- We will cover all transportation costs related to shooting and production. However, we can NOT cover transportation costs to and from the audition.
- Doors will open at 1 PM. After setting up, we will have some general remarks about the project. I would like to begin the audtions around 1:30 PM. We'lll be there till 5 PM.
- Auditions are first-come first-serve. We'll have a sign-in sheet.
- If we have time after auditions, we can do some Q&A about the project.
Friday, March 29, 2013
As we prepare the audition on April 6 at the Unitarian Universalist Church (147 High St., Medford, MA), I would like to clarify several points:
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Auditions for "A Better Fate"
Before December Productions will be holding auditions for "A Better Fate" on 4/6/13 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford at 1 PM. We've reserved the Sanctuary for 4 hours.
147 High Street • Medford, Massachusetts 02155
If you are interested in attending please contact Jim Kelly at kellyja8@gmail.com and I will send you a script. Participants will have a chance to perform their character's dialog and meet the crew. We hope to cast all the roles shortly after this audition.
Directions
Parking
There are parking spaces for approximately 18 cars in the church parking lot; street parking in the surrounding neighborhood does not require a permit. (For large church functions there is overflow parking capacity at a municipal parking lot between Governors Ave. and Bradlee Road a short distance to the east on High Street – see map.)
Public Transit
Take MBTA Bus #94 from Davis Square (on the Red Line) to Medford Square.
Before December Productions will be holding auditions for "A Better Fate" on 4/6/13 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford at 1 PM. We've reserved the Sanctuary for 4 hours.
147 High Street • Medford, Massachusetts 02155
If you are interested in attending please contact Jim Kelly at kellyja8@gmail.com and I will send you a script. Participants will have a chance to perform their character's dialog and meet the crew. We hope to cast all the roles shortly after this audition.
Directions
Parking
There are parking spaces for approximately 18 cars in the church parking lot; street parking in the surrounding neighborhood does not require a permit. (For large church functions there is overflow parking capacity at a municipal parking lot between Governors Ave. and Bradlee Road a short distance to the east on High Street – see map.)
Public Transit
Take MBTA Bus #94 from Davis Square (on the Red Line) to Medford Square.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Before December Videos
"The Interview"
by James F. Kelly
I've been to a lot of technical interviews in my life. These things are brutal. You spends 10 or 11 hours pretending that you understand concepts such as "Highly Scaleable Lattice Boltzmann C++ code optimized for distributed memory architecutres" and "Discontinuous Galerkin formulation of the non-hydrostatic compressible Euler equations". I always feel like a fraud (probably because I am a fraud). So, after an alcohol fueled binge with some co-workers, I went home I created "The Interview", in which my boss finds a much better candidate for my job: A hooker in a Santa outfit.
http://www.xtranormal.com/
"Little Prospect Trail"
by Vitas Polivaitis
Mark Furlong returns home from NYC to visit his folks in Waltham, MA. As he hikes up Prospect Hill in the middle of a blizzard, memories of this one true love, Jule ("a real screamer" in Mark's own words) flood his consciousness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"The Interview"
by James F. Kelly
I've been to a lot of technical interviews in my life. These things are brutal. You spends 10 or 11 hours pretending that you understand concepts such as "Highly Scaleable Lattice Boltzmann C++ code optimized for distributed memory architecutres" and "Discontinuous Galerkin formulation of the non-hydrostatic compressible Euler equations". I always feel like a fraud (probably because I am a fraud). So, after an alcohol fueled binge with some co-workers, I went home I created "The Interview", in which my boss finds a much better candidate for my job: A hooker in a Santa outfit.
