We Made a Movie Part 6: A Rich and Rewarding Experience

Richard Speight, Jr. first wrote us back about the script on his birthday. Or maybe a holiday? I forget. Does his birthday FALL on a holiday? I just remember seeing him tagged in a bunch of posts and finding it surprising that that was the day that he got back to us. Glenn thought it was very encouraging that he took the time to touch base with us on what could have been a day off. I felt my stomach shrink with dread. If you ever have trouble discerning which of us is the positive one, may you always refer back to that sentence: someone made a nice gesture on a day that they could have put us off and my response was one of fear. Partially because it meant all the additional expense mentioned in the second blog of this series and partially because I DIDN'T KNOW HIM. We'd met before and he'd been nothing but nice, but it's easy to be pleasant to a stranger for a few hours of a busy weekend. I've been on sets with people who didn't want to be there. It's awful and you can't call anyone out on anything because it will make things awkward and slow things down. Most of the movie would be me and him. If he was a dicksmack I would be ready to light my car on fire by the end of the shoot.

However during all the pre-shoot conversations and negotiations he remained nice, up-front and pleasant. My stomach churning intensified. If he was a really good guy and we cocked up and made him mad I'd feel extra terrible about it. He was taking time away from his family and blocking out his schedule from more lucrative gigs (whatever they were, trust me, they were more lucrative). And I've heard horror stories about some name actors do smaller projects who wouldn't learn their lines in advance or who showed up drunk or treated the crew badly. Here again, he was an unknown quantity.

I shouldn't have worried.

Rich is a dream to work with. Maybe not every writer/producer/director's dream, but definitely for this one (more on that later). He showed up with his lines if not down pat, pretty close and with a few run throughs he was always ready. He cheerfully complained about the cold weather, but never pulled a "get me into some heat or I walk". He was a complete sweetheart to the crew and the supporting cast and he was a real treat to get to act off of.

You should use actors who are also content creators. I don't say that to disparage people who only want to act, you're just essentially getting a two for one deal if you get someone who also makes things. I know that a lot of people want an actor to show up, do their lines and take direction, but that isn't necessarily what Rich did. He showed up with questions. In his copy of the script (which I now own) the margins are full of notes (some of which look suspiciously like criticisms, the ass. (jk)). I hesitate to say that we ever fought or even argued, even disagreements seems to strong for what it was. He spoke up if he had concerns about a scene, or the phrasing of certain sentences, or his blocking. And that is SUCH a useful tool for a writer or a director. You either have to be able to justify your decisions or you have to rethink them to come up with something stronger.

Working with him in scenes is excellent. One of the most pure, satisfying experiences I've had as a film actor. I don't know if people who are fans of Gabriel from Supernatural are going to like Roger, but you should definitely pay attention to him. He was born to play that role. Maybe somebody else could have done it, but nobody else should have. He got where he was coming from. He cared about what Roger was doing. And he's very present as a scene partner. He gives the scene his all when the camera is on him and then when it switches sides and gets my half of the scene... he still throws himself into it so that our energy can build together. Being a good scene partner is such a huge part of being a good actor, and it is easily overlooked.

It is my hope that Driven takes off and finds a wide audience, that there is some kind of financial payoff and that audiences enjoy it. But I also hope that they watch it and recognize how many balls he was keeping in the air at any given scene and the work and effort that he put into it.

It was a pleasure.

We Made a Movie Part 5: On the Set (Acting)

My name is Casey and I'm an actor. I play a character named Emerson in the feature film Driven. I figure I should clarify that right away because when you are performing words that you also wrote people automatically assume that the words are your opinion coming from a thinly veiled version of yourself (see also: Mindy Kaling). I think this will be extra the case in Driven because Emerson and I do share some traits, but I'd like to put it here that Emerson is not me. There's lots of nitpicking superficial elements of our preferences and interests that are different, but the biggest thing is that she is in some ways more timid than I am, but overall much more positive and resilient.

Hey, did I mention that "cheerful" isn't the easiest note to play when your throat feels like you've been snacking on fiberglass insulation? That's very complainy of me, but that was tricky the first week of filming.

