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This Movie Ain't Gonna Shoot Itself
By Chance Shirley
April 1, 2004
Part Five: Girls on Film
The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. Our super-cheap, super-short movie BIRTHDAY CALL had just played to a packed room at the 2003 Sidewalk Film Festival in our hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. The crowd really seemed to dig it. Then, as soon as the credits had rolled, another short began. The movie was called D.E.B.S., and the opening credits alone were better than BIRTHDAY CALL. And a lot less cheap-looking. By the end of said credits, the audience had already forgotten about our movie. And it just kept getting worse, as D.E.B.S. continued to be well-shot, well-acted, and funny. Then, two of the cute chick characters in D.E.B.S. started making out. With each other. The guys in the crowd went nuts, and most of the girls seemed to like it, too. We had a little fake blood in our short, the D.E.B.S. creators had girl-on-girl action. Game over, man. Game over.
Fast-forward to the post-film Q and A. Luckily, the crew of D.E.B.S. wasn't there to gloat over the fact that their movie was much, much better than ours. After a couple of questions I don't remember, someone asked why we didn't have hot lesbian ladies in our movie. Why, indeed?
Later, at our after-party, I was talking about the beating we took with fellow partier Carl Ross. We were also talking about the zombie script I was working on at the time (which would later evolve into HIDE AND CREEP). Carl made the suggestion that I add a couple of naked zombie girls to the script, and maybe they could be licking or gnawing on each other. I wrote in such a scene as soon as I could get back to my computer. Then I realized the only flaw in Carl's genius plan: where was I gonna find girls to play naked zombies?
Going With What You Know
Getting a cast together for HIDE AND CREEP was tricky, to say the least. The roles were plentiful (at least 30 speaking parts) and the budget thin. On top of that, there were quite a few scenes that required pretty large groups of extras. And often the extras had to be willing to be covered in dirt, fake blood, and zombie makeup.
Going back a bit further, I actually wrote HIDE AND CREEP with a few actors in mind. This is obvious in places. For example, co-director Chuck Hartsell plays "Chuck." Kenn McCracken has a small part as "Ken." You get the idea. The actors I had in mind were people I had worked with before, mostly on short movies. After actually getting the actors to read the parts, I changed my mind in a few cases. Michael Shelton, for instance, actually ended up with two parts, in a bit of an homage to Peter Sellers' DR. STRANGELOVE work. Neither part was originally written for him. We got Michael to read a few parts, though, and the part I wrote for Michael ended up going to Chuck's brother and BIRTHDAY CALL co-star, Chris Hartsell.
One great thing about indie movie-making is that every project you work on allows you to build on your previous work. The first movie I produced had literally no crew. The actors (including me) would set up a video camera, hit "record," and do the scene. And the movie wasn't very good (go figure). But working on it, I found out Michael was a good actor. Chuck acted in the second movie I worked on and proved to be pretty solid, too. When we started casting HIDE AND CREEP, I made my first calls to these actors I already had experience with. Now all we had to do was cast the other 25 parts.
Trained Professionals
I've mentioned in past columns the ALICE IN WONDERLAND movie I worked on last summer. That movie also featured a large cast. A few of the actors in ALICE particularly impressed me, and Chris Carr, the ALICE casting director, was nice enough to help me get in touch with them.
I think the first ALICE alum we cast was Kyle Holman. I didn't realize it until we had our first rehearsal with Kyle, but he's a professional. I mean, I knew he was a good actor, but I didn't find out until he signed on to play "Keith" in HIDE AND CREEP that he does acting for a living. As a part-time filmmaker, I'm always impressed with people who can pay the bills doing the thing they love. Anyway, Kyle has been a huge asset to the shoot, given his ability and experience. If you want to hear just how good he is, check out his web site, HotMic.com, which features some samples of his commercial voice work.
I met another professional on the ALICE shoot, Melba Sibrel, who's playing "Sheila" in HIDE AND CREEP. I actually wrote Sheila with Melba in mind, and she was nice enough to drive all the way down from Tennessee for one day of acting work, for what will probably end up being a couple of minutes of screen time. Us getting Kyle and Melba for the movie with no up-front pay proves my point that indie producers should never be afraid to ask anyone for anything. You'll be surprised by how often the answer is "yes."
Chris Garrison, who you might remember helped me out with the screenwriting, also appeared in ALICE. But I was already a fan of his from THE ELECTRIC HEARTBREAKER, a short film he made a few years ago that's become a bit of a cult classic. Having Chris join the cast was cool because he was very familiar with the script and knew which part he wanted to play and how he wanted to play it. Chris' ELECTRIC HEARTBREAKER co-director John Walker also helped out with the script and also took a part in HIDE AND CREEP. John flew all the way down from Baltimore to shoot with us for a weekend. For free.
