I am still amazed I got to work with this group of actors in season one:
John Colella, Reamy Hall, Marcia Wallace, Kirsten Vangsness, Chris Mulkey, Jim Roof, Andrea Cansler, Cris DAnnunzio and Elizabeth Beckwith.
One of the hard things to do when you’re making a web series, especially your own and the first season of it, is to ask actors to work with you.
Here’s one thing that I keep in mind when casting, which we did for the first season with no auditions - The Four Hour Rule.
You learn things working on other people’s shows and sometimes you don’t realize it until much later. One thing I learned working on Mike Upchurch’s web series “Powerloafing” is was what I call the four-hour rule.
When you’re asking a working actor to be in your web series, the first obstacle is if they know what a web series is and if they haven’t equated the word web series with “cable access.” Once you’re past that obstacle, the next is what your idea is for the show. What’s it about and who are they going to be in it?
The next obstacle is time, how much time is this going to take out of their day? That’s where the four-hour rule comes into play.
When Neil Patrick Harris was asked to guest star on “Powerloafing,” he was told it was a four-hour shoot. Mike Upchurch and I went over the script, figured out what was doable since an entire set needed to be struck to get one scene and we came up with what could be done in four hours.
The cool thing was that Neil walked out the door at exactly the four hour mark and we got everything!
When I asked Marcia Wallace, Kirsten Vangsness and Chris Mulkey if they would be in Vampire Mob, I let them know how long it would take - four hours.
No one will believe you and they think it’s going to be six hours, not four. And if you said it was going to be six hours, they probably think it’s eight or ten hours. Because shooting on a movie or television show almost always goes over the estimated time.
All of our shoots were four hours long for the cast with the exception of one day, which was six hours.
When I ask someone for four hours of their time, I make sure I can do it and I keep an eye on the clock the entire time.I write a script that I know I can get what’s needed in four hours and with every shoot, we made good on the promise of four hours, made our day and got all the coverage needed.
I wrote the show with that kind of timeframe in mind, which is part of the job - write to the budget you have, write to the locations you have access to or can steal and make good on your promise of how long shoots will take to the best of your ability.
Once you’ve proven yourself, that you really can do it on four hours, asking actors back in the future is a little easier, because they know that when you say four hours, it’s four hours.
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