Frequently Asked Questions

 

Who is we?

 

PRODUCER: Olivia Griego, is a talented producer, production coordinator and actor. She has done that work throughout NC and beyond.

 

PRODUCER and DIRECTOR: Andrew Martin is a local producer and director whose company ArtandM handles projects of various sizes for Triangle businesses. He also writes, directs, and produces his own projects.

 

PRODUCER: Paul Kilpatrick works locally in film production and also works as an actor and voice actor.

Why did we do it?

 

We are selfish. Selfishly, we are tired of the perception that the kind of talent you need to make good film and tv is somewhere else. We have all been on sets where someone is flown in from NYC, LA, or ATL. They are usually great people, good at their jobs and easy to work with, but they have traveled a great distance at great expense to do something that any number of local actors could knock out in their sleep. We wanted to have an evidential retort to those experiences so we made one. We also, Olivia and Paul, wanted to play on camera with our friends.

 

We may have also had a sincere desire to give local talent a chance to get in front of the camera. For some we wanted to create a first chance to get on camera and see how even a small set works. For others we wanted to provide an opportunity to do something that wasn’t a corporate video or commercial, to stretch a little and have fun.

 

The actors in these clips are about a third of the people we reached out to and an even smaller portion of the talented people in the Triangle. Hire them.

 

For our friends who worked behind the camera we wanted to have some fun. People who work in film production do it because they want to, they are good at it and they enjoy it. It is hard work but we tend to like each other which helps. That being said there is rarely time on set to try your hand at something new so we wanted to give our friends a chance to play and gain experience and confidence in new roles.

 

We wanted to showcase our community and often feel like the Triangle’s best talent is only seen on stage.

How did we find actors?

 

We actors but we wanted to make sure we could mix people from different communities and disciplines and were excited to be surprised. We created a list using personal contacts, recommendations, and word of mouth. The list contained theater actors, dancers, stand-ups, improvisers, drag queens, wrestlers, musicians, circus performers, personalities and then some folks we just wanted to see for fun. We tried to reach out to as many different types of performer as we could.  We asked for a 2-3 hour commitment on either a Friday or Saturday. The response was very positive and larger than expected with about a 3rd of the people contacted committing.

How did we film these?

Screen tests, back in the before time, where all about seeing how an actor could project through a lens, what essence they delivered on camera, in a situation that was unpredictable. The set was simple, chairs and a table, a piece of art, some glasses, just enough to scaffold a world. To recreate the uncertainty of old screen test the actors were given simple prompts only after they arrived on set and they improvised together from that prompt. We had four cameras rolling, hoping to capture honest moments and to encourage the actors to engage with each other since there was no way they could play to camera. There were minimal retakes and each scene was allowed to run between 5-10 minutes.