The following weekend - last weekend (I was a bit behind) we had 2 more people to audition. A guy called Blair for the boyfriend and a kid called Lochlan. Lochlan was for 12pm but he pulled out because he had some other part in something else and I guess that was enough for him.

Blair was a second choice from the pics as far as I was concerned, Jackie was a bit more open-minded and Joyce seemed to be favouring Blair before we'd seen him. This was mildly predictable behaviour as she had the row with Daniel on email and would want to then push her point forward even if it didn't really make sense. I was glad I'd predicted that would probably happen to Jackie a week or 2 prior. She probably knew it too but it was good that we had verbalised it before it materialised.

Blair's performance was okay and he would have been usable. I lost some interest by this time on who we had because I didn't want another fight and sort of felt like I wanted to concentrate more on things that I had total control over the outcome, like my Studio project. No emotional involvement in fail stuff this year. I pieced together an edit of Rebecca and Daniel and then Rebecca and Blair arguing to see how well they worked. It was clear Daniel worked better, but Blair was better than I had originally thought. Jackie agreed, Joyce had some long spiel that drew a different conclusion and Roslyn said nothing. This is a microcosm of the current group dynamic.

The rest of the week dragged, Jackie and I tried to re-work the script to have more dialogue and plan certain scenes better. We ran into issues and if I go into it, my blog will seem like a massive character assassination (not of Jackie). Basically the first scene requires a shot of a dresser, as Jackie and I had planned, and we'd all discussed at various times and I think the word Dresser is the second word of the script and it's description follows through the next sentence. So when we asked for photos of this dresser so we could plan it's layout were told that there is no dresser and a bunch of blah about the layout of a house that we hadn't seen as we weren't allowed into on the day we checked out locations. These are ridiculous obstacles. At the same time I'm not really willing to stick my ore in with everything.

Yesterday Jackie sent an email to all the actors and potentials asking if they could come in for a second audition to see how well they work together. Blair sent a short email back saying "you either use me or your don't". On one hand I can see his point, I suggested that it might be asking too much of the actors. They aren't being paid after all, and they don't know if our film will be any good (at the moment I don't know either). On the other hand, it annoyed Jackie and we agreed that if Daniel was to reply in a more curtly manner than that really sealed the deal in our opinion. He did respond much more curtly.

Today I re-wrote the script alone and sent it to Jackie. While I really liked the idea of collaborating with her on it I think it's probably mostly a solitary activity which is why we didn't get very far together on it.

The dialogue is not great but it's something which is more than it was before.