Blog

04/28/10

I am finally ready to reveal the fantastic cast we've brought together for the series!

(Pictures of the victim/suspects can be found here ).

Detective Page Williams: Paul Vonasek

Detective Michael Levins: Jeff Nichol

Captain Randall Aubrey: Hardy Koenig

Cassie Sterling: Haley Boyd

Patrick Felton: Steven Molony

Walter Rock: Taylor Schatz

Jennifer Johnson: Catherine Erhardt

Matthew Proctor: Marcus Mann

Billy Buchanan: Daniel Dutot

Mary Dunsworth: Kate Enge

It's been exciting sitting on these names for this long. I wanted to wait until we had gotten our promotional pictures finished to announce everyone (wanted faces to go with the names). We will be doing another photo shoot for the police members soon.

I'll keep this short and sweet. Enjoy the pics and stay tuned for another behind the scenes video (where we will meet the cast members and see what all went into our photo shoot!).

03/31/10

Been a while since I gave an update and we've been quite busy!

We recently held auditions and had a wonderful turnout. Over 30 people came and read for us. Callbacks are in the process of being set-up and I am really excited to see potential cast members read with each other.

If all goes well, we should have most of the production cast by next week. Be on the lookout for the unveiling (we're thinking up something fun for you all!).

Also, a special thanks go out to the people who helped out during the auditions (in no order: Tom Speer, Alex Welgraven, Kristen Conaty, Ryan Sailer, and Amber Johnson).

Also, please check out the Crew Call event on our Facebook page. We are looking for any and all interested parties wanting to be a part of this production experience.

Until next time...

It's my birthday today and I've always enjoyed giving gifts (as well as receiving them). So, in the spirit of the day, I am giving you all a 24 hour glimpse at a part of Curtain Call that I am particularly excited about: it's opening musical number. (I also put up something else in this blog post you might want to check out. If you find it, that is...)

The series begins with an actress, Cassie Sterling, performing a solo before a live audience. In the very first draft of the series, this was a monologue, but, being the musical theater fan I am, I decided it would be fun to write a solo. I wrote the lyrics and Curtain Call's talented composing duo, Reed Reimer and Ben Larson crafted a spectacular (in my opinion) musical piece. This was the first thing we created for the series and there is one more song to write before it is done...

Now, while this is pretty close to being final, realize that it isn't sound mixed and that instead of Cassie Sterling's voice, we have Mr. Ben Larson singing the vocal line... just pretend it's a female. :)

I'll leave this up for 24 hours (as long as it is my birthday) just to give you all a taste of part of the series.

The video can be found here.

I hope you enjoy the music (and the little text accompaniment).

On a final note, the audition event on our facebook page will be/has been (depending when you read this) updated with specific audition times and sign up information. Until next time...

3/1/10

Well, March already, huh?

The first of (hopefully) many behind-the-scene video diaries can be found here. Very brief but you can get a peek at how we set up two of the trailers shots. Special thanks to Tom Speer for shooting the footage on short notice (next time, we'll get a boom pole!).

We have just over 200 fans on our FB page, which is very exciting (will be even more excited when we have more to show you all). The amount of interest at this point is encouraging and I hope it grows exponentially.

I am a couple of days away from putting out information on how people can sign up for auditions (full audition info can be found here). Looking forward to seeing a whole lot of actors!

2/25/10

Well, it's out now. At least amongst my FB friends and acquaintances. After sitting on the idea, the scripts, and finally the teaser trailer for some time, it's finally time to let everyone take a look at what we've been doing.

Curtain Call's Facebook page is up and running (check it out here). The teaser trailer, a couple of promo pics and information on our upcoming auditions can be found there. The teaser trailer can also be seen on Vimeo and on the production page on this site ( here ).

Response to the teaser trailer has been positive. People have commented on both the visuals and the music. I am very happy with all the work everyone did to make it happen and am truly satisfied with the results.

Next up is working out the audition details. Dates have been set, sign up info has not (will hopefully be done over the weekend). Am looking for a wide variety of actors so I hope to see a wide variety of people audition.

Am also waiting to hear about a theater location for the shoot (a very important location). I hope to have that ironed out soon so I can begin shotlisting. Also coming up is one last script polish before locking the pages.

Am very glad more people know about the project and am excited that this long gestating project has taken one more step to becoming a reality.

2/13/10

Last night the very first footage of Curtain Call was shot. Granted, it was just shots for the teaser trailer that won't be used in the actual series, but it was footage nonetheless!

The shoot went from 8 pm to about 11:30 pm at two different theater locations on MSUM's campus. This was the first time that our camera team (DP - Ryan Sailer, Camera Operator - Alex Welgraven, along with assistance from Ben Pimlott and Tom Speer) worked together and I am pleased to say things went very smoothly. You never know what the chemistry of a set will be until it actually happens and I believe this bodes well for the actual production.

