Debbie Updates- Casting and Rehearsals

The last couple of months have been very hectic in terms of Debbie. Straight after Christmas we started casting for our film. We did Skype auditions over a couple of days and finally got our cast together:

I found it really easy to cast the guys as they were both fantastic and it was believable that they were brothers straight away. They really stood out to me and I could not have picked anyone else. I feel like we got very lucky in that regard. The girls I had particular trouble with. We had many fantastic candidates with very different styles, however Kesia stood out in particular to me because of her friendly attitude, and I loved her French accent aswell. That combined with her look really suited the kind of character I wanted her to play, whilst getting very good vibes from her that she would be reliable.

I am really happy with these guys, they are all equally reliable and friendly, as well as being fantastic actors. On Monday 15th February, we had a rehearsal with them to go through the script and play some different actions to see what kind of performances look best, try out different directing techniques, and to get to know my actors in general. 

In terms of directing technique, I have paid particular attention to 'Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television' By Judith Weston. 

I went into the rehearsal with an annotated copy of the script, which had lots of notes on how I could get the actors to play the roles and particular lines in different ways:

This book helped me see directing from an actor's perspective and I think has improved my direction on the whole. The book talks about using playable notes rather than result direction, which would be telling an actor you want them to be angry or be sad, rather than giving them something they can act on. I could see quite easily the differences in performance from one direction to another and to me that confirms that I'm succeeding at what I've set out to do. So now I feel prepared for our shoot in that regard!

Organisation wise, since Christmas it's been focused on shot lists and call sheets. Since the script is now finished, what I had to do was go through the script and write all the shots I wanted in there so I had a basic structure I wanted to work to. 

Then I had to write up all these shots into a spreadsheet with all details such as movement, props etc. So Laura could organise these into shooting schedules for each day of shooting:

In general now, I think we are prepared for the shoot. With just a few odd bits and bobs needed to do left. A couple of props here and there to get and we are set for the studio.