Glenn wanted me to stop producing about two weeks out from filming and just concentrate on the script/acting. That never happened.

The schedule for the first night worked out in my favor because it was pretty non-verbal on my end. Actually, aside from the feeling like garbage, it was pretty fun. I got to basically sit back and listen to the acting taking place in the back seat of my car while reacting with my face. It was fun. Everyone had a little space to improvise and I enjoyed seeing where they'd take the scene.

Night two I had a little more to do, but it was still a lot of reaction stuff. It was marginally warmer than the night before (though still cold). I definitely didn't feel overtaxed, but between fretting about the crew freezing to death and feeling awful, I wondered if I was finding Emerson in any given scene. There were a few times when I definitely felt like I was acting rather than being a character, which is not the best way to feel. But there was a lovely moment where I got to act with an improv sister (Mari Kenney) and Rich. I was sandwiched between two really talented performers and something about having such great players on either side of me felt like I could relax more in the scene. I got to be Emerson.

The third night I still felt awful and I had more to do. It was also the first night that the Jamies (Jaime Adams and Jamie Fair) were on set. They actually provided me with some inspiration. They were out in the freezing cold and having to do stunts and were very much in their characters and giving it all they had. If Jamie could maintain a character while falling on the ground, avoiding being run over when I pulled away from him and freezing then I could definitely muscle through my stuff. Except one part where I was supposed to scream. I did it once and realized that I wasn't going to be able to produce that sound again. That became a heavy silence in the scene instead. It was better than what I'd written. It worked out.

Basically we were moving along at a reasonable clip, Rich and the supporting cast were doing great, the crew was made up the best, most resilient people I could have imagined and I was starting to really fret that I was going to end up being the weak link (in fairness, I think this on most films at some time or other).

The final night of the first week of shooting the first thing we had to do was a fight scene in the rain. Someone was supposed to make us a lightweight weapon. They didn't get back in touch with us. I was now faced with swinging something very heavy and very real at my good friend Coley's head. That was the only thing I was actually concentrating on. We practiced the motions so many times that my fingers started cramping up and then we practiced it some more. In a weird way, being so fixated on performing that one move freed up my brain to just act and not overthink too much. I don't know how I did overall in the scene, but I know that nothing felt robotic and I didn't notice how badly I felt. I didn't crush Coley's facial bones. It was a win.

After that it was a big, talky scene. Maybe it was the relief of having not killed my friend, I'm not sure, but something clicked into place and I didn't think about what I was doing because I didn't have to. I was a woman talking about a personal failure and nothing felt rehearsed. Emerson didn't react like Casey, not because I was thinking of ways that we might do things differently but because Emerson isn't Casey and I was just being her. I know this is a very masturbatory paragraph and I hope it makes any kind of sense to non-actors, but it was a significant moment for me. My scene partner at the time squeezed my shoulder and told me that I did well. I got to be Emerson.

The second week went more smoothly (on the acting side. Dear Lord, not producing. See previous entry for that). I was feeling physically better (except for a night that I had a migraine), and I felt like I had really found Emerson. I wasn't doing a ton of thinking in scene unless someone told me where I couldn't move my head because I'd be out of frame. Best moment: either a big argument scene that was simultaneously the most stressful and upsetting but easiest from a performance perspective or a scene where I got to act with Glenn because it is always fun to act with your best friends.

Emerson no longer felt like a kite that I could lose control of. She was flying smoothly and I could give her as much line as she needed to soar. It was a privilege to play her. It was a good ride.

We Made a Movie Part 4: We Made It to Set (Producing)

I went to bed the night before shooting feeling pretty cruddy. I woke up the first day of shooting shivering and pretty damned sick. I couldn't swallow. It hurt to breathe deeply. My lymph nodes were swollen to the point that while I wouldn't say my neck could run Gaston out of town, it could definitely give him a run for his money.

Off to the doctor, marinated in other people's germs waiting and finally got to see a medical professional. He said it looked like strep/bronchitis. I declined a strep test because if I don't know I have strep it's almost like not having strep was my reasoning. I never claimed to be brilliant. I got a steroid shot and some antibiotics, poured soup down my throat and gathered my wardrobe options and props.

