Monday, August 17, 2015

Show's over...now what?

We finished up Fiddler last night and struck* the theater (*strike - remove everything we brought to the theater and return back to it's original state as much as we can).  Darly & I are both so very tired.  I woke up two hours ago but now feel as if I could go nap for another 5 hours or so.  ergh!

Saturday night I heard from the director of the film that Darly was cast in.  He had recast the role of Tony and wanted to shoot Darly's scene today at 9:30, an hour away from where we live.  sigh!
We decided to decline the role...let me count the ways...
  1. Going into this project we knew that the only payment would be if the film made money.  So we accepted for just the film credit.  (meaning: we only expected for Darly's name to be listed in the film's credits.)
  2. Darly was cast into a very small role in the film because of her look.  The cast is mainly Latino with a very few Anglo parts.
  3. The script is very short (less than 100 pages) but the writer/director/producer is a film student and is used to writing much shorter so he felt it was very long.
  4. The story is, well let's just say it isn't something that is going to have the same appeal at the box office as say um *insert movie title that you wished you hadn't paid to see here*
  5. The project has faced a lot of setbacks.  Mostly due to the inexperience of our "fearless leader."  I am pretty sure that he STILL has not secured a location for his interiors.
  6. Originally, filming was going to take place before tech week for Fiddler.  Due to setbacks and recasting filming was pushed back several times...including to have a filming day during tech week.  Luckily the new Tony couldn't make it as it was going to be difficult for us to film that day.
  7. The locations that the team has come up with so far all all about an hour away from where we live.  (note: no pay)
  8. Darly got a last minute job a few weeks ago that actually paid, so the desire to have a film credit on her resume isn't as pressing...and that film will actually be seen by people as it was produced for educational use.
  9. When we went for the read through, that became not a true read through because 1. only part of the cast could be there and 2. our "fearless leader" decided to turn it into a teaching moment to share his newly gained education with the cast...who were all more experienced than he was.  :-/
  10. While some of the cast members had more film experience, it seemed from the reading that was able to happen that Darly was the best trained actor there.  The director loved everything that she did and was trying to figure out how to expand Darly's role.
After the read through, Darly was less enthused to be a part of this production.  She was willing to still do the role if the filming took place on the 10th.  When that fell through she was looking for a way to get out of the role.  So when the director suggested filming on the 23rd, I sent back some pretty hard to meet time constraints with the suggestion that if we couldn't do it then we would have to drop out.  So Saturday when we got the email to film today (17th) at such an early hour we decided that nope, we're too tired and done to continue with this.

Auditions for the next musical got pushed back, so we're happy to not have to audition today...as a day of rest is needed.  :D

But now I'm looking for our next project.  Future shows with the theater company that did Fiddler have not yet been set.  Shows with the other big theaters in town aren't all that interesting to us...so we're looking at smaller theaters. 

Maybe I should just go nap.  ;) 

1 comment:

  1. Yes for the nap! Sounds like a well thought out decision about the film roll. Being able to discern good opportunities from not so good, is an excellent life skill.

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