One of the original flyers for the Student Seven auditions.

As September 20th, 2009 rolled around, Student Seven pre-production was in full swing.  The creative team was assembled and many meetings had been had to figure out fighting styles for characters, and each fight was organized by location and characters.  Auditions were happening and everything was about to really start moving.

Much thought had been given to these fight scenes.  You see, I was concerned that it would be somewhat boring, after a while, to see so many fight scenes in the same classroom.  I wanted the fights to really be standout and interesting, so I decided that certain fights, from then on called “Honor Bouts”, would have a transition and take place elsewhere, so that the fight could be much prettier than it would were it in the classroom.  I had an idea that was partially influenced by my childhood love of video games, in particular some of the Final Fantasy games, and decided that when one of these “Honor Bouts” was about to happen, some sort of transition would occur, and the screen would warp and twist and suddenly we would be in this other location, where the fight would be an official fight and perhaps also represent how the characters were thinking.

Thus, the fights were split into “Honor Bouts” (Fights after an honor insult that take place elsewhere), or “Brawls” (Fights that just happen, no Final Fantasy style transition).  This helped us to differentiate where fights would take place, and overall helped us to organize and finalize a shooting schedule.

And then, it happened.

Auditions.

The big day.

This was the point of no return.  Once we had a cast, there was no backing up.  We’d been planning already for roughly two months, but it could always be called off.  However we now were getting actors involved.  I was nervous.  This was like having children, in my mind.  To have actors meant that the group was now doubling, if not tripling in size, and now we had to stay on task, because if we didn’t then what reason would our actors have for caring?  Having actors meant that we now had to perform flawlessly.

We also had to find good actors.  Chelsey and I had hung up flyers all over campus.  We littered the Telecom building with flyers, flittered them around the Theatre Building’s casting call bulletin board, and even put some up in the Gym at the HPER, hoping it might be noticed by some of the real martial artists.  There would be two nights of auditions, the 20th and the 23rd, and the hope was that between the two nights we’d be able to sort out a cast.  To be honest, I can’t remember if we had any kind of callbacks.  I only had one actor in mind for one role, so I was hoping that the auditions would bring in some knockouts.

That one actor was Doug Burbank, who I’d worked with on the Pope Friction series “Tycoons”, by my friend Kaleb Havens.  I remember thinking that he had the look of what I imagined for the wild dog character, and if I could get him to be crazy and fluid enough, he would be perfect for it.  I didn’t know if he would even be interested in doing another web series.  Thus, one night I went to the bar that he was tending at the time and pitched the whole project to him.  Something about it must have intrigued him.  I hoped that he would be able to do it, and went forward into auditions.

So auditions came.  We decided that the best way to hold auditions would be in two phases.  We would gather everyone in a huge lecture hall, TV251.  From there they signed in, and after enough people had arrived we spoke to them about the audition and the demands of the different roles and of the series as a whole.  Chelsey and I had decided that we would try to shoot the first half of the series during the fall semester, and the second half of the series in the spring, so we needed actors who would be willing to commit an entire year to a project.  No one that I knew of at that time had attempted such an ambitious time frame, so I wanted people I could trust.

A note here, up until now the only member of Gamer’s Brigade that we thought of as female was Cymric.  Chelsey suggested that some other characters could possibly be female as well, and so we opened up the characters of Script and Kentucky to possibly being female.  This was one of many great things to come out of the auditions.

Back to auditions, after being introduced to the show and the characters, we split the crowd into two halves.  One half would go with Adam Noble and Adam Rector to learn some basic fighting moves and the Adams would grade each candidate on their movement ability.  The other half went with Chelsey and Sarah and I, with a video camera, and we had them read scenes straight from the scripts.  I had each candidate trying out different roles, seeing what worked best for them.  I had the candidates reading actual episode scripts, and I would just pick different people to play different parts, and if I liked someone or a role I had them read for that part a lot.  We had a lot of candidates, and a LOT of different interpretations of the characters, but for the most part I quickly knew who I liked for what roles.

Before the auditions started, Chelsey told Adam Rector that he should audition for the show.  He seemed hesitant, but agreed to give it a shot.  I was curious how he would be, and then he read as Shane.  And wasn’t bad.  And then I had him read as Shane in a different episode.  And he was pretty good.  Then he read again as Shane, and I was sold.  It was him.

A young kid with glasses came in at one point.  I’d met him before, as he’d come to a couple of GameZombie meetings and mentioned that he wanted to act in some things.  I didn’t know him very well, but I asked him to read as Kyle.  He exploded into excitement, exactly as I had wanted.  I’d found Kyle.

At one point, midway through one of the audition nights, a few martial artists came in late.  One had facial hair and kind of a pissed off look on his face, or maybe it was a bored look, and my initial thought was “He looks just like what I imagined for Ryan”.  Honestly, that is the thought that went through my mind as he walked in the door.  Luckily, he was good.  Dylan Cashbaugh became Ryan.