I did not anticipate being sick. I also did not anticipate the biggest cold snap that my little southern town had experienced since 2014. I think we filmed on two nights that were above freezing temps and one of them was indoors. The two days leading up to filming were spent frantically emailing actors and telling them to disregard wardrobe notes I'd sent them previously and just dress for warmth.

Thankfully (so thankfully) our friend Heather Roebuck was on set monitoring people to see if they were getting too cold. She also really picked up the banner on some of the scheduling and kept an eye on wardrobe continuity.

Day one of shooting was when we had the majority of our day players. I waved at them. Explained why I couldn't really hug them or talk much, ate as much food as I could comfortably swallow, drank some throat coat and went to film. Once again, getting the right people in the right roles is so essential. They didn't require a ton of direction/coaxing/cheerleading once we got going.

Day two was Rich's first day. In his second scene of the movie he bricked his head really hard on my car. It was kind of insane. I'm trying to stay in character and remember the beats of the scene while also wondering if he should be allowed to go to sleep at the end of the shooting day (which is actually night, so around 4:00 a.m.). By the end of the night I can't talk. My nightly prayer is more fervent than usual ("Please don't let me lose my voice!").

I fell into a daily routine during week 1: go to bed around 6:00, wake up around 10:30, drink tea with honey, look at the scenes scheduled for the night and run through the lines, get with Asia, our caterer, about the menu, what time to bring the food, where we'd be eating, how many people we anticipated feeding, go over the props list, give my car at least a cursory wipe-down so it's not dusty inside, go to the Link Centre (our base of operation), hand my car off to a crew member so that they could take it to get lighted, get my hair and makeup done (honestly the most relaxing part of my day), get dressed, go to set, film, try to make sure that everyone is getting in out of the cold when they can, chug water so that my throat holds out, rehearse in between takes, wrap, go back to Link Centre to return my clothes to hangers, drink more throat coat, discuss the next day's schedule with Heather and Glenn, go home and hope my sore throat doesn't wake me up in under four hours.

I am proud to say that I only cried three times during production (when I wasn't in character). Once because I was having an anxiety spell but it hurt to breathe deeply, once when I thought I was going to get to sleep in and rest but I had to do some unexpected people-shuffling instead and once when... we'll get to that.

Week two we lost a day of shooting. On his off day Rich went to visit family and got iced in at the airport. It was a bitch. But I was finally starting to feel marginally better. People seemed happier with what they were doing and where they were staying and we had several days of studio filming (though our coldest and windiest night we were outside all damn night. God our entities were tough cookies). Things seemed to be picking up and then on the second to last day of filming we got sleet. We put our crew up at a cabin. It was a really nice place in a gorgeous location off the main road. And I'm glad it was nice because that's where they were stuck when the road to the house got iced over. It was Rich's last day of filming. He didn't feel 100% confident driving on the roads in someone else's car so I picked him up. I spent probably an hour on the phone calling and texting people trying to find someone with a four wheel drive vehicle that felt comfortable picking up our crew. Michael was available because he'd requested to stay elsewhere. Greg was around because he lives life on the edge and just drove in incredibly dangerous conditions. But we were down by over half our crew. I kicked a chair over and cried. It was an ugly scene.

Driven has many heroes, people who volunteered their time, their homes or their work, but the biggest heroes of the day were Marley Maharrey and Tyler Floyd who happened to offer to help us out because they were frozen out of work. Because of them we were able to hobble across the finish line and get Rich off to a Supernatural convention with a little bit of breathing room.

And that's a glimpse into my sad brain as a producer. Up next, the acting side of it.

We Made a Movie Part 3: Casting a Wide Net

I have a love/hate relationship with casting a project. On the one hand you get to see dozens of good actors performing their interpretation of a character that you created. On the other hand before all is said and done you're only going to be giving good news to one out of dozens of good actors. Ugh.

I was going to be playing Emerson. It was something that I hoped to do, but didn't insist upon. I'm a good actor but don't kid myself that I'm the best there is in the area, so I was open to holding auditions for it and trying out myself, but in the end Glenn made an executive decision: I'm a known quantity and he's happy with the quality of my work so far.

