Bonny & Clyde Production Journal

Yesterday was our first real shoot, another milestone.

We spent the first hour improvising back stories, so while we already had certain backstory elements that were necessary for the plot, we let the players make up the rest, but through improvisation. They got to actually act out their backstories, which should make them more memorable for them.

We went on to shoot some pre-story arc footage which we were hoping to use later (we’ll see), and finally the roughly 30 seconds of footage that we’d planned to shoot as part of the first episode.

Apart from a fairly scary situation where we had a car with the two front people in balaclavas and the two back people (including myself) with bags over our heads, and the driver deciding to drive into a service (gas) station as a joke, the day went fairly well.

Next weekend we shoot the rest of the first and second episodes, and a whole bunch of stock footage. That’s when the reality of the project should really kick in.

So our first rehearsal was a little shakey, with some people turning up late, and us having to change the structure of the rehearsal around the late arrivals. So it wasn’t exactly the way we would have wished it to happen.

However, it was fairly exciting to see our characters, our nearly one year old precious characters, finally come alive as human beings. Not only did they come alive, but a whole bunch of back story came with them, which was wonderful.

Unfortunately some of them are a little away from what we’d envisioned, but its only the first rehearsal, so you can’t ask for much more than real characters.

We put them into situations which would both teach them about their character traits, and to see what was believable and what was not. We let them invent a lot of their backstory, and it was interesting to see how they tended to invent close to their real life personas, or at least their wishes or thoughts. Scary. After a few corrections, we feel they’re mostly all on track.

In several instances, characters were giving away their background and experience in scenes, which were a lot different to what we’d guided them into, and it was only when we stopped them to change their backstory, that we found out that they’d actually been lying and exaggerating in character, which was awesome. And even more scary.

One of the interesting exercises we did, was to get all the characters in a circle, pretend they’re all strangers, and improvise a therapy session. Therapy or some other similar group environment, like AA, isn’t ideal, because they all share a personal issue or interest, so we decided that they should all go to an improvised traffic school, where none of them have a shared interested or personal problem. It worked well.

This weekend is the second rehearsal for the 3 characters in the first few chapters, and we’re going to shoot a couple of short scenes used in the series opening sequence. We have our characters, we now need to work on the relationship between two of the lead characters.

Several times writing this blog, I’ve given away plot details, and had to go back and delete what I’d written. Its a little annoying at times, because some of the insight we’ve had, can only be explained by giving away some of the character and story arcs. However, I’ve made a decision that if it comes down to the series or the production journal, the series wins. Maybe we’ll publish some of the spoilers when the first series is done. Ooops… did I say first series?

Its been three weeks or so since the last post, but that doesn’t mean we’re standing still. Our first cast rehearsal is this weekend, amongst a whole bunch of other unrelated shows that a lot of us are doing.

We’d originally planned two rehearsals, to flesh out the characters to a certain degree, and then the first shoot, but in a moment of overconfidence, we’re going for some one on one talk throughs with each cast member, then one and a half rehearsals and straight into the shoot.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been scouting for locations and props, as well as tuning the series arc some more, particularly the character arcs, what the characters start and end with, what their journey is, what they learn, what their flaws are.

So, first rehearsal in 3 days, another rehearsal and the first shoot in 10 days. Exciting.

We’ve also all but decided to produce at least 4 episodes before release, so we have some lead time once the series is up and running. We still want to incorporate viewer feedback into the character and story arcs, so we can’t get too far ahead, but enough to be safe in case we have shooting issues.