Love Always - Auditions

Today we had the auditions for Dan's project. We held the auditions at Stepping Stones studios in Maidstone which was a great space for auditions.

On Casting Call Pro we had 50 people apply and I had been speaking to over half of them and told them all when the auditions where but the day before we only had 10 definitely turning up and as the auditions got closer it dropped to 7 for different reasons. We only had girls audition which was a bit disappointing as we need to find a Frank.

Before auditioning we had each performer fill out a form which would benefit us when looking for costumes and making our choices. We also gathered together head shot and full length pictures for the wardrobe girl so she could get a better understanding of what the characters would look like in their costumes.

The girls we saw were good and we have a few people sending video auditions. I'm going to pick my favorites and then me and Dan can discuss on Sunday who we think should become our cast.

Love Always - Locations

On Saturday 21st September there is a 1940's event on at Chatham Dock Yard called Salute To The 40's.

We have decided that this will be a brilliant place to record the relationship montage between Frank and Mary as the setting will be 1940's many of the guests will be dressed in 1940's and there will also be 1940's music and activities going on.

Love Always - Locations

Today me and Dan went and had a look around the Museum of Kent Life as we found out that they have a WW2 vintage village which we thought we maybe able to use for some of the locations in the film.

http://www.kentlife.org.uk/discover-kent-life/vintage-village.aspx

The locations were absolutely perfect. There were 2 vintage houses which both had the rooms we needed to use and they were all fully dressed which is perfect as it means we don't need to source as many props.

Seeing these amazing locations today as made me feel really excited about this project and it feels like its starting to come together.

Love Always - Costumes

For this project I have found an amazing girl called Emily-Jane Curtin who has been so helpful and hard working. She is creating the looks for each character and sourcing all of the costumes. She is a graduate from Ravensbourne college. She studied Film Production and as worked on many different projects.

She has also managed to find a hair stylist and a make up artist to help on the project. She produced this mood board to show the make up artist and hair stylist the look she was looking for for each character.

I have been liaising with her about the style of each character throughout the whole project and we are definitely on the same page. She will also be making up some mood boards for each of the characters wardrobe which will be good to see and visualize more what the characters will look like on the day. 

Love Always Music

Very early on I realised that making this project authentic was going to be a real challenge and if we could pull it off then it would be amazing. One of the first things I thought about is that if we want to use atmospheric music or have something playing on the radio it needed to fit in with the time period. I knew that we would not be able to get copy right to use big well know recordings of war time songs and so I began to contact 1940's style bands and singers. 

I first went through agencies and didn't really get anywhere. When I found out about the Salute to the 40's event I saw that they had bands and artists performing and so I contacted them directly.

There are 2 female singers who have offered to help us for free by giving us copies of their recordings and in return have asked for us to make them a promotional video.

The 2 ladies are:

Madeline Brown - http://www.madelinebrown.co.uk/

 

Fiona Harrison - http://www.fionaharrison.biz/index.htm#.UjCP7Makr9s

Love Always - Auditions

I have begun casting for Dan's project and we are going to be holding auditions on Thursday 29th August somewhere in Maidstone. All of the applicants are graduates from the Arts Education School in London or Casting Call Pro and so have been able to send over their professional head shots and CV's which really adds some professionalism to our project.

Love Always - Production Meeting

Today me, Maddie and Dan had a production meeting to go through the first draft of the script and pick out the bits we thought worked really well and those that we thought needed to be changed. We also went through and thought about what props we need to find and what locations we needed for each scene. It was a very productive meeting and we got a lot of work done.

This project is really coming together and we are all working really well together as a team.

Love Always - Finding Locations

I have started to have a look around at places we could film. There are many war time museums in London which allow filming and so maybe these few would be an option.

Imperial War Museum
filming@iwm.org.uk
http://www.iwm.org.uk/

Churchill War Rooms
cwr@sodexo.com
http://www.iwm.org.uk/form/churchill-war-rooms-event-enquiry-form

RAF Mueseum
events@rafmuseum.com
http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk