"If brevity is the soul of wit...they're SCREWED!" |
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Clinton County Community Players: The Miniseries!
Behind the Scenes...
Who did this?!
Cast [Character - Actor]:
Sally Russell - Brianne Beatrice
Michelle Calabrasi - Quetta Carpenter
Jake Masters - Jeremy Lee Cudd
Colin Bendish - Kevin Murphy
Laurel Richardson - Andrea Runge
Danika Colby-Cavendish - Kate Spurgeon
John Johnson - Jean-Gerald Tartiere
Max - Mark Olsen
Director: Mark Olsen
Assistant Director and Editor: Jeremy Lee Cudd
Special Guest Appearance by Helen Manfull
What is this?!
The Clinton County Community Players was created by the Penn State University graduate acting class of 2007 under the direction of Professor Mark Olsen. The project was designed to give our class exposure to improv on camera. The project was a response to the rise in popularity of the mockumentary form and the growing demand for improvisation skills on the television or film set. The project was shot over the course of our first semester of our second year.
We began with a brainstorming session, tried a premise, and went back to the drawing board. We fought and bounced around ideas and eventually decided to tell the story of a bunch of ne'er-do-well community theatre actors. Even though the premise was highly derivative of films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "A Midwinter's Tale", it did provide the advantage of using resources and locations that were readily available to us. We chewed over the various stock type characters that one meets in theatre: "the Lech", "the Guru", "the Newbie", "the Queen", etc. After roughing out our general choices, we did our specific character work independently, and then met back to let the characters meet each other for the first time in front of the camera.
Altogether, we shot over ten DV tapes worth of material. Everything was shot on one camera in long, uninterrupted takes.
Why?!
Editor's Notes:
Before I began whittling away at the footage, I was certain that my intentions with this project were only to practice editing and end up with a silly video that my classmates and I could watch to remember with a laugh the very intense time we spent together in graduate school. Perhaps that is all it will ever come to, but I found enough surprises along the way that I decided to make the episodes available in a form that allowed more friends, family, and theatre types to enjoy the fruits of our labor. This series is certainly flawed, but it has some heart. It also has some detailed character work. We grew into this premise and our respective POV's as the shooting went on, and the episodes reveal that progress. There was something fun, cathartic, and easily accessible about playing a struggling group of actors while we were ourselves in the hectic second year of our graduate school training. There is an ease and truth to our interactions. There is love in our anger. There is a detailed knowing in our irritation. That is the source, I believe, of the "heart" in this series. How did we get it? Clearly, we cheated.
Specific Episode Notes [Warning: Spoilers]:
The first episode is certainly the weakest in terms of story. We went into the improv the first two days of shooting with very little structure. The stage manager's phone call was pretty much the extent of our planning. We came in with characters and just let them meet for the first time. This helped us find the truth of a group of insecure actors feeling each other out on the first day, but the circumstances were too wide open to really stimulate a good through-line of action. Consequently, the unedited footage meandered a lot. Jumping forward on single-camera coverage also became a problem in editing because the improv lacked the focus that creates the repeating themes and shared ideas you need at the editing stage. My solution was to bridge the gaps of the best material with voice-overs, title cards, and music cues. I also shot an extra introduction with Colin Bendish a year after the original shoot. I had a feeling early on that I would need an introduction for this episode and series to bring together a cohesive and "believable" story. I tweeked the background plot and wove in invented storylines that justified what happened in the best improvs and smoothed over some early continuity problems in the improvs. The background on Max, the secret political operative disguised as a film documentarian, is weirdly funny in its own way, but it also answers the big question of believability: why would anybody film these losers as a real documentary? It allows the piece to dance a little bit more on the line between a mockumentary and a real documentary. More "The Office". Less "Reno 911". This became a guide for the editing as well.
If the first episode is like the audition pre-episode of MTV's The Real World, then the second episode is when we get to the house and some shit starts happening. The character-driven story of this whole series really begins in this episode. We also got some camera "smarts". About 13 minutes in, something clicks, and the timing of our entrances make it look like the camera movement was pre-planned. The story in the improv finds its pace, which meant, less editing. :)
Episode 3. I really like Episode 3.
I love Episode 4. IF YOU WATCH ONLY ONE EPISODE, WATCH EPISODE 4. This episode was a joy to edit. I love the final shape of this episode, but there is also some beautiful and funny footage on my digital "cutting-room floor".
Episode 5 is bizarre. And sad. Sad, because it's the last episode.
Acknowledgements
THANK YOU TO:
Penn State University
Penn State School of Theatre Faculty and Staff
Helen Manfull for joining our little skit and providing a location.
Jim Wise and Brant Pope for telling us about Need and Point-of-View.
Mark Olsen for making us do this thing.
Megan O'Donoghue, Luke Cieslewicz, Nate Grams, Erin O'Shea, Jennifer Betancourt, and Huyen Nguyen for being a great test audience.
Adam Coffia for Hamlet Panda.
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