Sorry, I'm gonna LJ a little bit here.
It all started when a friend of mine got an audition from one of those talent sites you pay $20 a month to be a member. She got an audition for the lead in a sci-fi flick. They sent her an audition script. Just about 5 pages of a scene she was supposed to memorize and then a week later she had an audition. She did pretty good, but didn't get the lead but they liked her so much they re-worked a smaller male part for her and made it a little larger. She went in for a table read two weeks later and she said it was really cool. She was excited about the project but did remark that not every part had been cast yet. Namely the smaller roles. I told her to let them know that if they needed someone for a small part I'd like to do it. I mean how much time could that be right? Like a day or two of shooting?
Well I get an email and they sent me an audition script for a small character. I memorized it and we went in a week later. I did really well and they had me read a couple others. They ended up settling on a larger part that they had previously cast, but booted the guy cause he couldn't play paranoid enough and I guess I did rather well in that department.
A week after that my friend Heather and I were to go in for some sort of rough shoot. We were going to be doing two scenes. One of hers with the lead and my one scene with the lead. We get there and they're about 3/4 the way complete with applying make-up to the lead. She got there at 11 (we were there at 1) and I have no idea how it took them so long to apply make-up or even why they were bothering with make-up since they weren't shooting the real deal, just kind of a practice or rough shoot to figure out what angles they wanted. See they can't shoot the real deal at the moment because they need to get a newer camera. Something that has or support "zebra stripes" cuase they'll be doing a lot of green screen (aliens and whatnot). Anyways they started shooting and I just got out of the way. The scene takes place in an apartment so obviously they use there own. I took a seat in the hallway that wasn't in any of the frames and asked to read the script since I hadn't yet. Only a few scenes that I read for and what Heather read. Well it was bad. Really bad. So bd that I didn't want to say anything right then cause I felt bad for them cause the guy has spent two years writing this thing.
Well at about 7PM when they FINALLY got done with thier FIVE PAGES!. Keep in mind this is 5 pages of a screenplay, not just dialogue. There's a ton of action line and whatnot in there as well. So at 7PM I got to do my scene. See now the plan had changed cuase they were running out of battery power so they just wanted us to rehearse the scene. It was originally written as a diner scene. Basically the lead gets a phone call asking if she wants to know what REALLY happened to her dead brother and to meet me at a diner. During the scene i explain that he was killed on this island trying to get this alien artifact off to expose the government. He died and I took the stone and have been in hiding for a few weeks before contacting his sister.
Anyways becuase this is SOOOO low budget they changed it the week of my audition to the riverfront as a meeting place. When I was to rehearse it with the actress right before I was to start they changed it to a bench in a park and all of a sudden they wanted me to be a bum sleeping on the bench with newspaper over me and then they started to yell out extra lines I was supposed to be saying and extra blocking they wanted. During all of this I noticed that the lead didn't have this scene memorized at all. We got through it okay and they did say they were going to have to change a few of the lines to accomodate the new setting which really pissed me off cuase we had talked about that at my audition since it wasn't going to be in a diner anymore and a few days before the rehearsal I asked about the changes and they said they liked it the way it was and that no changes would be made with the exception of the interaction with a waitress.
The other thing I found out at that rehearsal was that niether the director or his wife (producer i guess but she was directing too) knew what they were doing at all. I severely doubt they even read a book about it. No theatre experience, no prior film experience, nothing. The lead they cast also had no acting experience before but she was trying very hard. She wasn't bad, just really green for as strong as she'll have to be towards the end of the movie. Another this was that they can only film on SUNDAYS. that's it. This is a 120 page sci-fi script that they can only shoot on Sundays. I realized during the drive home that the average feature takes about 3 months of filming. Six day weeks at about 12 hours a day. At thier rate this movie would take them like two years before they were done even shooting the thing and even then they have to do all the post production and CG stuff. When I asked about the shooting schedule and or a timeline they didn't have one and I expect they didn't realize they would need one.
