Planning: Call Sheets and Storyboards

Now that the days have been scheduled, location selected and cast chosen - it's time to put together call sheets for the days of the shoot. There are plenty of call sheet templates out there - but here is an example of an Urban Numina Call Sheet.

Generally you will have two such schedules. This is for cast and crew outlining the overall plan for the day. It outlines the order that scenes are planned to be shot in, when people are expected to show up and when they are expecting to wrap for the day.

It is important to note that you can rarely set a solid wrap time because shoots can run overtime or finish early. It is best to set your wrap time later than you intend to wrap because it will give you some breathing space in the event of the shoot running over time, and it also is a boost for cast and crew if you manage to finish early.

A good call sheet will allow you to break down your script, work out the order in which to shoot scenes and save you a lot of time planning and organising. It is really important to plan efficiently so as to not have actors sitting around half the day with nothing to do. Call sheets will help you plan out when the actors are required. An average day should net you 5-10 minutes of usable footage if you have an experienced cast and crew. 3-5 minutes if inexperienced. So roughly plan to shoot an hour per minute of footage you want to capture.

How did I work out the length of each scene. The standard belief in Hollywood these days is that a page of a script roughly translates to a minute of screen time. So you will need to make an estimate. If the scene takes up approximate a third of the page, it is likely to be about twenty seconds of screen time. There are always exceptions, but at the planning stage this tends to be a safe estimate to work with. Note that with much more dialogue driven scripts, scenes can end up running shorter or longer than they seem - based on performance and direction. But you generally will find the a page per minute ratio a good measure to work with.

The second schedule is a shots sheet. I haven't done one for Urban Numina mostly because they are very time consuming. A shot sheet resembles a call sheet but it is split up over each shot that you are planning to take. This is actually important, but I have included the shots in the storyboards, so I will be working straight off those. Because each episode is fairly short and low on complex visual effects, I can afford to do this. If you are planning to do anything that involves a lot of complex photography, FX or movement, a shot sheet is going to make your life a lot easier.

Above is an example of the storyboard for the opening scene of Urban Numina. This was created using Cinemek Storyboard on the iPhone. A word of caution, a small 7 minute storyboard takes a long time to render and upload as an e-mail. Be prepared to wait. Still the finished storyboard is great and comes in PDF format - which you can then load on a tablet like an iPad and have with you during your shoot. Because the storyboard allows me to split scenes down shot by shot, I can use it instead of a shot sheet. Normally storyboards are too big to have on set, so you go by a shot sheet instead.

Celtx also has a great tool for breaking down shots and preparing a shot sheet for you and is well worth the investigation.

Good planning does wonders for a project. It keeps morale up, because it convinces cast and crew that things are organised and will see completion. It helps reduce the downtime for people on set - actors love to act and hate sitting around waiting for their next scene. Keeping a good plan and schedule ensures you don't waste their time and they leave a shoot feeling positive and that they have done a good day's work. Actors who had to sit around all day long doing nothing tend to walk away feeling that their time was wasted and nobody knew what was going on.

Be prepared for plans to go awry - I often prepare notes for extra scenes in the event that suddenly we have to change shooting order etc. But if you have done your job right, your shoot should run relatively smoothly and be full of positive and excited people eager to see the project to completion.

Next: Rehearsals, and spreading word about the project...

Conan

Scheduling: Herding Cats and Learning Patience

When you are producing a web series, it is going to be vital to get your scheduling down tightly.

Actors, crew, locations, friends and family - there are a lot of factors that you need to balance to make your production a success. My most vital piece of advice is don't give up.

There will be times where you will get frustrated - the larger your cast the more difficult it is going to be to organise. Organising all these elements can feel like herding cats. You need to be able to balance peoples' commitments with the commitment to the production.

While it would be nice to hope that everyone will make your project the first commitment for them, it's not a reasonable hope. Cast and crew are likely to be providing their skills and expertise on a volunteer basis, and they will only have so much time available for doing volunteer projects. They still need to eat, and get paid.

