Actresses for Hire?

I have never been one who relinquishes control easily. So if the director controls the stage, I will be the director. However, as the director I sometime have to make hard decisions, like who will be the main actors (or actresses in this case) in our film.

The first actresses that came to mind were my sister and her friend. We needed two girls that were of high school age, and they were. We also needed them to be two people we were comfortable filming with, having all attended the same middle school we all would be comfortable filming together. We also needed two actresses who were comfortable being filmed, luckily neither of these girls were camera shy (being the older sister I had many experiences taking photos for them in the past).

I thought using them as actresses would be a good idea and give Addie and I the opportunity to operate the camera. With both of us behind the camera we would be able to capture all the ideas we had for different shots as well as make more creative decisions along the way.

Unfortunately this idea did not come to completion. As our first shooting date was quickly approaching I realized that I would not have time to coordinate with both my sister and her friend. Organizing two schedules was hectic enough but having to organize four schedules of four very busy girls seemed almost impossible.

In addition to this I realized that I wanted to include scenes where our main character was driving alone. While both my sister and her friend are of high school age and have their learners permits, neither have their drivers license. This means they are legally required to have an adult in the passenger seat while driving. If either of them were to play the main character we could not show them driving alone.

This is how Addie and I came to be the two main actors in our own film. I will talk more about the benefits and draw backs of this outcome in my later posts.