With the script written it's now time for Pre-Production. First, casting my actors.
I have a friend who fancies himself an actor, and he's not bad. I went to him with the script and asked if he would be interested. He was more than happy to do it. Dan loved the challenge of an emotional role that would push his skills.
Dan Fowlks
Now with my lead actor cast I need someone to act across from him. Melanie Camire is young actress from Chicago. I know her from a short Dan had casted her in. The best part is in that short they acted across from one another, and had awesome chemistry.
Melanie Camire
Dan and Melanie play a married couple with two kids, but where do you find kid actors? I don't know, I just used my own.
Ashden and Kajlyn
And finally the last big role goes to... Greg Frisbie. Greg is someone I met while at DSU, but I never thought of him as an actor. One day though Greg acted in a little short for a class assignment and I knew he could play the role of Brian Lewis.
In 2008 The Used released "Shallow Believer." The tenth and final song on the album is "Tunnel." For some reason this song has just hits home for me.
But more importantly it sparked the idea for the short I am making for my Capstone. A short written four years after first thinking of it and one year before ever shooting a single frame.
My Capstone is the story of a man that finds himself wondering aimlessly through life, months after losing his job. It all comes to a head when a foreclosure letter is found by his wife.
I wrote a simple script for a five minute short, but decided to dive into the narrative a little more bulking up the back half of the story. Originally the short ended as the man tosses the foreclosure letter in the trash. After some thinking I felt it would more challenging for me, and the actors, if I added conflict between the man and his wife.
As it stands now there is a happy little ending because most people want to see that, but some ideas have been thrown around for a very dark ending. I'm on the fence right now with it, but feel that like real life this short could end with tragedy.
After three and a half years at Dixie State University it's time to do my Capstone Project. Well it has been time. I started on it over a year ago, but DSU is now requiring students to keep a blog documenting the process of completing a Capstone Project. That being said, I will be blogging retroactively.
