Well, it’s started. Casting for my movie! The script has four male leads, two of which are already cast. We had auditions at the Portage Park Center For The Arts on Saturday, for the two remaining roles.

We didn’t get a huge turnout (we advertised the fact that the roles would be non-paying, as this is a low-budget short film), but several people came in and read.

It was really neat having actors read the lines, and interact in a few of the scenes from the script. Some lines were delivered with an inflection that I hadn’t heard in my head. Some lines came out generally clunky, revealing possibilities of improvement for dialogue — you can think a line is natural-sounding, but if someone can’t say it naturally there’s a distinct possibility it’s the words that are the problem. In either situation, it was pretty cool, as I could see something on the written page growing into a more flesh-and-blood, breathing thing. It was like a 2-D shape suddenly becoming 3-D.

After a while, it was hard to judge the effectiveness of a performance. But I felt in the moment. I knew when there was a direction I wanted to go in a scene, and I did a reasonably good job (I think) of conveying my intent to the actors.

It’s really happening. The film is really going forward. It’s pretty exciting.

My next big hurdle is storyboarding, and working with my friend who is shooting the film to solve potential visual problems that arise (special effects shots, dialogue scenes in a moving car, etc.).

We have a couple more people auditioning on Thursday night. I’m looking forward to it.