The Vine Yard: Chapter 5

The second day of auditions were interesting. The same three actors from day one returned and read for a handful of different parts. At the end of it, Josh and I couldn’t decide how to cast it. There were 3 problems:

One:

Our one female actor has great chemistry with one of our male actors. We wanted to cast them as a pair; they were so good together! However, the male actor was phenomenal. We could cast him as a tree and he’d knock it out of the park.

The female actor’s performances, unfortunately, were 50/50. Sometimes she’d be incredible, making us truly believe she could carry a show, while other times, she'd be lackluster and bland. She was great as Janice, one of the secondary characters, and the male actor was incredible as Roger, Janice’s bestie. But the male actor was so obviously our lead! We just didn’t know if the female actor could handle landing the role of his love interest.

Two:

There was another actress who auditioned that was PERFECT for the love interest. If I closed my eyes and listened to her speak, it was like I was standing in a room with the character.

But that was just it. I had to close my eyes. She didn't have the look that fit the role. Plus, she lived out of town. She would've had to fly into Gainesville for filming, which was majorly expensive. Besides, I didn't want her to fly in and then find out she had absolutely no chemistry with our male lead. There were too many what-ifs involved for us to commit to her.

Three:

The second male actor had some great lines in all the male roles, but was not 100% in any of them. He had good and bad moments in every role he tried out for, which made it difficult to cut him, but also to cast him. I actually considered making him the lead for one scene, because he was great! But in the next scene when he read for the lead, he was lame. There wasn't a happy medium that we could work with. So, ultimately, we couldn't put him in the lead role.

Overall, auditions were a lot of fun. Unfortunately, all the other auditions we had were via video. Given that Josh and I were graduating in two months, we didn't have the time to schedule chemistry reads for everyone and figure out our film schedule. So we just had to go on our gut instincts.

On the first day of auditions, I looked at Josh and my friend Anna and said, "I know who my lead is." After reviewing the first auditions, and seeing the second ones, however, I felt like I had to retract my casting, simply because there were other factors to consider. We had to think about schedules, availability, and chemistry. It felt like we were going by the seat of our pants, and I didn't like it. But we still had more audition videos to watch before we made our final decision.

Considering filming started the next week, we'd have to work fast! I honestly couldn't believe I was starting filming/directing a short film of mine. It was crazy!

Tuesday, November 14, 2017, The Vine Yard became a reality.

The Vine Yard: Chapter 4

We held auditions for The Vine Yard! (Pause for applause)

That Saturday morning rolled around and I dragged myself out of bed (we’d had a late night the night before), woke up a hungover Josh (who had lost his phone sometime in the night and messaged me from his computer at three in the morning asking for a wake-up call), and made some coffee. I printed out the necessary copies of the script we would need, made sure our moral support friend was ready for me to pick her up, and wrote a note for our friend Jared, who was still fast asleep on our living room floor. After making him some coffee and making sure he had a key to the apartment, Josh and I left.

We arrived at the audition site with twenty minutes to spare. Josh set up the room, moving some chairs out into the hall, while I texted my actors and went upstairs to meet them. Once Century Tower chimed noon on the dot, I took my three actors down into the basement of Turlington Hall to begin.

I felt a little let down, honestly, that only three people showed up (out of the 15 that originally replied). A couple had emailed me to tell me they couldn’t make auditions, and would be emailing me their audition videos. But still. When one of the actors asked if they were the only ones coming, I was really disheartened. I didn’t want this to look like it wasn’t a real production, even though it didn’t feel real to me. I mean, we were filming this thing with our cell phones. These were actors that were going to want to use this footage for their resumes. I didn’t want to let them down! Yet, at the same time, I was proud of this writing, of this show. Either way, I was a little upset.

Auditions, themselves, went well, though. We had each of the actors read their parts, and Josh filmed, while I took notes. At the end of the day, I was pretty sure who I was going to cast as Joshua L. Glass. After reviewing all the video auditions I received, I was also pretty sure of who would be Alexis, the best friend/love interest. But we didn’t have enough actors to fill all the roles. Josh and I even considered changing one of the characters, Roger, from a male to female role, seeing as we had so many women audition.

So, Josh and I took to social media. I posted in my UF Class of 2017 site, the short film group I was a part of, and on the Chabad Board group, while Josh posted in groups he was a part of. (Shout out to Sam Iachello for posting the info in her improv group site, too!)