Another of the martial artists that came in that night was an intense, huge, buff guy.  I was terrified, but once I started talking to him I realized he was a nerd like me and pretty cool.  I had him read a few different roles, and then I had him read for the character “Dick”, of “Chad and Dick” fame from the first episode.  He was awesome at playing a bro/fratboy/dick, so I decided then Breitegan Paules would be our Dick.

Farrell Paules also auditioned.  With the possibility of Script and Kentucky being female, I wasn’t yet sure what my vision for those characters was.  When Farrell auditioned as Script, she brought a sophisticated and pompous arrogance to the character.  I realized that this was exactly what was needed, and thus we had our Script.

Another auditioner had been roped into coming by Chelsey, as they had a class together at the time.  I remember Chelsey telling me that the girl’s name was awesome and was spelled great.  Her name was Jowi (pronounced like Joey).  Chelsey saw her as Cym, the shy girl.  She read as the character and brought so much fear to the role, it was perfect.

Kentucky was another character who I wasn’t sure what my vision for was.  When Kristy Brannon auditioned as Kentucky, she had a smugness that wasn’t arrogance to the role.  It was more of a “I know I’m good so just tell me what to do and it’ll get done.”  And so Kristy became Kentucky.

The final main character to cast was that of the wild dog.  The first night of auditions went through and I saw a lot of people play wild dog.  I saw a street thug version of the character.  I saw many awkward versions of him.  I saw some angry wild dogs that really weren’t bad.  I saw some interesting sarcastic versions of him.  Many of these were fine performances, but I knew that what it needed was a cackle.  I didn’t want the character to be angry (entirely), I needed him to be kind of crazy.  At least on the surface.  I needed a character who was drunk but brilliant, but also thought that everything was a joke that needed to be laughed at.  Every challenge to the wild dog was just laugh worthy.  On night two, Doug showed up.  He did quite well at his movement test, and then nailed the role of the wild dog.  He was mad but found it funny that he was mad.  He cackled at such a suddenly high pitch that it was perfect.  We were set.

A ton of other people auditioned that night.  Almost everyone you see as an extra throughout the entire series auditioned for the main roles.  Keep in mind though, that those extras were just as important.  There are a few crowd scenes, a couple of brawls, and a huge tournament episode.  Had these people not stuck it out and continued to help us out, we never could have gotten what we did.  I’m certain that I haven’t thanked each and every one of them as much as they deserve.  If you are reading this and were an extra, please know how grateful I am.  We knew that we would need a lot of extras for many episodes, so we made sure everyone knew that if they didn’t get a main part, they would still be featured in chunks of the series.  We devised what we called “the fighters chorus”, or the chorus of extras who are always there fighting when extras were called for.  We would need some “candidates” for when Gamer’s Brigade was looking for more members.  There were lots of extra parts to be had.

As for the main characters, I wasn’t looking for actors who could read the lines well.  The lines were important, yes, but I wanted to make sure to get actors who could emote in ways other than just simple vocal intonation.  I knew what characteristics I was looking for in almost every character.  As with the wild dog character I knew for each of them what I had imagined when writing the scripts, or writing background info.  I wanted to find actors who’s natural inclinations for these characters would be along the lines of what I wanted.  That way, I could allow them to have fun and be creative with the characters and it would still flow with what I had in my mind as working.  When I noticed that Adam Rector played Shane in a way that on some primal level reminded me of the Ninja Turtle Leonardo, I realized that he was right for the role.  When Ryan Black was trying to act as though he were in awe of someone, and he acted like someone who had just seen the face of god himself, I knew he was right for the role.  Line reading can be improved on, but finding an actor who can emote well without words is for me the most important part of casting, because if they just can’t get into it then it’ll never work.

The night after the second round of auditions Chelsey and I took the tapes and browsed through them.  Many characters we already knew, but some needed a bit more refreshing.  That night we picked Dave Klein for Chad.  Dave had had one of the better auditions for the wild dog character, so I wanted to keep him for something, and thus “Chad” was born.  We also picked the members of the “Board of Student Group Affairs”.  Originally there were around 5 or 6 members of the group, but as ideas changed and different people became available, we went a very different route, but that’s a story for another day.  Actually, no one cast as a board member at the time of auditions ended up being a board member.  Like I’ve said before, ideas change a lot over time.

Now with a cast there was no turning back.  In the week following the auditions we sorted out rehearsal schedules, table reads, and I opted to meet with each of the main seven actors/actresses one-on-one to develop the characters more with each actor, and start working on nuances that could be thrown in.  Remember, I wanted this to be as professional as possible.  Nearly all student productions I’d seen, even the more well-made films, had suffered from acting.  Production students don’t usually consider acting an important part of the process, besides being able to read the lines well.  I wanted to go all the way with Student Seven.  I’d picked the best actors I could find, and I wanted to give them enough control over their characters that they cared about them.  This way they’d be more reliable, but also they’d give much better performances.  I wanted them to be able to have fun and be creative.  I sat down with each of them and talked about their characters’ background, I asked them to brainstorm more about their characters’ and make up a backstory if it didn’t already exist, or to expand upon it, and I asked them to think about any physical motions that might come from their characters.  I wasn’t gonna just throw them in front of a camera after looking at a script for the first time, I wanted them to know what the episode would look like, so they would be more aware of the process, and therefore hopefully more forgiving when I was slow.