http://www.xtranormal.com/
"Little Prospect Trail"
by Vitas Polivaitis
Mark Furlong returns home from NYC to visit his folks in Waltham, MA. As he hikes up Prospect Hill in the middle of a blizzard, memories of this one true love, Jule ("a real screamer" in Mark's own words) flood his consciousness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Crew Bios
Jim Kelly (Screenplay and Co-Director)
kellyja8@gmail.com
I remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back over thirty times as a kid. They would just keep showing it twice a day on HBO: once in the morning and once at night. So I would catch the first 30 minutes of Empire before school began, day after day. At lunch, I'd meet up with Chris Brozna, my best friend, and we would do scenes: "Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!" I'd shout. "Then I'll see you in hell!" replied Chris as he rode out into the frozen wasteland of Hoth (in other words, the baseball field in the rear of our elementary school) in search of Luke, who was hanging by his feet in an ice cave. Chris looked like Han, I could imagine him as a distant relative of Harrison Ford. But that was the spark, back there in Hazlet, NJ, in 1987---I knew I wanted to make a movie one day. A couple years later, I got a Fischer Pixelvision Camera for my birthday. We made an Aliens spoof with my friend Eric in the backyard---I think I played Ellen Ripley. The Pixelvision camera recorded on audio cassettes, so we tried to edit using my cousin's tape deck, which had a counter. Shit, I wonder what happened to that tape?
Vitas Povilaitis (Producer, Co-Director, and Director of Photography)
vitas@GracefulBoot.com
"I used to think about infinity, but I had to stop."
Joe Medeiros (Sound Design and Recording)
jafmedeiros@yahoo.com
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." --Saint Francis of Assisi
Joe talks fast but thinks faster. He studied at U. Mass.-Amherst, B.U., and Regis University. His vocation is software engineering, but his avocation is SFX & sound engineering. His interests range from gaming to Japanese and sailing to Argentine tango.
Jim Kelly (Screenplay and Co-Director)
kellyja8@gmail.com
I remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back over thirty times as a kid. They would just keep showing it twice a day on HBO: once in the morning and once at night. So I would catch the first 30 minutes of Empire before school began, day after day. At lunch, I'd meet up with Chris Brozna, my best friend, and we would do scenes: "Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!" I'd shout. "Then I'll see you in hell!" replied Chris as he rode out into the frozen wasteland of Hoth (in other words, the baseball field in the rear of our elementary school) in search of Luke, who was hanging by his feet in an ice cave. Chris looked like Han, I could imagine him as a distant relative of Harrison Ford. But that was the spark, back there in Hazlet, NJ, in 1987---I knew I wanted to make a movie one day. A couple years later, I got a Fischer Pixelvision Camera for my birthday. We made an Aliens spoof with my friend Eric in the backyard---I think I played Ellen Ripley. The Pixelvision camera recorded on audio cassettes, so we tried to edit using my cousin's tape deck, which had a counter. Shit, I wonder what happened to that tape?
Vitas Povilaitis (Producer, Co-Director, and Director of Photography)
vitas@GracefulBoot.com
"I used to think about infinity, but I had to stop."
Vitas studied Computer Science and Film at Rochester Institute of Technology. "I want to make a fictional story on video as I had done in college. I really want to work on the technical aspects of video production, and I have friends who want to act in it and write the script for it. This is a major project, and I've been putting it aside until I can truly commit to it." -- from "The Adventures of Vitas Povilaitis", December 1994
Joe Medeiros (Sound Design and Recording)
jafmedeiros@yahoo.com
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." --Saint Francis of Assisi
Joe talks fast but thinks faster. He studied at U. Mass.-Amherst, B.U., and Regis University. His vocation is software engineering, but his avocation is SFX & sound engineering. His interests range from gaming to Japanese and sailing to Argentine tango.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Casting Call
3/15/13
Before December Productions (Waltham, MA) is casting for a short, self-financed DV film called "A Better Fate" (see beforedecember.blogspot.com for more details).
Logline: An absurd comedy about an interview that goes haywire.
We are planning to shoot in late April/early May for three days (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday).
All travel expenses will be reimbursed. If you do not have transportation, we can provide transportation. Catering and beverages will be provided during the shoot. All cast members will receive a DVD of the finished film. We are planning on shooting two days (Saturday/Sunday) in Burlington and one additional day in Cambridge/Boston.
Major Roles (several pages of dialog required)
----------------------------------------------
Vince Hemming (lead): Male, late 20's - early 30's. Must be available for all 3 days.