Rank Amateurs
Still being new at the casting game, we couldn't fill every tiny part in the movie with a seasoned veteran of the acting trade. But there's nothing wrong with bringing some new faces to the silver screen, right?
For example, Chuck had been trying to cast the role of "Doug," a bartender in the movie, for a couple of weeks. He actually had asked a couple of people to do it, figuring if both showed up, one could be an extra in the scene. Well, neither showed up, but Chuck's friend Bryan Crowson did, and he volunteered to play the part. I asked him if he'd ever acted before. I think his reply was "not really." Anyway, his lack of experience didn't matter, because he did an excellent job. In fact, I'd say we often get good performances from actors without a lot of experience, especially when they're cast in a role that isn't too far removed from their own personality. Not everyone is Robert-DeNiro-in-RAGING-BULL-good, but most everyone can act, at least a little. Well, except for me. I have a cameo in HIDE AND CREEP as a dead guy, and I don't even do that very well.
From "Theatre" to the "Theater" (or home video, at least)
We cast Melissa Bush as one of the leads ("Barbara") in HIDE AND CREEP. Melissa has been doing stage acting off and on for the last ten years or so, though I met her her on another movie project, where she was playing a small part. "Barbara" is her first lead role in a movie, and she's been doing a fantastic job.
I filled another hard-to-cast role after seeing Mia Frost perform on stage, but she was working with a live improvisation group, called BrainFreeze, not in a standard play. I realized that improv can be a good venue for getting an idea of an actor's range and personality. Also, good improv actors are quick thinkers, and that helps out a lot shooting an indie movie, where a day rarely passes without a few scenes getting rushed. And a few lines getting re-written on the spot, sometimes by the actors.Extra Extras
One of the things I didn't consider while writing HIDE AND CREEP was the number of extras I'd need. I wrote in descriptions like "surrounded by zombies" and "the church is crowded with people." What was I thinking? Well, obviously I wasn't.
And, even now, I still don't have any method for getting extras together. I tried advertising with flyers at a local University on one occasion, thinking "I bet half the kids at this college would LOVE to be in a zombie movie." Wrong. Maybe five students showed up.
We've gotten the best results from word of mouth. Whenever we need extras, I just start calling and e-mailing everyone I know. Many of those people are nice enough to pass the word, too, which has given us a pretty good turnout on a couple of occasions. Also, as the shoot goes on, more people become aware of the project and volunteer to be extras. So, maybe it's better to schedule big scenes requiring extras at the end of the shoot, to give people more time to hear and read about the project.
I'm pretty sure casting extras isn't just a problem for us indie producers. I remember a few years back, they were shooting some of COBB, with Tommy Lee Jones, in Birmingham. If I recall correctly, they needed a couple of thousand extras and only got a couple hundred. Of course, they worked some Hollywood magic (involving, I believe, creative camera angles and cardboard cut-outs) and everything came out fine. The one day we completely busted out on extras (we needed ten or twenty, only got two or three), we just decided to move those shots to a later date, when we'd hopefully have a better turnout.
Good Direction or Good Casting?
There's a saying that directing a movie is easy if you make the right casting decisions. I'm inclined to agree. Between having some good casting ideas and getting really lucky, we've had a terrific group of actors working on HIDE AND CREEP. There have been plenty of times when Chuck and I weren't sure exactly what kind of performance we needed for a scene, told an actor "just do your thing," and got a great take. And plenty of other times an actor suggested a line of dialogue that was much better than what I'd written. I've gotten to know so many good actors while shooting HIDE AND CREEP that I'm excited about putting together another feature, just so I can work with some of these guys again.
Oh, yeah. I almost forgot to get back to the naked zombie girls. Casting them ended up being easier than I'd expected. I was playing with one of my bands at Bailey's (a neighborhood pub) one night and, during a break, started asking random girls in the audience if they wanted to be a half-naked zombie in a movie. Most of them looked at me like I was crazy (or getting ready to make a porn movie). But two friends of mine that were there, Jennifer Garland and Liesl Statham, thought it was a swell idea, thus saving what had become one of the script's key scenes from being cut. And saving Chuck and me from having to listen to complaints about why our movies never have hot naked chicks.
If any of you guys want to check out the "teaser" trailer for HIDE AND CREEP, it's online at the HIDE AND CREEP web site. Also, I think Mr. Stipp might mention it in his TRAILER PARK column soon, maybe even tomorrow. Media saturation, baby!
Thanks again to everyone for the e-mail questions and comments over the past couple of weeks. Stop by again in two weeks for Part Six, where we'll (finally) start to wrap up pre-production stuff and get ready to actually start shooting.
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