Production Pursuits - Acting Coach Meets Director!

Hey everyone! “Wake up! It’s the first of the month.” From the infamous song Sky by Playboi Carti is the only thing on my mind today. And well of course my pending cinematic debut with my fabricated crime documentary. 

As the initiation to my production process I had to inform my actor on her role. As I’ve said previously, my mother, Satnam Kandola, will be playing the role of detective/police officer. In order to fully get into character I decide to hold a “workshop” of sorts so she is able to fulfill her role to her best ability. And I am able to take note of any needs my mother has from a director standpoint. As I’ve said, it's much easier to communicate with my mom than a peer when it comes to more serious and logistical problems. 

Alrightly, to start this informal workshop I explained the persona of this role. The key points I conveyed is that the detective is is based in a small town where this insane crime occurred, I made sure to highlight how it was a murder case and the weapon is a knife, that the suspect “Elena Mercer” (which is a completely made up name and has no known relations to anyone) is a perfectionist which made this case even more unbenounced. 

After getting the low-down of the role my mum was ready to rehearse her script. As for the actual acting there was little briefing needed to be done since my mum has watched plenty of documentaries including crime so this type of film is a familiar concept. This saved me a lot of time so I gave her the script and we kept going through the lines to memorize them and also see if she felt confident saying them. 

One thing I noticed in this process is my mom had a tone of endorsement and excitement during the rehearsal. Likely because she was excited to do this opening sequence with me, nonetheless, I had to remind her that this is supposed to be as realistic as possible. Therefore we went over the importance of tone and influx of words in the overall mood of a piece. The easiest way to display this was by comparing the different “voices” of voice actors like Tawny Platis. More generally I explained how my mom is giving a bright read when she needs to give the tone of authoritative or documentary narration in order to blend awe with horror. Once we went over a couple examples, we practiced again. It was clear this slight tweak made all the difference in the delivery. 

At this point of the workshop I felt confident in my moms’ ability to film the interview. With that, I left her with the task of memorizing her script but more importantly developing her persona while acting, essentially fulfilling her role to the best extent. If my mom is unable to memorize her script I will allow her to have free reign of her lines as long as they follow the general plot of the original script. 

So, let’s see how the filming of the scenes will go now! I’m interested in seeing if my workshop helped in the overall mood of the opening sequence.