When we hold casting calls we tend to open it up to the entire general public. Yes, if you go through actors access or agencies you'll get some very groomed performers with great headshots, but we would have missed out on some real jewels in the past if those were the only avenues we took. You get all manner of submissions from people of all levels of experience and to be honest, we were pretty bowled over.

Here's why I hate thinking like a producer: in a perfect world, the best person to read would get the role. Full stop. The reality is that that isn't always the case. The good news is that we were beholden to no higher ups, so nobody could nix our choices for not being "marketable" or some noise, but there are other factors. If you have one really good actor who works for half of a couple, their age might determine the casting of the significant other. If you know that a role is very physical you need someone who can handle that aspect of it. If a character is supposed to be physically intimidating and a wee tiny gal has a good audition she may be edged out by someone equally good who is over 5'2". Thankfully we didn't have to do very much of that in this particular project and I truly believe that the best actors for the roles ended up in the right spot.

There was still the rushed aspect of it. Ideally we'd have had a little more time. Maybe there was someone who was good in the audition that didn't fully get the tone of the scene who with a little coaching could have given us a perfect interpretation? Unfortunately we didn't have time for that.

The role of the First Entity was also a puzzler. Though she doesn't talk much in the film we really needed a strong performer and weren't sure how to put what we needed into audition format. We did our best and fortunately we ended up with someone exceptional.

Here is another thing that I want to address: For those who have only been following through the process of Driven, feel free to skip ahead, but I occasionally hear people say that Glenn and I only cast our friends in our projects. Well... I can honestly say that anybody that I've worked with I would consider myself to be on friendly terms with AFTER THE FACT. In any of our big casting call projects there has been a mix of people that we've worked with previously and people that we never saw prior to their audition. That being said, if I'm looking at two equally good performers, but I've worked with one before and know that they are really agreeable with long hours, unpleasant conditions, strangers and a lot of waiting, there is a likelihood that I will go with the person that I know is awesome and positive ("But Casey, if people went with the person that is positive how would you ever get work again?" Shut up, I'm awesome in a different way. Golden retrievers are amazing, but sometimes you need a doberman.). Praises be, all the UNKNOWN quantities turned out to be great and real team players, too. Including Rich, but more on that later.

We only had callbacks for one character and with all the gamepieces in place we were ready to move forward.

We Made a Movie: Part 2 Preproduction Purgatory

If war is hell then preproduction is... nothing like hell. Come on, do you really think I'm going to compare what I do to going to war? How self-aggrandizing do you think I am (hint: a little bit, not a lot)?

So we were pretty sure we had Rich. That changed the entire movie. We couldn't be no-budget now; we had to fly him in, put him up somewhere. We had to be SAG, which meant that union actors could participate, which meant we had to leave money in the budget to be able to pay a couple more people minimum rates if they were cast. We needed the best cinematographer, which meant Michael, which meant money. We needed impeccable sound which meant that our trusty rode mic on a pole wasn't going to work. I didn't need to try and attempt makeup, which meant... you see where this is going. There was a lot of money gathering, figuring out what to give investors, rearranging finances, etc.

Gentle readers, I don't like producing. I WILL produce to get a project that I care about done and because Glenn does too much as is, but I don't like it. I will say, though, that producing a feature in a very limited time frame in the middle of the winter holiday mashup is a fool's errand and I hope never to do it again.

The other thing that we quickly realized was that we were deeply (deeply) mistaken about a car movie being easy to make. Yes, the car itself was the anchor of each scene, but it still had to BE at locations. Lots of locations. Specific locations. Shit. More calling, more arguing ("I think this should be a cemetery." "I don't want a cemetery." "It will be better visually." "Go crap in a hat.")

We needed props. Some of them were tricky, some weren't, but all needed to be found and gathered. More calls.

We needed wardrobe for (we hoped) Rich.

We needed the rest of our cast. Do we include the Roger character in the cast breakdown just in case this doesn't work out? No? Are you sure, Glenn? OK, I trust you. Did we want to try for another name for the Jess character? No? Are you sure, Casey? I'm gonna try anyway.