So the trick is to keep open about scheduling with everyone involved. Engage them in the process so that they feel that they are having a say. You will find that people are willing to make compromises if they feel that they are being listened to.

In most cases you will be able to make things work, but you need to be patient and be able to change plans.

In the case of Urban Numina, I had placed some very tight turn arounds on the cast and crew. I wanted to get into shooting as soon as possible. Locking down a location was proving to be difficult and to use the house I wanted to, I needed to be able to provide dates and times so that the occupants could plan around my timetable.

As such, I had a very tight set of dates available. This was further complicated by the fact that The 48 Hours Film Challenge was sitting right in the middle of May - which many of our team are involved in. Then I discovered one of the cast was involved in a theatrical production that had booked out all Sundays with rehearsals - which made my range of options even smaller.

I didn't want to shoot every weekend of the month, and with 48 hours I expected people to be exhausted for the next week and a bit.

To further complicate things, another actor had family commitments on the weekends I did have available!

So what was a producer to do? Give up? Never! Delay until June? I wanted to strike while the cast were still eager and positive about the production. The longer it takes until shooting, the more time for that good will to weaken.

The solution ended up being an easy one. I split the episodes up into six shorter pieces, (although in total they actually add about 6-10 minutes of extra film time to the original three) and split these around the times certain actors were free and when locations were available.

This succeeded in doing two things for me - firstly, I was now able to shoot a single episode in a day rather than needing 2-3. Secondly, it allowed me to shoot around other people's commitments and keep their on set time down to around 4 hours each in most instances.

Ultimately we can shoot the episodes and start releasing them at the end of May while still getting a 2-3 week break between episodes 2 and 3.

What happens if nobody is free at the same time? This is an unlikely situation, but it is possible. Some people do audition despite not actually having the time to do the project if they are successful. In the unlikely event of this occurring, it will depend on the people involved. You will likely need to get hard with some of the actors. Stick the the largest number of actors able to work at the same times and recast the rest if they cannot reschedule.

I don't think it is really that likely though, so you should be fine.

So remember, be flexible and patient. Sometimes it looks like you have no options, but if you take a deep breath - walk away from schedules for a day or two and then come back and look at them again, you will find a way around. And by being open to the cast and crew, I had some of them come back and offer suggestions of what days worked for them.

Keep honest, keep positive and keep determined. Scheduling will prove to be one of the biggest challenges you'll face - but it is also one that can be overcome.

Next - Making a call sheet.

Conan

Auditions Part 3: The Ladies - Second Half

Apologies again for the delay in updating the blog. I have been very busy negotiating locations, doing one final casting that has now turned into two new roles, and scheduling the series along with a major adjustment to the scripts.

More on that later. :)

Here are the remaining auditions.

Melissa

Olga

Rebecca

Zelda

After going through all the auditions, Kerina and I agreed to call back Melissa and Ella to audition for the role of Jenna.

Melissa's Jenna Audition

Ella's Jenna Audition

As you can see, two very strong performances, which made the casting somewhat difficult. In the end, after much careful consideration, the casting ended up as follows. Note that some roles had already been cast to people I knew were best for the parts.

Andrea - Kerina Deas

Anima - Rebecca Parker

Carey - Lee Dowsett

Deus - Michael Van Echten

Devon - Joshua Stewart

Jenna - Ella Hope-Higgson

Mel - Jenni Dowsett

Urge - Andrew Goddard

Ziana - Melissa Phillips

Oooooh - who is Ziana, you ask? Well you'll just have to wait and see. I'll discuss the character in more depth later.

Next up: Schedules and Call Sheets

Conan

Auditions Part 3: The Ladies - first half

Now for the ladies. Of course we had a larger number of women audition for the role of Anima. Without further ado, here are the first five.

Ange

Anita

Ella

Emma

Gina

As you can see, Anima's role is a much more serious character.