I knew the moment I read the script that I was going to drop out of it. Not so much that I was against acting in a shitty-ass movie, but the fact that it'd be time wasted as I don't think they'll even finish the damn thing. They were just so unorganized. I didn't wanna tell them everything that was wrong with it becuase I didn't want to reflect bad on my friend Heather since she recommended me. Then I got this letter before I told them I was out.
This was good. I felt that I had a way out and I could still tell them everything that was sooo very wrong with this. I sent them this email. Yeah, this is getting long, but I still think it's entertaining.
I thought I was helping them out. they REALLY needed to hear that from someone however I forgot to realize they'd consider it retalitory and might not take it seriously....they didn't.
Funny thing about that email, they BCCd it to Heather which I didn't appreciate since I was trying to keep her out of it. She's not as experienced as I am and she really just wants to do something, even if it sucks though her scenes were before it got really bad.
I've been railing about this ever since last Sunday. Heather and my GF Sarah said that I should just write my own and shoot it and I think I might just do that. of course I'd make something a bit simpler and talky. Some day in the life of type story that's got a lot of dialogue kinda like Clerks. Who knows, haven't come up with that yet.
Oh yeah, sorry it's so long. The internet is a bit larger now.
It all started when a friend of mine got an audition from one of those talent sites you pay $20 a month to be a member. She got an audition for the lead in a sci-fi flick. They sent her an audition script. Just about 5 pages of a scene she was supposed to memorize and then a week later she had an audition. She did pretty good, but didn't get the lead but they liked her so much they re-worked a smaller male part for her and made it a little larger. She went in for a table read two weeks later and she said it was really cool. She was excited about the project but did remark that not every part had been cast yet. Namely the smaller roles. I told her to let them know that if they needed someone for a small part I'd like to do it. I mean how much time could that be right? Like a day or two of shooting?
Well I get an email and they sent me an audition script for a small character. I memorized it and we went in a week later. I did really well and they had me read a couple others. They ended up settling on a larger part that they had previously cast, but booted the guy cause he couldn't play paranoid enough and I guess I did rather well in that department.
A week after that my friend Heather and I were to go in for some sort of rough shoot. We were going to be doing two scenes. One of hers with the lead and my one scene with the lead. We get there and they're about 3/4 the way complete with applying make-up to the lead. She got there at 11 (we were there at 1) and I have no idea how it took them so long to apply make-up or even why they were bothering with make-up since they weren't shooting the real deal, just kind of a practice or rough shoot to figure out what angles they wanted. See they can't shoot the real deal at the moment because they need to get a newer camera. Something that has or support "zebra stripes" cuase they'll be doing a lot of green screen (aliens and whatnot). Anyways they started shooting and I just got out of the way. The scene takes place in an apartment so obviously they use there own. I took a seat in the hallway that wasn't in any of the frames and asked to read the script since I hadn't yet. Only a few scenes that I read for and what Heather read. Well it was bad. Really bad. So bd that I didn't want to say anything right then cause I felt bad for them cause the guy has spent two years writing this thing.
Well at about 7PM when they FINALLY got done with thier FIVE PAGES!. Keep in mind this is 5 pages of a screenplay, not just dialogue. There's a ton of action line and whatnot in there as well. So at 7PM I got to do my scene. See now the plan had changed cuase they were running out of battery power so they just wanted us to rehearse the scene. It was originally written as a diner scene. Basically the lead gets a phone call asking if she wants to know what REALLY happened to her dead brother and to meet me at a diner. During the scene i explain that he was killed on this island trying to get this alien artifact off to expose the government. He died and I took the stone and have been in hiding for a few weeks before contacting his sister.
Anyways becuase this is SOOOO low budget they changed it the week of my audition to the riverfront as a meeting place. When I was to rehearse it with the actress right before I was to start they changed it to a bench in a park and all of a sudden they wanted me to be a bum sleeping on the bench with newspaper over me and then they started to yell out extra lines I was supposed to be saying and extra blocking they wanted. During all of this I noticed that the lead didn't have this scene memorized at all. We got through it okay and they did say they were going to have to change a few of the lines to accomodate the new setting which really pissed me off cuase we had talked about that at my audition since it wasn't going to be in a diner anymore and a few days before the rehearsal I asked about the changes and they said they liked it the way it was and that no changes would be made with the exception of the interaction with a waitress.
