Audition, actually

We had our auditions on Saturday for our younger male lead and while I haven't auditioned for something in many years, this is the very first time I've been on the other side of the desk. Turns out it's pretty much as nerve-wracking as being the auditionee. And it goes on for longer, too. When you're the one running the audition, there's the pressure of being in charge, but I think we managed to pretend that we knew what we were doing. It helped that we rented the rehearsal space at Rapier Wit for the process and that Scott Moyle was willing to come out and be our person-wrangler. Thanks, Scotty! Also, the large chai latte from Second Cup. As an Executive Producer, I feel that's an absolute must. And we seem to have been successful: we have asked Robert Eaton to be our James and even though he had to rearrange his October travel plans, he's accepted the role. Now on to costuming.

Audition, sort of

We had a meeting today with Peter Nelson, who will be our older male lead for the trailer. I don't think this constitutes an audition, since it was really more lunch and chat at one of our local pubs. We mostly wanted to see him in real life, having already approved of him from a shot provided by Luke Marty, and having seen some of his previous work on video. We did make him read a line from the script, partly for the look of the thing. "Audition" feels like a very large word to me, and I feel sort of uneasy about using it in regards to a trailer for which we have little to no budget. That having been said, we are planning auditions for our younger male lead this Saturday.

An introduction

Perhaps a little background may be in order: "we" is Steve and Chris, and no, for regular viewers of the CBC, we are not a couple of gay interior designers and talk show hosts. We are a married couple, Steve teaches high school English and Drama and I work in television. I finished my first novel in May of 2011 and was about to start writing a second when I heard that the company I worked for was firing up a new TV channel, so I put the novel aside and started working on an idea I had had two years ago for a TV pilot. At about seven pages in, I asked Steve, who is also a stand-up comic, if he wanted to help me write the pilot, and he thought that he would. And, for a couple of people with no experience or credentials, we think it worked out pretty well. Of course, we would say that.

Pre-production

A shout-out to Luke Marty and Lindsey Alston for our first pre-production meeting, during which we made plans to shoot a trailer for our pilot in the last few weekends of October. They have given us a line on some crew, a potential actor for one of our male leads, and are, in general, very excited about the project. Thanks, guys, it feels good to know there are people rooting for us!