Often times, I come up with visuals I would like to see, get on set, and am either told or realize myself that the look is just not doable and I end up compromising what I want. Not this time. Every shot looked just the way I wanted it to and I believe that it is going to be a great looking teaser trailer.

Editing was planned for last night as well, but after the footage was imported, we decided to call it a night and tackle it next Monday. After that, it's off to Reed and Ben for some musical goodness and then up online for the masses! This project is slowly lurching to life and it's starting to feel exciting.

2/5/10

As my written proposal gets nearer to completion (who would have thought having to basically rewrite the whole plot of your show three separate times, each with varying degrees of depth, would take so long?), there has been a request for a teaser trailer to accompany the proposal. This is a bit odd, as usually one puts together a teaser with footage that has already been shot. We haven't even cast anyone yet. But, I've done this once before (with my feature project, One in Nine) and I can do it again.

I scripted the teaser with a minimum number of shots, one actor in silhouette, and some choice on-screen text (some lifted from The Bard, himself). All in all, I feel that it will capture the essence of the project, if only the theatrical side of it (the police procedural side will come later).

We plan on shooting this next Friday and, after some new music composed by Reed and Ben, hope to have it online for all to see soon.

2/1/10

Reaction to the scripts has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, this has been the best received material I've ever written. Makes me feel like the hard work was worth it (and believe me, writing this has been more difficult than anything else I've ever attempted). BUT... they are still just scripts. I need to actually make them into, you know, viewable episodes.

And in order to do that, I need shooting dates!

I don't know why I've been dragging my heels in setting the production dates. Part of me feels like I am going to scare away anyone who has an interest in working on this. Not gonna lie, it's going to be a huge shoot (but what else did you expect from a page count double that of a feature film?). And another part of me feels that once I lock in those dates, I have a deadline. I need to get it all together by those dates... OR ELSE.

I broke down the page count for every location last night (how I wish I had an assistant to do some of this stuff for me). I had to finally estimate how many pages I think I could get done in a day. I finally decided upon a (most likely foolish) ten pages a day. My reason for this is that I am an efficient filmmaker and these locations aren't going to require major relighting between set-ups. With this estimate in mind, I figured out how many days I need per location.

I always figured I'd need 5-7 days for the theater location. Was a little surprised to find out that I would need about 5 days for the police station. As far as individual interview room locations (which will all be the same room, just redressed several times), I was pleased to find that the page counts were less than I expected... a day per suspect, with one suspect probably needing two. (And if you haven't read the scripts yet, the above probably doesn't make much sense...sorry).

SO, here are my initial dates for shooting...these will remain flexible for a while and will definitely be dependent on location availability.

MAY 31, JUNE 1-6: Police Station OR Theater

JUNE 14-20: Theater OR Police Station

JULY 3,4 (Happy Independence Day!): Matthew's Interview Room

JULY 17: Walter's Interview Room

JULY 18: Jennifer's Interview Room

JULY 31: Billy's Interview Room

AUGUST 1: Mary's Interview Room

AUGUST 14: Cemetery

AUGUST 15: Patrick's Interview Room

NOTE - The locations within weekends could be flopped around according to convenience.

Scared yet, potential cast and crew members?

Now that I have some dates to throw at people, it's time to start scouting for locations (anyone got a theater I can use for a solid week? How about a police station? Anyone?). And beyond that, AUDITIONS!

1/14/10

Am working hard on a written pitch proposal for the project while slowly getting feedback from my readers (pretty positive so far).

I realized that I needed to finally name all the episodes for the proposal, a task I had been putting off for some time. Originally, when I had thought this would only go 9 episodes, I had 9 episode titles ready to go. When the number shot up to 17, I quit trying to name them, telling myself I'd get to it later. Well, it's later.

Titles are always difficult for me and usually one of the last things I create. Oddly enough, the title of the series, Curtain Call, came to me really early in the process.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the titles of all 17 episodes here. Each title is theater-related, which made the titling task even more trying. And here we go...

Episode 101 - The Curtain Rises...

Episode 102 - The Performance Begins

Episode 103 - Cast of Characters

Episode 104 - The Stage Is Set

Episode 105 - Sense Memory

Episode 106 - Backstage Drama

Episode 107 - Playing The Part

Episode 108 - The Show Must Go On

Episode 109 - Character Study

Episode 110 - Intermission

Episode 111 - Dramatic Intent

Episode 112 - Callbacks

Episode 113 - Missed Cues

Episode 114 - Conflict

Episode 115 - Motivation

Episode 116 - Critical Review

Episode 117 - The Curtain Falls...

1/11/10

Here I sit, nervous as shit.

