Proverbs 10:7 states Good people will be remembered as a blessing . . .Kesha Afrika Oliver (pictured left) has been just that to our production, a blessing. As told in a previous post she was one of the first people we cast. She called me to tell me of a fantastic actor she knew who would be perfect for the role of Aisha. I said sure we would like to see her. The problem was she didn’t know if she could make it to our auditions on July 19th. Turns out she couldn’t and she didn’t know if she could make it up to Baltimore (from Virginia).
We saw a lot of good actors on the 19th that we cast in other roles, but none for the role of Aisha. We had ALL of our actors, but the starring role. How could we proceed with our shoot without our star?
It was getting to crunch time. It looked like we had to have another audition. I had a tentative date for a second audition for August 9th, TWENTY days before our shoot date. That didn’t leave a lot of time for rehearsals and such. The location where we had our last auditions was booked up for August 9th so I was about to schedule them for August 16th THIRTEEN days before our shoot date and ONE day before our scheduled rehearsals on August 17th.
It was getting to crunch time. It looked like we had to have another audition. I had a tentative date for a second audition for August 9th, TWENTY days before our shoot date. That didn’t leave a lot of time for rehearsals and such. The location where we had our last auditions was booked up for August 9th so I was about to schedule them for August 16th THIRTEEN days before our shoot date and ONE day before our scheduled rehearsals on August 17th.
I’ve read about other films where an actor was cast three to four days before shooting began, but I sure didn’t want that for my little production. During this time I also tried to arrange an audition with Kesha's friend, the actor from Virginia, but couldn’t narrow down a date. It was my co-producer Amy’s idea to get an “Internet audition”. I asked the actor to send me a video audition by email and she did. What I saw was great, but I wanted a second opinion. After Amy saw it she said “yes” offer her the role.
Serendipitously I got her audition on the tentative date I was going to have my second auditions August 9th. One day when I release The Part: Special Edition DVD you might just get to see that audition. LOL. So who is this "actor from Virginia"? Who is she? Well I gushed about her in another blog entry You can call her Miss Ross
Well now that we had our lead role everything was groovy right? (yeah I’m bringing groovy back) Not exactly. There is still more tell.
Previous “scenes” of Pre-Production:
Pre-Production-Scene 1Previous “scenes” of Pre-Production:
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