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.