Now going into pre-production, I knew as the director I needed vocal points – something that I emphasized throughout the shoot to my cast & crew.
Cast: Don’t Act. If I caught you ACTING, it was a problem. Live in these moments when that camera is rolling, and be genuine to it. Everyone who got casted were chosen because they ARE the characters in their own unique way. Naturalism is something we noticed LA projects had been missing in the realm of mainstream media. So we wanted to shit on shows like “All American” and “On My Block” with our LA cultural depiction, to be blatantly honest with you. in my eyes it could always be better. I’ll just say for two people that aren’t from LA, but started our film journey here, we held it down.
Cast: Gain a theatre actors method. So much preparation goes into the rehearsal process for plays because when you get on that stage and it’s time to perform, you have no time to mess up or not know your lines. In theatre you get one long take, as I call it. So treat this film set like your stage, the camera and crew like your audience, and treat every shot like you get one take. Though if you’re gonna mess up, make us feel like it never happened.
Crew: Communicate. A shoot without communication is a shoot with no heartbeat. Which became our biggest misstep, being that it was the one thing our crew wasn’t keen on doing. Which is partially why the film ended up flatlining and had to be put on life support for a while. But, that fault falls directly on the shoulders of Rah & Ali, so we took that on the chin, coming out with an essential lesson: VET YOUR CREW. Don’t just put together a chunk of individuals who were affordable, make sure they are passionate about carrying this baby that is your project, don’t sit down with one potential crew member, then make a decision, sit down with at least five of them. Grow rapport with your cinematographer & editor as a unit at all times going into the project. Better yet, spend all the work or free time you have with them (coffee, a movie, video games, you get the point) because that crew will become your family for the entirety of your production and if you don’t love them or they don’t love you back, you will be walking on hot ass eggshells all day. Don’t get me wrong, you will all eventually hate each other during the process, because filmmaking is that mind-numbing and intense, but if it ain’t really love then bridges will be burned.
Casting for this project was probably the only time I could sit back and look around to say “Damn, we’re shooting a movie.” In my mind, we have actually arrived and nobody could tell us we haven’t, as much as we’ve been here mentally. It’s now tangible. But, I wanna take this time to state that if you are ever casting for a project, go on your IMDb Pro account and search the names “Alice-Jean Fraser & Ali-Han Ibragimov” if you need casting directors! They stretched their hands to make this independent project filled with such untapped talent by putting in the overtime needed. It definitely shows in the film now. But we still ultimately could never hold a full table read with the entire cast, because it wasn’t even fully casted until days before the shoot, due to hiring, firing, and persistently not finding exactly what we were looking for. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t intensify rehearsals with the individual character dynamics I already had to work with. My rehearsals took place in an apartment complex lobby, with one set of characters in a minuscule hot-ass workout room, others in the lobby, and one in the public kitchen. Rotating my time between the three. This went on the entire month prior to shooting, from around 10 at night till 4 or 5 each morning. With each cast member, I had a three stage rehearsal process that worked for me:
Conversation: it was absolutely imperative that I have healthy dialogue with my cast members before we even pick up a script, sometimes even stopping in the middle of rehearsal to simply talk. See where their heads are at for the time being, picking up on their natural expressions and tonality, also just letting them know I am here to listen and not just conduct. Which means everything to me, establishing a bond to where we can communicate freely with each other, not just on a “Director-to-Actor” basis.
Impromptu Improv: whenever I first started developing chemistry amongst actors that will have to portray long-time relationships on screen, I found myself making each group improvise a completely random scenario on the spot. For example (for those that have seen the movie), I would make Javon, Phoolie, and Saav play out Javon making it to the NBA Draft, and him bringing them to his private watch party. Now if you know any of those characters, then you can imagine how much they would run with that. Almost every time I did it with this cast, I couldn’t fix myself to yell “Cut” because they adapted so seamlessly to what I needed. Doing so, made each dynamic comfortable with one another, to the point where picking up a script & digesting lines, figuring out each other’s timing & pace didn’t take much time at all.
Scene Rehearsing: this is where things become surgical. Because these actors are supposed to come into that rehearsal as your actor, but leave as your vision. I adapted to having a checklist of things I started to consider and implement into my process:
How willing am I to adapt to the actor? I’ve casted multiple people with a natural cadence that can add a different element to the movie or their own character’s persona v. what I originally wrote.
What will the expression in this scene look and feel like as it flows into the next? Writing vs. molding the scene with the actors are two different experiences. The performance of each actor has to be accounted for in-sequence with the next, so the film’s tone doesn’t have an imbalance.
Always experiment. I couldn’t be afraid to throw a monkey wrench at my actors and approach the scene with a fresh mindset for a couple takes. It gave me something I didn’t even know I was looking for on multiple occasions.
Competing with my actors. I had to show them each day that I am more passionate about my work, so that can become contagious, or at least reflect on to them.
It’s okay to wear an actors shoes, sometimes. Some actors are very receptive to a director that can act out a couple scene lines for them, that way they can watch exactly what the director wants from them (not to say I did this often or was any good for that matter.)
Always give feedback, even when there is nothing to give. Actors often need some sort of confirmation, or approval from the director. After all, it is your vision, so even a simple “That was beautiful, let’s run it again” is always better than just “let’s run it again.”
Once I figured this out for myself, I got what I wanted, and still ended up having to reshoot certain scenes because I didn’t get what I needed. Huge difference.