“The Queen of Hearts”

The short film project “The Queen of Hearts” is part of the Com­pendium series “Alice In Waste­land” pro­duced at Van­cou­ver Film School under the EBM depart­ment (Enter­tain­ment Busi­ness Man­age­ment). Also within the “Alice in Waste­land” theme, four other short films are being shot with dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion teams: Twee­dleDee and Twee­dle­Dum, The Twins; The T-​Party; The Chesire Cat; and, The Flow­ers. I have been cast as the Queen of Hearts, and am excited to part of this high qual­ity creation.

Pro­duc­ers of “Team Queen”: Lewis Chieng, Sheryl Vedamani, Daniel Gogolin, Alexan­dra Castillo, and Max Tennessen.

Direc­tor: Dave Roncin Writer: Casey Splin­ter Actors: Trilby Jeeves, Ava Van­der­star­ren, Jason Mireau

Fol­low Team Queen’s blog for more information.

In the mean­time, I have decided to post my jour­ney into the dark “Alice in Wasteland”.

Jan­u­ary 9^th, 2012

I was con­tacted by direc­tor and teacher David Roncin from Van­cou­ver Film School regard­ing the next Com­pendium film shoot. He wanted to know if I might be inter­ested in audi­tion­ing for the role of Queen in their short “Queen”. I read the script, fell in love with the style and the story, and promptly said yes!

Jan­u­ary 10^th, 2012

I’m hav­ing a very busy Jan­u­ary and finally, late evening, got to study­ing my lines and doing some char­ac­ter prepa­ra­tion for the audi­tion. The role is bold, trou­bled, and sen­sual in an ugly way. I went over the lines many times with­out impos­ing too many deci­sions. Just played. Even­tu­ally got the script to a place where I felt I could sleep the night!

Jan­u­ary 11^th, 2012

In the after­noon, after work­ing on my busi­ness all morn­ing, I dug into the script again. Using some tools I teach, I “buf­fooned” the scene (tak­ing it to an extreme with some mock­ery), and danced to the words. It seemed to help find the Queen. Jumped in my car, put a cork in my mouth to prac­tice the lines on my way (this helps with dic­tion and clar­ity, and warms up the mouth mus­cles!). Once there, I con­tin­ued to lis­ten to the music I chose to suit the Queen’s per­son­al­ity, until I was invited into thee room. There I met a beau­ti­ful young woman who was play­ing my Alice. It was easy to be inspired by her beauty, and dig up the objec­tive of the Queen. (you’ll have to see the film to find out what that is.. ) Your hint is that the Queen ISN’T pretty. We con­nected and I had fun in the audi­tion. I think if one is hav­ing fun dur­ing an audi­tion, things are look­ing good. If noth­ing else, you walk away feel­ing good. And, I did. And, I had no expec­ta­tions. Onwards.

Jan­u­ary 12^th, 2012

I’m always up very early on Thurs­day morn­ings for a busi­ness net­work­ing break­fast I attend. Decided to check my email on my iPhone, as I do most Thurs­days. Today there was a mes­sage from one of the pro­duc­ers, Daniel, that they were thrilled with my per­for­mance and wanted me for the role. Yahoooo!! I had to share with my biz group and they were excited for me. I’m very happy to do this project as I know how great the pro­duc­tion val­ues are, and the peo­ple involved are super nice. Plus the role is “juicy”! I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity. Two of my friends were in pre­vi­ous Com­pendium films and they had a super expe­ri­ence. In fact, I got to coach on one of them – “Hook” from the For­ever Series. Now it is my turn to be in the hot seat!

Jan­u­ary 18^th, 2012

This evening was sched­uled for me, “Queen”, to have a make-​up test. I wasn’t sure what that was going to be until ear­lier today. I fig­ured it would be involved as the Queen’s face is to be scarred, and less than pretty. Well, tonight was about mak­ing a mask of my face so the make up artists could cre­ate pros­thet­ics that would be glued to my face. I had been through the process before, which was good as it can be chal­leng­ing. Your face is com­pletely cov­ered in goop with only the nos­trils being left so you can breathe. There is a lot of trust in the peo­ple who are doing it so you want to make friends with them very quickly!

Pre-​goo.. Sexy ball cap! (not)

No fear, Louise Lock­hart and Steph Segaric were awe­some and con­stantly check­ing in with me to see if I was okay. They first applied some pur­ple gooey stuff (offi­cial name is algi­nate, a sea­weed by prod­uct) to my face. It felt strange as it dripped around. This first step was to take a detailed impres­sion of my face. (I won­der if it’s the same stuff they use at the den­tist…) The cheese­cloth they then attached was to help cre­ate some trac­tion for the sub­se­quent cast­ing to grip. The gyp­sona, a light plas­ter, becomes the spine of the shape so they have some­thing solid to work with when they make a “positive”.