Gerry Hodge: Male, late 40's - early 50's. Must be available for 1-2 days shooting.
Minor Roles (less than one page of dialog required)
----------------------------------------------------
Alisa Hemming: Female, late 20's. Preferably blondeor willing to dye hair. Must be available for 1-2 days of shooting.
Yolanda Rivera: Female, late 20's. Hispanic. Must be available for 1 day of shooting. All of Yolanda's dialog is over the phone, so no memorization is required.
Voice-Only Roles
--------------------------------------------------
Broker: Male, 20's - 30's. Able to speak with a New York or Boston accent.
As part of pre-production, we will be taking still photos which will be used as part of the sets. We would like to do this shoot one or two weeks before the shoot.
Please contact Jim Kelly at kellyja8@gmail.com or by phone at 517-230-0323 for more details.
3/15/13
Before December Productions (Waltham, MA) is casting for a short, self-financed DV film called "A Better Fate" (see beforedecember.blogspot.com for more details).
Logline: An absurd comedy about an interview that goes haywire.
We are planning to shoot in late April/early May for three days (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday).
All travel expenses will be reimbursed. If you do not have transportation, we can provide transportation. Catering and beverages will be provided during the shoot. All cast members will receive a DVD of the finished film. We are planning on shooting two days (Saturday/Sunday) in Burlington and one additional day in Cambridge/Boston.
Major Roles (several pages of dialog required)
----------------------------------------------
Vince Hemming (lead): Male, late 20's - early 30's. Must be available for all 3 days.
Gerry Hodge: Male, late 40's - early 50's. Must be available for 1-2 days shooting.
Minor Roles (less than one page of dialog required)
----------------------------------------------------
Alisa Hemming: Female, late 20's. Preferably blondeor willing to dye hair. Must be available for 1-2 days of shooting.
Yolanda Rivera: Female, late 20's. Hispanic. Must be available for 1 day of shooting. All of Yolanda's dialog is over the phone, so no memorization is required.
Voice-Only Roles
--------------------------------------------------
Broker: Male, 20's - 30's. Able to speak with a New York or Boston accent.
As part of pre-production, we will be taking still photos which will be used as part of the sets. We would like to do this shoot one or two weeks before the shoot.
Please contact Jim Kelly at kellyja8@gmail.com or by phone at 517-230-0323 for more details.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Several people have asked me what this movie is about. To answer this question, I wrote down the seven questions journalists ask when writing a story. I don't claim to know anything about journalism, but it seems like a reasonable technique. I therefore wrote a fictional interview with a journalist who didn't know anything about this project.
Q. Where is the story set?
Outside Boston (Burlington, MA and
Cambridge, MA). Most of the film is set in an office off HWY 128, although we a planning some nice exteriors of Cambridge.
Q. When is the story set?
11-12 September 2008.
The weekend before the default of Lehman Brothers.
Q. Who is the story about?
Vince. A quant. As the world experiences the financial crisis, Vince grapples with his own internal crisis.
Q. What is your story about (literally)?
Imagine interviewing
the man who just fucked your fiancee.
Q. How is the story told?
In the simplest, most economical fashion. My background is Applied Mathematics, where economy of expression, or elegance, is valued. The short film (approx. 15 minutes) will be shot on DV.
Q. Why did you write this story?
Several reasons. At first, I simply wanted the experience of writing a screenplay. I've always loved movies, and I felt that I could write a watchable movie given the chance. As the writing process continued, I began to understand a deeper reason: to ignite an internal revolution in my own thinking. At root, this story is about internal revolution. All revolutions require sparks, an external spark. This revolution is sparked my Vince's counterpart, his doppelganger, Mark, the man who he is interviewing, the man who is sleeping with his fiancee.
Film Synopsis
"A Better Fate" is an absurd comedy about a man whose life collapses in the space of a 24 hour period. Vince is a quant who’s having a bad day. He broker just called and wants 80 large by Friday. And his fiancée is sleeping with another guy—the guy Vince is about to interview.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)