The other thing I found out at that rehearsal was that niether the director or his wife (producer i guess but she was directing too) knew what they were doing at all. I severely doubt they even read a book about it. No theatre experience, no prior film experience, nothing. The lead they cast also had no acting experience before but she was trying very hard. She wasn't bad, just really green for as strong as she'll have to be towards the end of the movie. Another this was that they can only film on SUNDAYS. that's it. This is a 120 page sci-fi script that they can only shoot on Sundays. I realized during the drive home that the average feature takes about 3 months of filming. Six day weeks at about 12 hours a day. At thier rate this movie would take them like two years before they were done even shooting the thing and even then they have to do all the post production and CG stuff. When I asked about the shooting schedule and or a timeline they didn't have one and I expect they didn't realize they would need one.
I knew the moment I read the script that I was going to drop out of it. Not so much that I was against acting in a shitty-ass movie, but the fact that it'd be time wasted as I don't think they'll even finish the damn thing. They were just so unorganized. I didn't wanna tell them everything that was wrong with it becuase I didn't want to reflect bad on my friend Heather since she recommended me. Then I got this letter before I told them I was out.
Tony we were so excited how well you played Carter the day you auditioned. We forgot we had already cast someone for the part. We forgot about him plain and simple. He just emailed us saying he is returning from China on the 24th of June. Hes been studying his lines. So for right now just concentrate on Ray the cameraman [part I auditioned for]. Im so sorry for the total misunderstanding and inconvience this may have caused. I would still like for you to be an understudy for Carter. If it doesnt work out with the other guy then you can step in. I know this may be disappointing but I had already promised the role to him. I do feel torn but I have to make this judgment. I do thank you for your understanding in this. So Tiffany and Rob will be doing the scene we sent out.
This was good. I felt that I had a way out and I could still tell them everything that was sooo very wrong with this. I sent them this email. Yeah, this is getting long, but I still think it's entertaining.
Well first let me thank you for making this easier for me. I was trying to think of a polite way to bow out of this project and this news makes it oh so much easier. I was just going to make up a lame excuse and leave it at that so you wouldn't think ill of Heather becuase she's really excited about doing something and I know she'll be giving it her 110%. I really don't want the rest of this email to reflect bad on her in any way and I haven't told her I'm writing this so she won't get caught in the middle.
In the beginning I was just excited to be in a "movie" ya know? I figure get a small part, spend a couple days and it'll be a neat experience. Having acted and directed in many productions I thought it'd be cool to see a different side. I was a bit put off by not getting to read the entire script before my audition (very unheard of even with low/no budget flicks) but Heather has said some good things so I thought why not? What I wasn't prepared for was during my six hour wait to do a scene last sunday getting to read the script and was appauled at what I read.
PLESASE READ ALL OF THIS. Sometimes it takes a fresh point of view to help you see where major flaws are. Plus I don't think anyone else will have the balls to say any of this.
For one, the entire PREMISE is well....dumb. What I'm refering to is the part where Larry gives his "history lesson" about how aliens made up and we're thier lab rats. That in itself isn't dumb really, it's the idea that after they supposedly implanted everyone (just early man or all of us throughout history as we're born?) with the notion of God, Jesus and the Bible and that now for some odd reason they want us to throw that out the window and worship them. First of all, would they also implant the idea of Allah and Mohammoud to Arabs? Do they implant the idea of Bhudda, Ganeisha and other dieties in people? For what purpose? Why would they make us believe in god and jesus (or any of those other ones) if in the end they wanted us to worship them and throw everything they've taught us by the wayside? Besides, worship is such a primal and primitive thing, why would such a super advanced race care about such a thing?. Introducing a theological aspect like that just makes the entire sci-fi aspect stupid and BAMM you just lost most of your sci-fi fans with talk about god and what-not which most sci-fi fans don't believe in in the first place. Also if they're so advanced they could easily destroy our plant with the flick of a button and start thier experiment over when they realized how dumb of an idea implanting the notion of Gods other than themselves into our brains was. Especially hen they just want to be worshipped.
