Articles

SPY AUDITIONS DRAW A CROWD

More than fifty prospective Jonathan Looke's and Susan Spellman's brought their headshots and their dreams to Theater 22 in NYC hoping to be cast in ShootingDV's first feature length production, SPY.

Here is a brief summary of the auditions and minutes from the Spy Production Team meeting that followed.

For this one day, Theater 22, the old black box nestled between pre-war tenements in the heart of Chelsea, became casting central for the Spy production team.

Auditions were held between 1pm and 5pm, and the turn out was everything Co-Producers/Directors Alex Klymko and Jim MacPherson were hoping for. Their only concern was that they would not be able to see all the actors within the scheduled four hour time slot.

Two at a time, Jonathan's and Susan's (as well as some potential Mike Chase's and Yvonne Hayworth's) were escorted onto the main stage and were videotaped as they acted out various scenes from the SPY script.

Also on hand for the auditions were Associate Producer Zen, Production Designer Tom Cukier, as well as Co-Writers Charles Messina and Lynwood Sawyer.

All auditions were taped for further evaluation by the Spy Casting Team. Two DV cameras were used simultaneously so actors could play to one another in over-the-shoulder shots. This allowed the actors to use each other and gave the Spy Team an opportunity to examine and discuss chemistry.

"I'm not interested in your memorization skills yet," Klymko told the actors. "We are here to see each other for the first time, to play with your range and then evaluate your ability to take direction. Now please stand on your marks and play to one another. Run through it once and then we'll tape it."

The decision sure won't be an easy one. Many of the talented actors are strong candidates who made a great impression on the Spy team. "We saw no bad actors today," said Klymko, "we simply have too few parts. I can't believe the amount of talent that presents itself at one of these sessions. Although I shouldn't be surprised. This is New York City after all! God bless them and the craft which they seek to perfect."

"Hearing the dialogue read aloud for the first time, I was genuinely moved," remarked Jim MacPherson to co-writers Messina and Sawyer in between auditions.

The auditions ran right up until the last second, but the Spy production team (in danger of being thrown out by the theater manager) lived up to their promise of seeing every actor and getting out of Theatre 22 on time.

Overall, it was a successful day. A day that moved the pre-production process further along and brought the Spy Team that much closer to the day when the word "Action!" will be shouted and this romantic spy thriller will begin shooting.

Now the Spy team takes a deep breath before they jump headlong into the second phase in the casting process-call backs!

Minutes from the meeting:

Jim MacPherson calls the meeting to order and gets down to the business at hand; talent, story, script, website, time line, deliverables, projections and forecasts. A plan of action is outlined and implemented.

The entire staff thanks Julia Sullivan and Kevin Abdullah (not present) who organized a wonderful turnout for auditions.

Everyone agrees the SPYtheMovie and ShootingDV websites begin to show their value as hits increase and positive feedback is heard from a variety of sources including other filmmakers and writers.

Jim makes a suggestion to change the film title to ispy. Surprisingly, all involved, each a strong personality, agree with the potential change... or was it the beer and Martinis?

Alex refers to typos in the paradigm he constructed and handed out at the previous production meeting, " Either no one is reading this stuff or everyone thinks I'm either crazy or unapproachable. I reread it this morning and I found 5 typos. "There's no harm in crossing all our 't's and dotting all of our 'i's ," he scolds, "I want to make sure everyone is reading this stuff."

Klymko and MacPherson advocate Messina as Senior Editorial Director and his responsibilies are outlined.

Later, MacPherson and Messina strongly oppose Klymko's suggestion to introduce another character as the villain and devoutly lobby to repurpose an existing character to suit the role of antagonist.

An agreement is reached to commit to 3 weeks of script development in a workshop setting.

And so the process continues... as more and more of the production teams' lives become consumed with Spy.

Ben Curtis

Vincent Pastore

Welcome to ShootingDV

Welcome to SPYtheMovie

Real Klymko

home | about | contact | register | volunteer | sitemap
disclaimer | privacy statement

Copyright 2001 ShootingDV.com