I'll be uploading more auditions tomorrow.

Conan

Auditions Part 2: The Boys

As promised here are the male auditions for the series.

Unfortunately Dan pulled out of the running as he is now moving to Australia, but I felt you still needed to see his audition because he is very talented.

Without further ado, here are the auditions.

Andrew

Dan

Josh

Kieran

Michael

Next up - the ladies!

Conan

Auditions Part 1: Casting Completed!

Inkeetoe? Insightoe? Deuce? Dayoos?

Auditions and casting is now effectively over. We have seen a number of people, had a few debates over pronunciation and discussions between myself and Kerina - who is playing Andrea - as to who should be in what part. But it is now all done.

Over the next few days I shall be showing some of the auditions we had to give you an idea of breadth of talent and interpretations we saw.

It is very satisfying to know that there is so much talent out there, but kind of upsetting too - because I can't cast everyone, as much as I might like to. It's also a little frustrating because it makes the decision making process that much harder when you simply can't decided out of three or four incredible performances.

Some helpful pointers though:

• When running an audition, I find it is best to get at least three takes from an actor. One is a cold read where you get to see their own take on the role, one is with direction and the third is if they want to give it one more go. The reason I like to do this is because I know what it is like to walk out of an audition and think "if I had only done one more take..." So I like to try and let the actors get one more take before we finish up their audition.
• Let the actors ask questions before starting. A side rarely tells the actor the full story about their character. Giving them a chance to ask a few questions about the project and the character helps them to get them focused on what is expected. It also lets you as a producer/director get a feel for the actor as a person. When you are working with people on a volunteer project, it is good to know if their dynamic is going to match the other cast and crew.
• Be friendly. Auditions are scary things to do, it's a competition and most actors are nervous - even the real professionals still have butterflies - so keeping a friendly and approachable demeanour means that they are more likely to listen to direction and open up for their audition.
• Try to have someone else with you. Due to timing issues, some of the auditions were just myself and the actor. I don't usually like doing this as it can feel a little confrontational or creepy. Especially if you are holding auditions in a house rather than at a studio. Having another cast or crew member with you helps to add a sense of legitimacy to your project.

Something I noticed locally here is that there are a lot of actresses and simply not enough roles to go around. I definitely intend to write a female heavy project for my next undertaking...

When it came to making the decision of who got which part, we had some interesting situations. Two of the roles were no brainers. Kerina and I both just looked at the video for the two actors and said straight away yes. There simply was not doubt that they nailed their characters in ways that the other actors simply didn't.

However, two roles were very hard to decide on. The male role had two contenders. One who looked like the classical idea of the role and played the part well, and the other who had a more unusual look but had a very intense focus. The part of Anima was also hotly contested, and came down to three very different takes on the character - over which Kerina and I had much debate. The actresses were three very different looks for the part and had three very different ways of playing her.

When I put the auditions up, I won't actually discuss each individual actor and why they did nor didn't get the role. Mostly because I don't feel that it would be fair. I will cover here the key things that it came down to for each role without discussing the aspects of the actors who got the parts - these are just notes about what Kerina and I ended up agreeing were the key points we were looking for.

Devon: Despite being a mortal character, Devon is one of the most comedic characters in the script. He does a lot of physical and expressive comedy, and as such needed a very animated actor who could do funny facial expressions while also still looking cute in a boy-next-door kind of way.

Deus: On the shallow end, Deus needed to be attractive. But he also needed to be distinctive. When the actor walked into frame, he needed to have a presence that commanded attention. He also needed to be able to be both neutral but warm and be able to play opposite Devon.

Urge: In many ways Urge's character is fairly easy to play. He's larger than life and often just needs to be a little slutty in his acting. What we were looking for is an actor who could build on that and give Urge more comedy out of his performance than just relying on his audacious dialogue.