Even if you let slide the ridiculous premise, one thing that would have made it better would be to have a love interst. That at least would get some female demographic back after you lose the hordes of atheist sci-fi fans that have walked out after Larry gets all "keep the faith" preachy. Scott would be an ideal candidate if he wasn't written as a jokey comic relief fat guy.
The ending is the worst EVER. I mean at the end of the flick what have they accomplished? Nothing! Stones are gone, brother/grandfather died for no reason, cypress is dead for no reason and what does the military tell Scott and Tina? They have two options, to either DIE to keep thier mouth shut?!?!?!? What? Here's a legal document, sign it?? The ONLY way Tina should be alive is if she had some sort of insurance. Like if she died, the story would automatically be exposed to the public. If that situation was real they would have been shot on sight. What's stopping them from talking? A legal document? And if you say they won't talk cause they'll die, well, the military has them right there and could/should kill them. The last lines in the movie is something like, This isn't over. I was told it was left open for a sequel, but it read more like it was never finished.
At the end all of a sudden Tina is a badass fighter of aliens? So the span of a day or so she goes from wimpering coward to kick ass chick? Ever seen House of the Dead directed by Uwe Boll? Same thing happens there. All these pot head party high school kids all of a sudden become weapons experts and fight zombies and shit and it was just as ridiculous and people hated it.
In the Soloman Islad universe you have the existance of aliens as fact, they even have bases on earth. You have the character of Lisa who has intimate expert knowledge about specific GREYS technology yet she wastes her time listening for signals from space?! She must not be very good cause they slipped in right under her nose. Now if she had just been a conspiracy theorist she could have just "heard" about the possiblity of stones like that existing. That would cover up that plot hole right there.
Why is it when the portal appears in front of Tina (because of the stone) it knocks her on her ass, but the same portal appears in the basement (far from the stone) and doesn't knock Lisa on her ass? What was the point even of going into the basement? They cleared the hallway, they should have just gotten out. It does nothing to move the story forward.
Larry is very experienced and has been on many missions but doesn't offer to go with tina to help her out even though he was friends with her now dead brother? And what's up with him being the only one that can "fly the hell out of a plane"? Is he the only pilot left in the world? Cause I'm sure any pilot could take the easy way out of just delivering Tina to those natives people. And once she get's there, how is she to communiate with the chief to get her the rest of the way, it's not really said.
Two words....Ray Gun?!?!?! Sounds like an 8 year old wrote that. Make it Diatroptic Particle Blaster or something. Anything but ray gun.
Carter and Ronnie aren't really ever established in the beginning. I mean I know you told me who they are, but the audience watching won't make that connection for a while and will be confused.
There's a lot more but I don't have the script with me (which i should have) right here to go through the entire thing as I'm working from memory. While i'm on the subject of a script let me tell you why it's important for an actor to have an entire script and not just his/her scene. The script has CLUES about who you are in it.Even if you're a small part there are still clues about your charactor long after you're no longer in the script. In order for an actor to make good solid choices about a character, they must be able to see the ENTIRE story and study it. What if in some later scene someone mentions that Ronnie was a chronic nose picker or something? Well the actor playing ronnie has only ever seen this one scene. He doesn't know to pick his nose. If he doesn't pick his nose it won't make any sense why Tina would say that her big brother was always quite the nose picker. Now I know nose picking is a silly example, but I think you get what I'm talking about.
NON-SCRIPT STUFF
You really need to story board this movie. Even with stick figures. This will help with knowing what angles and frames and where to set the camera so you don't end up shooting everything twice like you'll have to with Tiffany and Heathers scene. Had that just been story boarded from the beginning you'd only have to shoot once. You might change some angles on the day but it'll be better than double shooting the entire flick.
You need a whole cast. The fact that the entire cast including researcher #1 and #2 and M.P. #1 and #2 yadda yadda aren't cast yet, not to mention secondary supporting characters doesn't sound too good.