Within three days, I had seven people email me, interested in the project. I sent them the audition material from the second day of auditions, and gave them a little less than a week to send in their video auditions. A couple people got back with me right away, but, since the internet was out in my apartment, I didn’t have the chance to review them right away.

I was still thrilled, though. These actors were fabulous!

The Vine Yard: Chapter 3

The week of auditions for the teaser trailer of The Vine Yard arrived. It hadn’t hit me or my production partner, Josh, until that week that we were really making a web series. So, we sat down and had a production meeting that Monday.

We decided that we’d like to vlog our escapades, and eked out the details regarding footage, locations, and timing. After realizing that most of our actors would be either unwilling or unable to travel six hours to South Florida for filming, we weighed our options. We needed a place that could double as a club and a movie theater, but also wouldn’t be expensive to use. At that point, we realized we could use our Chabad House for filming. The café would be perfect to film in for the club, and one of the VPs of the student board had an excellent speaker we could use. And if we tweaked the script a little, we could use the parking lot for the movie theater.

After that, we worked on setting up our social media. It took fifteen minutes to pick a handle, seeing as all variations of The Vine Yard had already been used (looking at YOU Vineyard Vines). Thankfully, we settled on one, and proceeded to make a Twitter, Facebook page, and YouTube account. We started following a ton of ex-Viners, and set up our accounts for posting.

Around that time, our friend came to pick up the coffee he left at our apartment after a party we’d hosted. Upon seeing him, we both remembered he wrote music as a hobby. Excitement shot through me when he said he’d be thrilled to help us with music for the show. Not only would we not have to pay for music, but we could also promote his work to all of our followers—once we had some. It felt like everything was finally coming together.

All that was left was to audition our actors, film, and make our budget for our kickstarter!

This was really happening.

We were really making a webseries!

The Vine Yard: Chapter 2

After getting the scripts written, I went on the hunt for producers. Unfortunately, researching producers for The Vine Yard proved bittersweet.

Bitter because I’m what’s called a “baby writer.” It means I’m new to the industry, with no produced work or production experience. In that regard, it would be extremely difficult to find a producer because there’s no “heat” on my script. No one was talking about my work, or the story, so no one would be vying to work with me. At the same time, I was untested. It would be a risk to take on my project, no matter how good the writing was, because I had no guarantees of success.

It was sweet because Amazon Studios took unsolicited material. I could submit my work to them on the chance they’d want to produce it!

The downside to Amazon Studios was that I’d read all about how they greenlighted material, and then it sat for four years. As The Vine Yard was time-sensitive (given that Vine had ended and would quickly be forgotten in our face-paced society) I needed this to happen quickly.

So, of course, I delayed taking any action. I spent hours researching agents that took unsolicited work, meanwhile getting advice from anyone remotely associated with “the industry.”

After reading yet another devastating blog post about the difficulty of getting an agent, and the fact that even having an agent wouldn’t guarantee your work going anywhere, I made a decision. After reading over my script for the fifth time, I submitted it to Amazon Studios. While waiting to hear from them, I put plans into motion to create The Vine Yard myself. That’s right, I was going to produce the show.

After plotting with my roommate, I made a list of everything I’d need to do this project, and proceeded to call my parents. We discussed logistics, and surprisingly, they both not only wholeheartedly agreed that I could do it, but also enthusiastically encouraged me to do so. Stunned, I returned to my list and began.

Two days later, I heard back from Amazon Studios. The Vine Yard was not what they were looking for at this time. Seeing as it was a 17+ TV show about a dead app, I understood. I wasn’t fazed by the rejection, though.

I decided I’d film the show myself, using phones (as it was the way OG Viners filmed their work back in the day, and it would cut costs until I could afford to rent equipment.) Deciding to film a sort of teaser trailer to post on GoFundMe, so I could raise the money I’d need to properly produce this, I sent out a casting call to the telecommunications and theater departments at UF. Within a week, I had 15 people interested in auditioning. I felt powerful. I was a writer/director/producer creating my own work. I couldn’t quite believe it was happening.

With the auditions set, I sent out a page of dialogue from the excerpt of the pilot script for my actors to memorize, and set the date. This was it. This was me going for my dream. Nothing will stop me now!