Anima: Anima was a very hard role to nail. I had very specific ideas about who she was, and the actress really needed to have a strong presence as well as a mystery to her. The role was one that needed both a warmth and a sharp edge hidden within it. As Kerina likes to say "there is a sense of 'don't f**k with me' to her."

Sadly, not everyone could "win" and I have had the unenviable job of telling most of the people I saw that they didn't get a part. Which I hate doing, because it wasn't a case of them not being good, but that there were a lot of good people who auditioned. It was not an easy decision.

Fortunately, I now know who is out there looking for work and can write characters with an idea of the people I'd like to ask to play the roles. So hopefully in the future we will see some of these faces in the series at a later point. (Fingers crossed.)

So tomorrow I shall start off with the boys - make sure to be here not only to see the auditions, but hear some of the script.

It's going to be an interesting exercise!

Conan

Casting: Putting out a casting call

With the first drafts of the series now completed, it's now that things get complex. Making a web series is not about one step after the other - eventually a producer, much like a professional juggler, has to start throwing more than one ball up into the air.

Once you have your scripts ready, you need to begin planning *how* you intend to shoot your series and also start gathering your cast.

Fortunately, I already have three roles effectively cast. Mel, Andrea and Carey. I'll still be asking the actors to do a screen test of the character so that I can get a feel for how they intend to play their character, but the roles were effectively written for these three.

But I still have four roles to fill, and they are all central roles to the show. The plan here will be to put out casting calls, hold auditions and once I have my full cast we will be doing workshops to improve the comedy of the script to match the actors.

But how do you put together a casting call? First, find somewhere that will allow you to post them. There are a lot of great sites these days for putting up casting calls.

Star Now

The Big Idea

These are two New Zealand based sites that I have chosen to advertise on.

A more international service for small productions is Spidvid but I have very limited knowledge about it's effectiveness. Do a google search, and ask around local theatre groups. Ideally, the more places you put your call up, the more responses you are likely to get.

Here is the Starnow Ad

Here is The Big Idea Ad

But how do you put together a casting call?

Keep It Brief

There is a temptation to go into great detail when putting up a casting call. What you need to do is give actors enough information to pique their interest and get a feel for the character, but not so much as to lock them into a performance that will feel unnatural to them.

Most of my advice focuses around this. Do not make the mistake of trying to mould the actor into the role. The trick is to find the point where the actor's interpretation and your vision come together to create a living character. In order to do this, you need to give the actors enough freedom to interpret the role and enough direction to know where they need to be focusing.

I tend to pick key words that define the core of the character and a few lines about how I see that character being played. Beyond that, it's too much at this early stage. Part of the process is developing the character with the actor rather than just saying "your character must be played like this..."

Be clear about expectations

As you will note in the ads, I'm upfront about Devon and Deus being shirtless. The opening scene of the series has Deus showing up naked, and actors need to know when that is expected. Now my plan is to shoot the scene so that the nudity is implied rather than shown - so the actor will be wearing shorts and we'll be shooting only above the waist and a shot of his legs - but no actual nudity.

However, this does need to be known. Also, I have tried to be clear that this is a comedic show and actors will need to have some comedic timing. This isn't so central, as we can build on timing issues - but again, it helps to give them an idea as to what tone is going to be expected when they audition.

Don't be too limiting

Now despite all that, I need to stress that you can't be too limiting in a casting call. I generally avoid mentioning ethnicity or body type because I like to see who shows up and what kind of performance they bring with them. Deus could be muscular, athletic, slim, European, Samoan, Chinese...

You do need some limitations - Deus and Urge need to be physically fit and attractive - and if this was a story about a Danish family, obviously I would be looking for people who can look and act as if they were Danish. But in regards to these characters, I'm wanting to keep things open. I'm wanting to be surprised by the people who apply, and give them an opportunity to show me their take on these characters. Because there will be improv and workshop sessions to develop the characters further, I need to be seeing people who can show creativity and initiative in their roles but who can still take direction.

So now it is simply a matter of waiting for the applications to come in.

Next: Auditions

Conan