An interlude of project Inside Triangle

I started looking for mid-age actors since September, at the beginning I wanted to find Chinese look actors. I stayed the afternoon in front of the Chinese supermarket gate but I decided not to interrupt them. Not because of cowardice, just I cannot trust someone who stopped me on the street so I assume those Chinese people would not trust me either.

Then I decided to find actors throughout Tinder. Some people showed their interest but none of them showed up in the appointment.

The project stuck for a month, I was distracted by something else. Needless to say my self-accusatory and frustration during the days, the exciting feeling and creative ideas at the beginning all disappeared, only the problem stayed. I asked myself constantly why am I doing this? What am I talking about in my script?

I thought it was funny so I wrote it, but after reading it again and again, I can only tell how mean I was: The reason of why the lines are funny is because the characters do not respect each other. They laughed at fat people and even said some really heavy things like “rape the cheating ex-boyfriend to revenge….” I felt too mean to write these lines, they are terrible. How can I make jokes by offending people? Maybe when I wrote the script in English I do not have any feeling or sympathy, I went as nasty as I can, as negative I can. I can never tell how the native-English mind felt for that, I think that also revealed a reason of why my lines made some people laugh ---- my English writing is wrong and not normal.

Until last week, I had a group discussion with Simon, Samira and Sara, we talked about my script and I got some great suggestions. I decided to shoot in green screen space, to draw a car instead of shooting in the car, to make it more stylish and ridiculous.

I encouraged myself to take actions. Go for it!

So I posted a call for actors on a professional actor website. Soon enough, I have got some audition emails.

Last Friday I had the first casting with an actor. He is in his 40s and good looking for his age. I showed him my script and I told him that we could try to read it together.

As he picked up my script, he asked me: Are you a native English speaker?

I said no.

He said: There are some mistakes in your lines.

I said: Ok, but can we read it?

He said: I felt awkward to read your lines as a native speaker.

I said: It’s a comedy. I kept the strange metaphors on purpose. It’s my style.

He said: I worked with a lot of artists and nobody wrote English like that.

I said: The pen is here. If you hate it you can correct them.

Then he corrected all of my grammar and preposition each words by each.

I asked him: Can we just read it and try a bit rehearsal?

He said: I can’t because the lines are not right. Maybe I can improvise.

All right.

Then I read the lines of two characters, he read one character.

And I even read the wrong line.

We transformed the script of a short situation comedy to a situation tragedy. I was overwhelmed by my Chinese accent. He recited my script in a poetic way.

Before leaving, he asked me: How do you pay the actor?

I said: It’s a student production, I will cover the expenses during the day.

He said: Oh, I acted in another short film project, shooting within one day, and they paid me 2000 Euros.

Then he left.