I don’t think I can make an evil smile

Fast forward to today. The team name is “Respect the Thing” (a Dr. Who reference) and they set up a meeting to introduce themselves, get all the actors together, have them work in front of the camera to see what they’re capable of (and not capable of) and get a general idea of who they can use for what when the scriptwriting starts.

One of the coolest parts of the day: walking up to the door of the building and seeing Michael Morningstar, one of the other actors from Mind Over Matt standing there, waiting to be let inside so we could get out of the pouring rain. Dunno if we’ll be on camera together, but the fact that we’re on the same team is pretty sweet.

So eventually, we got the full group together, about 20 people, 15 of whom would be in front of the camera during the course of the project. Before introductions, they explained that the group had been together for a while now—not just doing the 48 HFP—and considered themselves a bunch of geeks. “Typecasting!” (Well, that’s not what I really said, but I told everyone that I officially held that title after being on TV).

After intros and learning (and quickly forgetting) everyone’s names, they had some scripts printed out for us to read. Some of those scripts suuuuucked, which was why they never bothered producing them. Still, it was material to work with, so they were passing out different scripts and sending people to the front of the room to get in front of the camera and work their acting mojo.

My mojo… it sure wasn’t there for the first scene I did, but that was a crappy scene (or lots of scenes) in general. Too many people saying too few lines. Plus having five people trying to move around in a small area doesn’t work well. The second one? Hell, yeah…

I had the chance to read the script for a couple minutes beforehand, then went up with one of the girls and nailed it. Well, mostly nailed it. The problem: no evil smile. I had no problem shouting out, “Your father was a weak-minded old fool!” A sinister grin? Couldn’t do it. They had us do the scene a second time: she did better, but I couldn’t pull off “more evil.” Still, it earned us applause from the group, so I wasn’t gonna complain.

Cute moment of the day: Gypsy, the director, explained that the character I was playing was a necromancer (i.e., practitioner of the dark arts, likes to summon the undead, drain the lifeforce from enemies and what not). The girl standing next to me looked at him for a moment, then said quietly, “Necrophiliac?” I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t keep from smiling when I told her it was a dark wizard. That probably wasn’t an evil smile, either.

I actually felt kinda bad for the guys going after me—when the first guy does really well and you do… not as well, you get mercy applause. (Been there, got that, felt crappy.)

There was more script reading amongst the group and some improv stuff after that. For example: “Shawn, you’re God (Yeah, but what role do you want me to play?), she’s an angel who’s been causing havoc on Earth and you want her to stop, but she’s nice and sweet and you’re not that upset, etc.” In the middle of the scene, the director would send someone else in unexpectedly—first, it was Jesus, then the devil and so on. It was interesting and fun at times and I think a couple people got kicked in the stomach by accident. At least I’m assuming it was an accident.

And that was pretty much it. They’ll be in touch as the project gets further along and we should be ready to shoot until 5:00 on Saturday morning if necessary. Sounds like my regular sleep schedule. And then we left the dark conference room and walked toward a bright glass door. It was pouring rain when we walked inside; the sun was shining when we left the building. Life was spiffy.

[That’s the end of the story, but I also want to send out my condolences and best wishes to the people in the Twin Cities who got hit by the tornado this afternoon. While I was reading scripts, they were having their houses and neighborhoods torn apart. It could be a long time before their lives are spiffy again, but I hope the healing process starts soon.]