The more film-savvy among you are probably saying "It's called a location scout, wardrobe manager, etc." to which I say you are welcome to bankroll our next movie so that we can pay such people.

I mentioned that this all happened in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am deeply grateful that my Mom and family are both very cool and very, very supportive of my film pursuits. I think a lesser Mom would have been pretty peeved that her kid's cell phone was glued to her hand through all family gatherings as she fired off pictures, questions and follow ups to her production partner. I realized that I was the biggest heel on the planet when I felt a moment of relief that Christmas with my in-laws would have to be postponed, giving me an extra workday (I love you, Pernells! Sorry I'm fundamentally selfish).

Mainly preproduction involves calling a lot of people and asking for things. It can start to feel like begging. I don't even like asking for favors. I broke out into a sweat every time I had to approach someone about using their house, seeing if they could build us a safe version of a cross-bar tire iron, etc. And Glenn was doing everything that I was doing but add in buying/renting gear and drawing storyboards.

This is a very complaining post, so let me be clear: I love what I do and I'm grateful that unpleasantness gives the the opportunity to do so occasionally. And lest I make this a completely negative note, I will say this: I'm sure that I have a price, but this production taught me that it must be pretty high. If nothing else, I got good at saying no. To money, specifically. If it came attached to deals or people that I didn't feel comfortable with I didn't take it. And I'm beyond grateful to have a partner that understands and even leads the charge on that when need be.

But the main thing that I dislike about producing is having to think like a producer. Particularly when it comes to casting. More on that later.

We Made a Movie Part 1: Plots and Plans

My friend Glenn and I make movies. That is not news to anyone who knows us personally, nor probably to anyone to whom this blog entry would be of interest. You're either reading it because you like me or because you're curious about "Driven", but I appreciate you bearing with me as I go through some obvious stuff.

He's got my back. Sorry. He's on my back.

My friend Glenn and I make movies among other things. We also do improv together on a five person team, do improv as a two-person team and try to make festivals and other things happen in our hometown. The problem with trying to do all those other things is that it can sometimes interfere with the "making movies" thing. While we've stayed busy in the years since he made his feature "Earthrise" (one of the most despised movies on Amazon Prime. Sup haters! Thanks for paying my light bill!) making short films, organizing improv festivals, doing the horror fest, making our comedy series and doing our web show we hadn't really tackled another feature. For various reasons. Some of our proposed projects would be too expensive for various reasons. Some of them needed locations that we don't have access to. Some of them just weren't feasible as something that we could sell. But for whatever reason in the past year and change we decided it was time to pull the trigger. Make something with an absolutely micro-budget. No-budget, maybe. Found footage movies, two-person movies, one location movies... The skeletons of those ideas are still floating around and I hope we'll circle back to some of them, but one day Glenn floated the idea of a movie that takes place entirely in a car. It would be  easy, we thought. And cheap. But that was the extent that we agreed on.

Of the many misconceptions about Glenn and me and our relationship, one of them is that we are perfectly synced up and agree upon things to move forward smoothly as a single unit. That's inaccurate. He saw it as a character-driven (ha) suspenseful drama whereas I thought it would make for a great comedy-horror. We both pitched ideas to our film festival son Coley who skillfully evaded telling us which sounded more promising, so we finally agreed on a race/competition. We'd both write 5-10 pages of a script and read them together and pick one to move forward with.
I won.

When we write a script something that we do is get together and do a dream cast. Anyone from Oscar-winners to stars of local theatre productions are fair game. I don't remember which of us mentioned Richard Speight Jr., but even in the lists that included celebrities who probably wouldn't even take a meeting with us, his was the name that kept bobbing to the surface. We could almost see him in certain scenes. We didn't really think it would happen, but eventually decided that we'd be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't at least reach out. We'd met him at a film festival years ago. Glenn was a big fan of Supernatural, I'd seen him in other things and thought he was good, so we sent him the script and crossed our fingers.

To one of our surprise (Glenn tends to have a lot more confidence in my work than I do), he was interested, so began the agent/manager tango. We enlisted the help of regional entertainment lawyer/awesome guy and got our I's dotted and T's crossed and then we had a name actor signed on to the project. And a little over a month to plan it.