The Year of Archetype: Day 12

The auditions process goes both ways. While I comforted myself with the snide resolve that I had The Power when they were reading, it's now a role-reversal when I ask these actors if they'll accept the parts and, by extension, the commitment to the project. I, now, have no Power.

On paper, or briefly mentioned, it sounds enormous: a shoot stretching from January through July. Then I try to ratchet down the actual level of commitment involved; other than the crew, most of the cast just has to work two or so days each month. It's not so much that it's Archetype > personal lives as personal lives > Archetype. Barring the fact that actors might take this very Seriously and spend a lot of time creating their characters, it's really an infrequent thing. Albeit over a long period of time.

So this is where another round of Nerves kick in, namely because of the rather nasty surprise of getting my "first cast" locked and having not one, nor two, but three of the main actors having to drop out because of (I grudgingly admit) legitimate reasons in which they couldn't be part of the whole project. Dead-horse-beating when I say better to know now than have someone on a shaky commitment start the project and drop out in the middle, leaving Archetype truly Fucked barring my ability to perform some magic, coherent rewrite that'd solve all problems.

I guess I should leave this unfinished for now, given I don't want to be too much a tease about knowing who I want to cast as who and not telling them yet. I want them to finish the script and sort of know what they're getting into. And once I offer them the parts and if - by god - they say Yes, my next set of worries is locking down days with my sister during which I can invade her and my brother-in-law's and brother-in-law's brother's house at some ungodly morning hour well through the day for shooting, in which I'll have so many rules - no loud television, no loud talking, no excess movement on the creaky floors - that I might as well ask them to stay somewhere else each weekend chunk of shooting. During which I not only hijack their house but kidnap their dog for inclusion in my little movie.