I don't think your'e aware of just how long even principle shooting is going to take. The average flick takes 3 months to just shoot the raw footage of actors not including all the post production work. Even at three months they're working 6 days a week at 12 to 15 hour days. Even if you shoot every Sunday for 8 or 9 hours this movie will take at the very least 18 months and I don't think Tiffany and the guy playsing Scott (I hope he's not the guy that'll be driving from Grand Rapids) who obviously have the most screen time are aware of these figures. You're script is what 120 pages or so? Look how long it took you to get a rough idea of a scene on camera.
It also doesn't help having so many "directors" trying to direct a scene. It's confusing to actors to hhave so many things thrown at them like that. I mean just last week you (william) and I had a discussion about Carter and how he knew he was doing something dangerous by sneaking people on the base and letting them out with property and for him to have that knowlege of just how dangerous that is, he would have had a back-up plan for wen he was out on the run. he'd have different accounts like swiss bank accounts and a different identity set up and be living in mexico or something. It felt like we were on the same page that he wouldn't be a bummy person becuase he's on the lamb. he was obviously a smart guy, he would have thought of that stuff. I'm no scientist and I could think of it....of course Carter would have. Fast forward a week and I've got three "directors" shouting new lines at me and they've changed the location yet again and have completely disregarded our conversation and went back to bummy. It almost makes me think they just think the idea of a guy laying under newspaper is funny whether or not it makes sense in the film.
What it all boils down to is this. the script isn't ready by any stretch. Even if you continue with the worshiping aliens bit, it's just a rocky script, though I will say it's fairly decent until Larry shatters any sense of believability with the theological soapbox.
You guys as a filmmaking team aren't ready to tackle a job this large with really no production staff to speak of. Yeah it was cool your sister came it to do make-up but what directing experience does she have? For that matter, what experience do you guys have? I wouldn't even imagine you've read a filmmaking book in your life and I would go so far as to say you've never watched production documentaries on DVD special features sections. If you had you'd know a whole lot more than you do.
I'd wager that I was the most experienced person there on Sunday (which is sad) with the possiblity of Heather and your editor who at least knew what I was talking about when I'd name out specific directors styles and types of shots. I understand that this is new to you guys but at least pick up some books, take some classes, try something less ambitious for your "training film". Kevin Smith had the idea for Dogma a while before he made Clerks but he realized that he didn't have the time or resources to make a movie like Dogma with such a tight budget ($25,000). He made clerks instead which was very good and was mainly just a decent story with really good dialogue that acted as a snapshot of a particular demographic of young adults and this cheap black and white grainy ass movie still strikes a chord with kids 12 years later. Obviously he was later able to do his script for Dogma (1999) justice once he had the proper resources.
I don't mean to discourage you about this, but I also don't want to see you waste a lot of good people's time, yours included. The fact that you don't have a set timeline is very telling. You NEED a shooting schedule, you NEED a storyboard, you NEED to know the number of shots required, you NEED to know the number of digital effects shots required and I don't think you do.
Listen, I think you guys are really nice people, you have passion for what you want to do and I admire that. I also don't want you to take these critisisms as malice or hate or revenge or whatever. I'm a firm believer that sometimes certain things need to be said for someone elses own good, even if that means severeing a relationship. I think you really need to hear these things and consider them.
Good luck.
I thought I was helping them out. they REALLY needed to hear that from someone however I forgot to realize they'd consider it retalitory and might not take it seriously....they didn't.
Tony! It's amazing what things are said when people don't get their way. With that said , the fact you sat down to write almost a script length e-mail back to us DEFINATELY lets me know that we have a winning script on our hands. Why waste your VALUED time even responding if the script sucked and you didn't care...hmmm? Heather would never and will never feel the reprocussions of your mistake...that's not how we work! So since I'm not really concerned with you I'll end it like that!
Funny thing about that email, they BCCd it to Heather which I didn't appreciate since I was trying to keep her out of it. She's not as experienced as I am and she really just wants to do something, even if it sucks though her scenes were before it got really bad.
I've been railing about this ever since last Sunday. Heather and my GF Sarah said that I should just write my own and shoot it and I think I might just do that. of course I'd make something a bit simpler and talky. Some day in the life of type story that's got a lot of dialogue kinda like Clerks. Who knows, haven't come up with that yet.
Oh yeah, sorry it's so long. The internet is a bit larger now.