The Cast Call

The beauty of having a small crew is that you’re nimble and can fit in tight spaces or, as we’d find out, be less conspicuous in the big outdoors… more on that subject later.

Here we were April 2007 with the goal to shoot a feature film ‘deconstructive’ style… a series of shorts, +/-10, that we’d submit to film festivals, YouTube, and everywhere else appropriate, along the way.  Even in hindsight, I think this is a darn good idea, and I have a story about a serial killer in San Francisco that’s perfect for this approach, it's Seven meets Sliding Doors… but I digress.

Confident of our plan, 7-minute script in hand, we set about the task of casting and quickly realized that we needed to find all our principal cast, even for the short, i.e. Anjelica, Mitch and Toni.  Since we were operating with zero budget, there was no discussion about hiring a Casting Agent, so it was up to us and resources on the Internet.

While Craig's List is always an option, as well as other indie filmmaker groups, my tool of choice was SF Casting.  I can’t speak highly enough of their service – a great resource for finding talented actors; even better for indie filmmakers, it’s free.  No sooner had we posted our profile and call for our cast and we were inundated with applicants. 

This is one of the most fun aspects of filmmaking… to actualize your vision of a character and see it embodied in a walking, talking human being.  I’ll confess, it’s a bit of a meat market… kind of like online dating, at least to start, as you flip through pages and pages of headshots.  Nope, too pretty… nope, too skinny… nope, too young… nope, no film experience… nope, nope, nope!  Until you get to the maybe, maybe, maybe and hopefully, yes, yes, yes!

We whittled the list down to our top three for each role and thus began the parade – through my living room – of actors hoping to bring their interpretation of our characters to life.

Compulsion... Characters... The Muse that Compels to Create...

One subject that fascinates Gino and I as filmmakers – and one we continue to explore as we develop the script for our next film Pitchin’ Papaya – is human compulsions. We are interested in exploring what compels people to act in certain ways, do certain things, even when it goes against their better judgment. It’s the core of Mismo and our tagline …when fate and freedom collide; meaning that while we all have free will, we permit our innate nature to make our choices, thus leading to our inevitable fate… and oftentimes resulting in a collision.

We first explored this theme in Compulsion, the story for which was sparked by a real runaway bride who, to avoid a trip to the altar, claimed she’d been kidnapped. Her story spawned a nationwide search for her kidnappers accompanied by a media furor. It was likely the furor that tripped her up… in the end, she confessed it was a lie… she’d concocted the entire story. In our version, the runaway’s impulse, “I simply had to get away,” leads to another compulsion – greed – that leads to her being kidnapped for real.

Had we completed the script, the themes of freedom versus security, predictable versus risky, and passion versus romance would have been explored. As it was, Compulsion took many forms before finally settling on the genre of road movie – and, alas, a production beyond our modest means.

With Mismo’s parallel story lines the opportunity for compulsions to collide is amplified, leading to an ending that led one viewer to comment, “it sent chills right down my spine.”

While we have created our characters for Papaya, I am guessing that, as we write the script, at least one of them is going to take us on a road trip with her compulsion. It’s our journey as writers… to follow the muse… see what transpires… and in the end, we always have free will to delete.

The Team of Many Hats...

Our Scary Cow pitch attracted the cameraman that we desired, the "legendary" Danny Baldonado.  I figured that if a guy can shoot skateboarders while he's also on a skateboard, well, he's our man!  Thankfully, he liked our idea.

When it came to lighting and sound, there was no-one withing the SC community, so I called on my friend Jeffery Davis with whom I'd attended film school.  He also liked our idea, but not the monthly SC fees.  It wasn't hard to do the math and conclude that we were better off putting $$ directly into our own  kitty rather than compete quarterly for bucks that might never come our way. 

Et voila... that was our team... and for those of you who wonder what a "real" film team looks like, I'm providing this image courtesy of The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint by Chris Jones, Jonathan Newman and Cara Williams.

oh honey...feed me a grape...

before our screenplay was complete...much was processed...thought about...written about...researched...edited...thought about again...

lorraine and i aimed to develop provocative characters and develop nothing sacred scenes that when brought together...would make a meaningful story...

as for character development...we got to dig into the shadows of the unconscious and work with the rawness of human experience...things you've (we've) wanted to say...things you've (we've) wanted to do....things you (we) long for...but that you can't pursue without being thought of as...well... you know...you fill in the blank...dozen of maddening adjectives...

the characters in mismo are a derivation of mindful experimentation and our experiential mind...these characters spoke to us...either as people we've crossed paths with in the exterior world...or people that have migrated before us in our inner world...

once we had our characters...in loose form...we needed them to meet up...this is where scene development comes in....

you ask yourself...what would i like to see them do...a part of this is based on personal interest such as my interest in having bella and diego feed each other grapes...i once saw an ad for a high end carpet store in san francisco showing two young...beautiful people...laying on a carpet...scantily dressed...feeding each other grapes...i thought...heck...why can't the 'other side of the tracks' characters share in this bliss...nothing sacred, right?...

yet as mismo got built out...an internal gravitational pull started to create boundaries for what was possible and impossible...since as we developed characters...we also developed expectations for our characters...the consistency factor crept in...

once we had the characters and scenes developed in loose form...we posted the scenes...in the form of index cards...on a wall so we can see if our characters and scenes were consistent with what was in our head... or how much of story was still in our head...

from the soundtrack for Mismo

This was supposed to post from YouTube last week as an early New Year's pressie... I resposted it again today and the YouTube share isn't working... ah... the challenges of technology. Thankfully, there's always more than one way to accomplish a plan (which surely has to be the producer's credo).


As it transpires, it is appropo to follow Gino's commentary on public and private persona using Toni, the voyeuristic psychologist in Mismo, as an example. Here you can see Toni in nasty mode... or is it nice?