Tonight is our table read; the first time that all of the cast and crew will be in one place with the script. It’s a scary and exciting moment all at once. I’ve heard it in bits and pieces during auditions and have read through it in my head a thousand times, but now, it’s real. It’s really real. Not only will the script come to life as one full document, but the actors will now breathe real life into the characters. They will bring their nuances, their thoughts and their training to Jenn, Ian, Dave and Larissa. It’s also time for me to transition script and character responsibilities to Cody, the Director. Even though I’m not a parent, I can’t imagine handing off a 3-month old baby to someone I hardly know, but must inherently trust to my fullest capabilities. But, that’s what I will do. The script is “all groweds up tonight” as Double-Down Trent would say.

Given that Jenn is based on a real person, you think it’d be easy to form the basis of her character. Ummm, no. As pointed out in an earlier post, we had to balance between the reality of Jenn and the privacy concerns of someone who is working hard to define herself. In the end, the character of Jenn became a very fictionalized version of her world, her relationships and her struggles. This was all very interesting and I have no idea how writers do two-hour biographical pics. It must be very difficult to draw that line as between “what I hear and see” vs. “what the audience needs to hear and see”. In the end, it comes down to the story and what is best for that.

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Jenn 2.0 Audition

Second casting call was well worth it.  (Video to follow.) We had a great showing, even a girl who saw the Craig’s List post on her phone today and came by for a cold read.  Ironically, I think the auditions really confirmed our favor for the call backs.  We still have some tough decisions, but we feel strongly that we can pull our cast from the people that we have seen.

The great thing is that we had some more guys.  I was surprised at the lack of guys going out for roles, but I guess I shouldn’t be.  Anyway, this all leads to our biggest challenge so far… Who is Ian?

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Auditions went very well. We had callbacks and really confirmed some of our initial thoughts. It’s always good to hear your words read by others and I was pleasantly surprised by the actors that read. During lunch for the 1st auditions on Oct 4, we had a great, collaborative effort on the script, the characters, etc. Surprisingly, there was a long (really, really long) conversation about the stage of relationship between Ian and Jenn. Are they at 3 months? 6 months? Have they slept together? What does this all mean to the pilot and, thus, the series?

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After the initial idea was fleshed out and I had a chance to learn more about the real-life Jenn, Rob and I collaborated on a treatment. Within that, we discussed the main characters and the core of the show, in addition to an outline of the pilot. I wrote the first draft rather quickly and completed it on Sep 2. It came in at 6 pages and served as the basis for our first group meeting on Sep 4 with the NAS team. Ian was in this draft, but Larissa was not. In short time, Josh came back with some comments. For the next draft, some were included, others weren’t, but Rob and I could tell they got it and had a connection to the project (which was also exhibited in our first meeting). The draft that was completed on Sep 20 ran 7.5 pages and served as the 1st audition draft. Larissa was now included. We wanted to introduce that conflict since we had discussed it further and thought it not only had potential for humor as a character who wants the spotlight, but also continuous conflict for Jenn who is trying to build her brand. And, that’s the idea for any pilot: introduce your characters, your conflicts… and get out.