Sorry for the vulgarity (you'll find almost none of that in the series, new for me), but this is the first time that I've really experienced any sort of anxiety while waiting to hear people's reactions to something I've written. You see, I just finished writing approx. 175 pages (divided into 17 parts) of a web series that, until late last night, was fully known only to me. It's out there now to a select group of readers. I feel like I just sent my kid off to their first day of school, waiting to see if the other kids accept her or not (and let me tell you, I don't look forward to when THAT day actually comes around).

And so I sit.

Let me back up.

It's June, 2009. I'm driving back from a visit at my parents and in-laws. My daughter is asleep in the back seat and my wife drifts in and out as well (it's quite the boring drive). It's also raining pretty hard and while I should be really paying attention to the road, I'm instead pre-occupied with an idea that started growing in my head.

I'm 30 years old. I'm married and have a beautiful daughter. I have a great job that I look forward to going to every morning.

And yet...

Creatively, I feel like I haven't gotten there. Haven't achieved what I set out to do when I was younger. Haven't... arrived? I dunno how exactly to put it (a wonderful thing for a writer to say, I know).

I've made several well-received short films. I've even made a feature that, while painful to watch now, I was very proud of at the time (don't get me wrong, I'm still proud of it...but if I had the chance to make it NOW, boy, watch out...).

I've also been thinking about exposure. How one obtains it these days. And from that, where I want to be, what I really want to be doing. What do I want to be doing? Easy: writing and directing for a living. How does one go about this? First step is representation. How does one get that? Exposure. To the right kind of people.

One thing became crystal clear: living in North Dakota wasn't gonna do it.

I've become tired of film festivals. It's great to screen your film for an audience, no doubt. And it does the ego good to see an audience react well to your film. But what are you really getting out of it? Do the people that really matter, the ones that can help you make a career, see these films? Certainly not the festivals around here. And with the proliferation of large budget "indie" films clogging the bigger film festivals, the chances of a no-budget short from ND getting screened is about as good as winning the lottery.

Which brought my mind to the internet. Specifically, the stories of people getting noticed from videos they had created and posted to Youtube. Sure, I could post my shorts up there, but it takes tremendous word of mouth to garner the views needed to appear as even a miniscule blip on the pop culture radar (and even then only for a brief second). Again, the lottery analog, while tired, is appropriate.

But what about a web series? A continuing story that would keep interest over a period of time and be able to build word of mouth? I'd been watching some online (namely The Guild...yep, geek at heart here). I was impressed at how they were able to put together such a polished production with so little time, budget, and resources. I then started looking around the web some more, trying to find other web series out there. And then I got struck with the bug that got me into writing plays and shorts in the first place, that infectious idea that only a healthy (or overly large) ego could support:

I could do this. I might even be able to do this better.

And so, with ego fully in charge, I began thinking about what kind of series I would create. I'm not a comedy man. Never have been, never will be. My mind tends to drift toward darker material. I started thinking about the kinds of plays that I wrote when I was younger (with my writing partner Craig Petersen). They were murder mysteries. And then I realized something: I had never written a murder mystery screenplay. My favorite genre was the one I kept ignoring whenever I thought of my next story idea.

That could work. It has an inherent hook (who did it?) that would keep people coming back for more and I could explore the dark material that I enjoy creating. Win-win all around.

And with that, I started creating the story for Curtain Call (title was to come much later). I knew two things right from the start: the ending solution, and the beginning situation (an actress is murdered on-stage during a live performance). I needed more, though. A framework to hang this mystery on. Two detectives of opposite mind sets came to mind. And from that the format came to me: there would be the set-up episode, followed by an interrogation of every suspect, one per episode, and concluding with two wrap-up episodes where the detectives argue their theories and the final solution is revealed (oh...it all seemed so simple back then...).

SO... back to the drive. My wife is awake now. I wanted to take my chance, try my pitch out. My wife is a great evaluator of my ideas and she almost always picks up on problems that I never see (I love her for that...she might not believe that due to my reactions, but I really do. It keeps me honest). So, I clear my throat and start telling her my idea for a murder mystery web series.

I don't think she knew just how much power she had at that moment. Because if she had not been interested in it, or thought it a foolish venture, or had really any problems with the idea, I would have squashed it then and there. No regret. It had been something fun to think about on a long, rainy drive.

Am glad she liked it.

So, here we are. Roughly 6 months later. 55 episode drafts. 17 parts. 175 pages. Immense amounts of time spent writing.

I await the readers feedback, but, as stated above, I do so with a nice heaping does of anxiety. This is no longer a lark of an idea on a rainy drive home. This has grown into a large project, my biggest yet. Finally, others will know what I've been carrying around in my head for so long.

I hope it was worth it.