Me in my pur­ple gooey Zen state!

Okay… that’s the tech­ni­cal details. What was I going through as these steps took place? Sur­pris­ingly, once I got used to being cov­ered, and trust­ing my lit­tle air holes, I felt quite Zen. It was a refresh­ing break in my crazy sched­ule. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t read, couldn’t do any­thing but sit. It was a “mask retreat”. Maybe there is a new busi­ness here! Our soci­ety needs it! Forced still­ness. I was almost dis­ap­pointed when it was time to pull the mask off (which went quite smoothly).

Louise lay­ing down plas­ter strips

But… there was some fun hap­pen­ing around me dur­ing my masked meditation!

Louise and the Queen… hmmm

Steph hav­ing fun.. me innocent!

I didn’t see my “pos­i­tive” made from a cement like sub­stance, but this is Jack’s, the Queen’s cohort. Louise and Steph use the rock hard face molds to cre­ate the pros­thet­ics that will even­tu­ally find them­selves on our faces as scars.

Jack’s face for pros­thetic making

Jan­u­ary 25, 2012

Time for a sec­ond ses­sion with Louise for a more in-​depth test­ing of the pros­thet­ics and some make up for the Queen.

Colour Test­ing the prosthetic

Louise showed me the scars, and then began her artistry to feel out how every­thing might look. I became her can­vas. I tried not to inter­fere too much with photo tak­ing, but, it’s not every day a gal gets to have this kind of char­ac­ter build­ing, in a lit­eral way! We tested the skin grafts, because they’re impor­tant dur­ing a piv­otal moment for the Queen. But… I won’t give that away, either! As an actor, I always enjoy play­ing a role that is phys­i­cally steps away from me. There is a free­dom of expres­sion that is hard to explain. This make-​up will be like doing mask work, in a minia­ture way, which always leads you to a mys­te­ri­ous place.

Good begin­ning tests for “skin graphs” … blec!

Jan­u­ary 26, 2012

Today I am going over the most recent script and hop­ing the lines don’t change too much. I know they have to keep the script under a cer­tain amount of time as we have only 12 hours to shoot every­thing. And, that will include the 3 to 4 hours they will have me in make-​up. I plan to use that time to review my lines, my inten­tions, my objec­tives, and lis­ten to some music (this really helps me get in the zone of my char­ac­ter). I’m sure I’ll spend the first part of the ses­sion just wak­ing up, and chat­ting to Louise as our call time is sure to be very early.

Jan­u­ary 27, 2012

This evening we had a rehearsal with the three cast mem­bers and our direc­tor, Dave Roncin. The role of “Jack” has been re-​cast for per­sonal rea­sons. I never did meet the orig­i­nal “Jack” so I didn’t have a chance to get attached. Our new Jack, Jason, is a nice guy and con­tributed some good insight about the script. Both Ava and Jason have worked together before, which can be a help­ful bonus (they grad­u­ated from VFS at the same time). I think we will have fun and give each other good support.

Tonight’s rehearsal focused mainly on dis­cussing our indi­vid­ual sto­ries, our rela­tion­ships to each other, and the sub­text of what is really going on. I enjoy this sleuthing. Then at some point you have to decide what are the stronger choices, and what is going to make the story “sing”. It’s like build­ing a puz­zle and know­ing when you’ve found the right piece because it slips in eas­ily. The Queen’s char­ac­ter, on the sur­face, could appear to be hate­ful and ugly, but under­neath she is a suf­fer­ing fig­ure, like so many in real life. My job as an actor will be to inspire some sym­pa­thy in the audi­ence despite her appar­ent cru­elty. No pres­sure!! I do like her, though, and that should read some­where in me when the cam­eras are turned on. At least, this is what I hope for. I will look to our fear­less leader, Dave, for guidance.

We also exam­ined cer­tain sen­tences that didn’t ring quite right. A lot of times you might not know exactly why, but some­thing leads you to ques­tion whether your char­ac­ter would say that word, or that line. The writer has done a great job and now we’re just doing some tweak­ing. Our job is to serve the writ­ing. I didn’t see the orig­i­nal script but appar­ently it has gone through some major changes to its cur­rent state (as they do). I am also look­ing for­ward to the silences in the story.

After a cou­ple of reads and our dis­cus­sion we walked down to the stu­dio to see the set. It was a busy place with the walls being painted a dusty rose (not pur­ple, Max!). And, I saw the begin­nings of my lit­tle stage where the Queen dances. I’m excited about that. Hav­ing some phys­i­cal action will help my over­all inter­pre­ta­tion. When I per­form I always use music to inspire me into my char­ac­ter. Dave walked us through the broad strokes of how we will be mov­ing through the space. Then we were released to go home and do our homework!

The gang “early days”…