Finding Kristana

We've been stretched pretty thin over the last couple of weeks in particular with assignments and also the Rialto 48 Hour Film Competition that almost everyone in the team has been involved with. I was co-writing, co-directing and co-editing for our team entry 'The Rough Patch' - the goal for our team this year was really just to have fun and not take it too seriously - so I think we achieved that! We ended up writing something quite ambitious cast-wise and location-wise, and we had to re-write some things on the second day due to some of the material being too inappropriate for younger members of the cast that got brought in (it was a very 'Superbad' style of film. The film we ended up making was more of a fun romp kind of thing, but we were quite happy with the results considering we accidentally forgot to film a part of one of the scenes! We still managed to make it work in editing though. These things happen in 48 hours especially when no one has had much sleep!). I was originally meant to be directing it by myself but I think Richie and Doug ended up co-directing it because I was a little brain-fried from writing (and the many late nights leading up to R48!) - I'm not someone who likes to direct without having a precise plan as well - improv directing isn't really my cup of tea.

For games trailer, I've been part of the team that was running auditions. To be honest, I think there were problems with the way these auditions were organised (there needed to be more time given to advertising them - it was all a bit last minute. That said, we really are pushed for time now and a few more corners are having to be cut - much more than we would like). Something that has popped up as an issue as well was the fact that our script doesn't have a huge amount of dialogue, so we haven't got a lot of material to audition people with - we've mainly been working with one scene, trying to see if the people auditioning have understood the rest of the script and generally seeing how they have interpreted the characters. An important aspect of our lead character, Kristana, is that she needs to be able to convincingly convey a complex and often contradictory set of emotions/motivations that are consistent with her backstory. Also, she needs to have the physicality and athleticism to be able to perform the fight sequences. That has affected the way we have gone about casting the role. I had the idea of going to martial arts studios and gyms in order to advertise the casting call so we would be getting to see people of the right age and physical appearance. 

We will be running some more auditions next week in order to pin down the roles.

Also over the last week, we attended a workshop by one of the SIT arts tutors, Karl Hart. He ran us through the process of working with bone as a material and gave us some valuable advise on how to go about sourcing certain materials we will need for costumes, props and set building. Much of this week we will be focusing on sourcing, while the art department make a start on the materials we currently have.