots of continuity issues, and we’re currently working on ways to address this, which I’ll talk about here soon.

As it turned out, we had pretty much a complete cast at the auditions, with several less interested people having other commitments, which made the selection process easier. We’ve now selected our main cast. In fact we had 6 players turn up, so we’ve decided to write in an extra major role so that all six are cast.

When we originally planned the auditions, the idea was not to give away the characters or the plot, and while this probably seems strange not to tell them what they’re auditioning for, we figured it would make them more open to improvise. The night before the auditions, we changed our minds, and decided to give them a full briefing on the story arc, the characters and their relationships. Whether it would have changed things for the better having not told them, we don’t know, but there was a down side to coming clean.

We came up with several scenarios which would not only jam the characters, but more importantly their relationships. These scenarios had little to do with the story arc, but would be fairly typical situations that they’d find themselves in. e.g. running late getting to the airport, and having to pack the car with bags which won’t fit; changing the wheel on a car they’re not familiar with; an interview situation about a fictional book project. Unfortunately in several cases, the players latched onto snippets of information we’d given about the main story arc, and tried to work those character traits and plot points into the improvised scenes, which caused two problems: we weren’t seeing improvisation of characters and relationships, we were seeing them tell and justify a story; and they had embellished in their own minds certain story arc plot points, to a degree that they were basing their improvised characters on traits that were actually wrong.

In the end however, it was a simple matter of tagging in and out players in various roles, until we got a good idea of who worked with who, and who could best take on the character traits we were after.

Although we forgot to mention it, we were very wary of gagging, with a lot of them having short form/Theatresports backgrounds. However perhaps it was the fact that they were outside, in front of a camera, or handling real (not mimed) objects, that there was none throughout the whole session. It was very encouraging and refreshing, because we were afraid it may be a problem for some of them.

The two hour session went like this:

1. Introduction to the auditions, and the schedule for the session.
2. Overview of the state of Internet video, citizen media and guerrilla filmmaking.
3. All player warm up for 15 minutes in the local park, including physical, vocal and group games.
4. Improvised scenes in the street and in the park, with tagging in and out of players in the various roles we’d already decided each was auditioning for. We were concerned that a simple situation may not be enough for them to work with, so we wrote some back story and tasks for them to achieve, just in case. In the end, all we needed was a simple goal for each scene, and to sit back and watch the fun.
5. Closing remarks, including casting process and when to expect a follow up call.

One of the many things we were worried about, was people perhaps not being able to improvise in public. All of them were used to stage performance, but this was new for a lot of them. Fortunately the presence of a camera automatically made them feel comfortable. A useful tip.

All in all, it was a very successful two hours, and we feel we now have a good strong cast for the series.

Next steps are finishing the episode narratives with the new cast in mind, and scheduling the character rehearsals.

With the auditions coming up next Sunday, we spent much of the weekend reviewing the series story arc and individual episodes, double checking for hero’s journey plot points, comedic rising action/risk/tension and character variation and compatability. We also wrote a lot of the character backstories, which won’t be used in the series, but the actors will use to tune their characters.

This gave us a more detailed description of the character and improvisational requirements, and allowed us to put together a final audition running order. It also meant we could remove some of the actors, as some of them are now inappropriate for certain roles. It has also meant we can expand the list of improvisors, to some who we’d not previously considered for roles.

Instead of auditioning the actual final characters, we’ve decided to use a series of improvised scenes which highlight certain relationships between characters and the actors’ improvisational skills. This way we can audition a group of actors at the same time, without giving too much series detail, and thus an advantage, to the first actors to get up and audition. We’re also locked into a group audition, because we don’t actually have a script which individuals may read for us on their own.