Zoomin

I'll begin by apologizing for my inactivity, as I was out of town the past three days to visit the Savannah College of Art and Design, which is the school I'll be going to in the Fall. Well now I'm back and there's no time to think about the future when I need to devote myself to my present, and by my present, I mean THE ABNORMALS!

Last week, on Tuesday, I hosted another meeting on Zoom to further discuss the film. I decided that filming would be on three days: One day will be at Becon Tv, a student tv station, and would be the two scenes in the Abnormals HQ. The second day will be at a park called Treetops Park (where I filmed my AS Level project!) and will be the forest scenes. The third day will be back at Becon to film the entrance of the villains for the rogues gallery scene at the very end of the film. I don't know if I'll have available space in the runtime to include that scene in the edit of the film I send to Cambridge, but regardless I'll have an extended cut that I'll release on my own as the definitive edition. These days won't be in the exact order I described, and in fact I'm thinking that we might do the forest scenes this weekend because it's the most heavy of the three days and I want to try to have most of the filming done before Spring Break.

After explaining all of that to the cast, we did a quick read through of select scenes that I felt were the most important to showing who these characters are and how they interact. Originally I wanted the villain character of Blackout to be played one of my friends from my summer workshop (most of the cast is from there, in fact) but he won't be available, so instead I got one of my friends from school and rewrote Blackout to be female so she could play her.

I was really happy with how the readthrough went. The people I have playing the main trio of Astroknight, Cryptid Kid, and Showstopper are all good friends in real life and I can already feel that translate into the chemistry of the characters. I hope that through the natural friendship of the characters, the film can be more engaging and maybe even comforting for some viewers. The dynamic is there for the Abnormals, and I'm also really happy with my two villains Blackout and Toy Master. They lean more into the campy tone then the heroes, and their actors are already having a blast going as over the top as they can. As a director, my main notes for all of the actors is going to be telling them when to dial up the camp and when to tone it down. I've noticed that there are moments where I feel like going over the top is distracting and harms the scene, and others where it feels like playing it naturalistically makes it feel awkward because the tone of the performance doesn't match the dialogue.

I'm going to be hosting another Zoom tonight, this one being a full table read. I am beyond excited for this movie, and it feels great watching it take shape.