Video Report

On Monday we went to Creative House Studios to shoot the video sequence for the Scottish play. We met everyone the night before to go over the fight sequences and rehearse each scene, and even though I felt a little underprepared, I was really excited to get into the studio and start filming.

Of course, in true Cleveland fashion, the first major snowstorm of the season hit Sunday night and didn't really let up until late Monday night. I was worried that people wouldn't be able to make it to the studio, but they're all true Clevelanders and they soldiered through the rotten weather. We all met up at the studio at 4:00 and after loading in, getting into costume and tying up some loose ends we were ready to shoot.

The studio was really awesome, and Peter Sampson, the gentleman who graciously agreed to work with us and who also shot the whole thing for us, was a fantastic collaborator. He kept saying how impressed he was with our concept and our preparation, which made me feel a lot better about our rehearsal the night before. We started with the scenes with Matt and Margi, since they agreed to bring their newborn son Devin for the Lady Macduff scene and I wanted to release them early so they could get him back home. And after that we just kept knocking them out, one by one. It was super fun to be able to see each take right away as we shot them, and I think we came away with some really great footage. I got the hard drive back yesterday with the video on it, but I have not had a chance to review it yet. I'll start editing this weekend.

Blocking

Ok. If you were expecting anything remotely sane or realistic, stop right now. Don't see the show. Don't read any more posts.

Yes, Ali is directing this in a fabulously comedic way. Over the top! Over the line! Over the...something! We finally starting getting on our feet last night and worked out a few scenes with blocking. My personal challenge is to just make Josh laugh in every scene every time we rehearse it. I don't know what his personal challenge is, but it's on for me!

It felt good to start working the text and to know that it is holding water and that we might not have to paddle the entire way upstream! I mean, this isn't the first time I've worked on a new piece. About a decade ago I worked on a collaborative piece at Dobama Night Kitchen on the Gulf War. Josh was in it too. I knew that I wasn't exactly cast on the strength of my writing, and my scripts weren't integral to the show as a whole (there were A LOT of good writers working on that show) but it was great helping a show take shape. I haven't sought the opportunity to do a show like that since then. It is a wonderful experience. And I'm remembering that again. I'm glad for that.

Merry Christmas, me.

Official first draft almost done!!!!

YEEEEEHAAAAAAWWW!

Josh and I almost have an entire first draft done! We just have to finish up Hamlet and we've got a working script! I'm so proud of us!

Time keeps on slipping

Why, clock? Why? All I want for Christmas is more time. Today was a wash. We were supposed to have hours to work on the choreography for the Macbeth video shoot and writing the bits we haven't yet. Not so much.

Maybe tonight we'll have so time, but we're also trying to visit friends that have been cooped up with a newborn. Ok, Ok, tomorrow, definitely. All day. NO EXCUSES.

A journey of 1000 miles

Last night we had our first rehearsal with Ali. We have about 60% of the script done, I'd say, and we read through it twice, swapping roles on the second read. It was kind of fun to read Kelly's lines and have her read mine, and Ali thought it was funny enough to seriously consider keeping. While writing the dialogue, we have been pretty successful in staying true to ourselves as characters, and Ali liked the dynamic of switching our "characters", so I'm playing Kelly and she's playing me.

Tonight we started some fight work. We got one and half fights down in a first draft form. I'm sure we'll continue to tweak them as we go along but what we've got feels pretty good. We also ordered a couple super cheap bokken from Amazon, and we're waiting for confirmation of a brand spanking new 32" light sword from Starfire Swords.

Also, we had a ridiculous stroke of good luck video-wise. Without giving too much away, the concept for one of the fights is to do it as a fighting video game, like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. This would require filming the fights in front of a green screen. As an alumnus of the Multimedia Program at Virginia Marti College of Art and Design, I keep in touch with the head of Digital Media there, Geof Pelaia. I contacted Geof to see if we could possibly use their green screen, and he told me about a place on East 40th called Creative House Studios. The Digital Media students from VMC all go there now for their lighting and green screen classes. They have a huge permanent green screen studio, lighting grid, camera equipment, everything. Geof put me in touch with his contact there and they agreed to help us out for an undisclosed, but quite reasonable price, plus they're going to shoot it for us and put the raw footage on a hard drive for me to edit at my leisure. Awesome! Now we just need to get some folks to be various fighters and die-ers. Who wants to be in a video?

We are here to kill his characters.

Last night we had some friends over for a dinner party, and we read the current script to them for feedback. They liked a lot of it, and we got some good laughs, plus some very helpful notes and suggestions. The intro needs to be revised, and there were some conflicting opinions as to how much we need to explain each play as we do them. It made me realize that it doesn't matter if the audience knows who the characters in a given play are, or what the story is, because we're not there to do scenes from Shakespeare. We're there to kill his characters, and tell some bad jokes, and do some kick-ass fights. So that's what we're going to do.

Also, we had our first production meeting with our director, the stupendous Ali Garrigan, and she, too, had a lot of helpful criticism and ideas for the script. The best thing is, she is super excited to be working with us on this show and she really wants to be an objective director and help us get our ideas out there. We've got a lot of rewrites to do before our first rehearsal on Thursday.

Kelly just asked me, "Yes, but how do you feel about it all?" A couple of days ago I was very stressed about how much work we had left to do, and I freaked out a little. (Kelly: A little?!?!?) OK, a lot. I still feel a bit stressed, but the laughs and comments we got from everyone were great and made me feel a lot better about what we do have written. My biggest concern right now besides the script is getting all the video done. I've got some feelers out there about how we're going to do that. So, overall, I feel much better about where we are.

Critique

Josh and I received a couple of critiques from our friends.

One said he needed to hear it before he could really give an opinion, and the other was very detailed, but I think she thought it was the whole thing and close to being a final draft. Her thoughts still hold, though. And I agree with quite a few of them. Things need to be fleshed out more. We have to remember that more people than just our friends and family will be seeing this show and need to know basic things like
- who we are!
- why are we doing this?

Yeah, good questions.

(Josh just asked from the kitchen if we could do one of the fights as a silent film - maybe Hamlet?

"Hamlet is the wordiest play in the cannon, so we are going to do it completely silent!")

One thing we keep asking ourselves is ,"Will people know enough about the plays?" I mean, almost everyone know R&J, MacB, Hamlet, but what about the others? Other than the two, maybe three people reading this, does anyone know that there's 3 parts to Henry IV? Should we work a one or two sentence description into each scene? Are we clever enough to do that without it sounding like English 101?