Pippa and the Casting Call

How is it Friday already?! I swear, it was Monday like yesterday.

This week had a lot of casting call stuff for Epic Studios too - and so it should, since the auditions were Tuesday and Wednesday. Which would also explain how I apparently got lost in the space-time continuum.

So Monday was predominantly spent calling agents of anyone who wasn’t confirmed for Epic Studios. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls, lots of voicemails. I’m getting a lot better at making my emails short and to the point. I’ve always struggled with that sort of thing, what with my writer’s nature to make things sound pretty.

I’m really glad that I’m actually becoming less verbose. It only took me sending between twenty and fifty emails of saying pretty much the same thing, when I could have summed it up in a single sentence and made that process a lot less time consuming.

Tuesday and Wednesday took me to Farmhouse Productions to meet the team there, which was pretty cool. I also got to meet a few actors that I knew as I was manning the sign-in sheets for the auditions, which I emailed to ACTRA afterwards. I was surprised to see how quickly auditions actually go.

I also got to do a bit of production scheduling for Epic Studios, and counted how many days each cast member will be needed on set. I got to try some of that in my program, but I’ve been finding that a lot of aspects of a production are easier to wrap my head around when it’s actually attached to a show rather than a school assignment.

Back at Smiley Guy Studios, I started helping with the Vampire Steve weekly meeting schedule, and Erin said next week, meeting notes will be my responsibility. I also got to sit in on a skype interview with one of our future interns from Denmark, so that was cool.

Aside from Smiley Guy stuff, I also helped with a second breakdown for Epic Studios casting which is going to take place Monday. I’ve also finally started compiling that script notes master list for Lisa that I mentioned last week. Working on things for the second casting call is actually why my blog post for this week is going to be late - lots of scheduling and adding and shifting things around. And then I got to make more sides for those characters that didn’t have sides already. There were a lot more emails and phone calls, but we eventually got that all taken care of.

And that was my week.

Callie Love Halloween and Samosas

Halloween is upon us!! I love costumes and I was very happy when I was allowed to wear mine to work on Friday, even though the high heeled boots made me late. My boots are quite irrelevant to what work I got done this week however, so I'll move on. Monday and Wednesday I worked on my script, using Jeremy's notes and I watched more animated shorts to look at what elements made a short funny or memorable. Death Buy Lemonade by Kyu-bum Lee is definitely my favourite (probably because of the pun in the title).

Friday was my most productive day, by far. I sat in on a meeting and listened to Julie talk about a top secret toy (shhhh) being released just in time for Valentine's Day. It was actually a good thing to listen to because it offered an inside look at the back and forth between the client and the studio. Julie also printed out a script of Chirp and used that to teach me how to format my own script. I didn't do much after that except eat a samosa and write this before it was time to go. People are always giving me food here and I love it. Yum. Anyways, Happy Halloween!! See you next week.

Callie = Claire Standish

Elizabeth is a Comedian

Hello!

I sat in on my second production meeting today. It was a meeting about Warren United, an upcoming show that Smiley Guy Studios are working on and I happened to be working on one of the episodes that was discussed during the meeting. I’ve seen its script and its animatic version, so I had an idea about what everyone was talking about when they were discussing its animation. I’m curious to see how it will all turn out.

I just googled how to make a .gif and there’s a website which tells you how to do it in 5 easy steps…so watch out Lucas. I’m going to attempt one for next week.

I’ve been doing a late night class at school for a few months now. We write jokes, sketches or anything that we think a late night show would do. So I thought I’d end my update with one that got a few laughs last night…

Eating sugar causes massive health problems according to the World Health Organization. When asked for a comment, Dr. Pepper said “WHO? Never heard of them”.

Lea Admires Smiley Guy Meetings

I just noticed I never introduce myself in my blog posts. Good thing Julie covers that in the titles. Titles are important. How else would you know what To Kill a Mockingbird was about?


Anyway, what I'm going to talk about today: Meetings. I've had the privilege of attending a few meetings regarding Warren. Not only do these allow me see how the show has been progressing, they give me hope.

Yes, that is right. Hope. Let me explain:

Over the past school year I worked with a number of other students to create a film. My group was amazing - we managed to complete a good piece of work on time with little drama between members. However there were still bouts if indecision, squabbling and chaos that irked me. Sometimes things would go offtrack and issues wouldn't get resolved, or there would be arguments over details that no one could agree on. I was vaguely worried that this is what it would be like in an actual work environment.

Meetings for Warren have been different. Julie comes in with notes and a list of all the assets that have been completed written down. Just with that these meetings have structure. Everyone sees the score, and what needs to be addressed gets addressed.  People still discuss things amongst themselves and give suggestions and input, but the ones in charge are the ones who make the calls. I feel these things give meetings at Smiley Guy a different dynamic than the meetings I had at school. In a lot of ways my experience with both has been similar, but in these ways they are not.

This makes me glad. Overall the group film meetings were great, but for awhile I was fearful that actual studios had those problems. I'm sure they do. I've only actually been to three meetings at SGS - for all I know everyone is just behaving in front of the interns. Maybe it's different at various stages of production. Maybe they do crop up, but so far so good. I'm sure I will see for myself someday!