Actors in place, we needed a crew.  We also needed a camera.  We also needed to start prepping for the first shoot and schedule it.  So much had now been done, but so much still remained to do.  At this point I’d say we were maybe 3% done with Student Seven, and chugging away down our track.  To those of you who came to the auditions, thank you.  You made it what it is, and what it hopefully will be.

Next week I’ll talk about events that transpire post-auditions, including the crew callout meeting and early rehearsals.  Until then, stay classy.

-Sam Sher, Director

The classroom where so much happened.

As with any project, it takes a team to succeed.  So far our team consisted of me, John Quick, Chelsey McKrill, and Sarah Pierpont, but we were about to meet two people who would improve everything.  One afternoon in September, we filed downtown to “The Pour House” to meet for the first time (of many times) Adam Noble and Adam Rector.  I remember being intimidated at first, because they discussed all kinds of weapons and fighting styles that were far over my head.  Adam Noble was an experienced choreographer and stunt coordinator in the midwest, and Adam Rector was a student looking for experience in this realm.  I was thrilled to just be able to meet them.  I was also nervous that my lack of fighting knowledge would deter them from taking me seriously.  Luckily, it didn’t.

One of my early policies on the project was that it must be everyone’s vision.  Sure I was the director and it was my vision and all that, but all of these people were going to be giving huge chunks of their time, and for that they deserved to have plenty of say in what they were doing.  Also, I wanted the project to be fun for everyone.  If it wasn’t fun then it wouldn’t be worth it.  We could always stick to core ideals, but I wanted to incorporate the fun ideas and the spontaneous moments we had into the show as best we could.  If people aren’t having fun, then why should they care?  I wanted them to care, and I’d been on way too many sets where no one seemed to have a say in what happened, and thus didn’t care about the project.

I told this to Adam Rector and told him that for the most part he could do anything he wanted with the fights, so long as they lasted a certain length, fit the ending necessary, and incorporated the character’s differing fighting styles.  I wanted him to be able to brainstorm some awesome fight sequence that would wow him.  I wanted him to go too far with his ideas, in terms of ridiculousness, and then we could reel it in from there if we needed to.  I didn’t want to play it cautious, in terms of ideas, I wanted to shoot for the stars.  I later took this approach with the actors in rehearsals, but that’s a bit later in our story.  I wanted Adam to have an idea, think “there’s no way we can do that”, then figure out how to do it.

After that initial meeting with the Adams, John Quick took me aside. Up until now Student Seven had been our baby.  Everything I did I checked with him first to see his thoughts, and vice versa.  On that day, John told me that he would probably be too busy, and handed full creative control over to me.  I was nervous, but I knew that it made sense with his schedule and our timeframe for getting things done, with auditions now very close.  Also, John had gotten into the Vancouver Film School and would be leaving at the end of December.  As long as he was around I tried to keep him updated in the process, and I’ve never forgotten for a moment that originally Student Seven was his baby as much as it was mine.

With auditions getting closer and closer, we were working on nailing down the look.  We wanted the characters to not be dressed normal.  We considered getting costumes to invoke the look of some famous anime characters, and we discussed maybe having some kind of school uniform that all the students would be wearing.  A lot of ideas went through our meetings.

We also tried to think more about location.  Our plan was that a good chunk of the series would take place in the same classroom, and that it would become Gamer’s Brigade’s home base.  This plan stayed true, but our classroom changed.  Until this point the classroom was going to be TV 245 in the telecom building.  TV245 is a pretty modern looking room, with white walls and nice carpet and nice seats.  After a meeting with someone about the art direction, we realized that it would help for the story if the classroom were older looking.  With older desks and no carpet and in general just a more antique classroom, the story of Gamer’s Brigade being a ragtag group would feel more authentic, it seemed.  After a short search we found a classroom in Woodburn Hall, where I’d had a couple of classes.  The room had a much more “wooded” look, and fit more into something much more old-fashioned.  I instantly had the idea of hanging some china-ball lights as accent lighting, and using the soft light of the Kino-Barflys as an extension of those.  I had already wanted to light this darker, more cinematically, and make use of shadows, rather than just flatly lighting everything and trying eliminate all shadows (I hate flat, no-shadow lighting).  I had read about lighting for an environment, rather than characters, and then blocking the characters in a way that would help light them, and this is what I wanted to do.  This classroom might be one of the first discoveries that set my vision for Student Seven into what it became.  The more wooded, old-fashioned look eventually grew into the filmic-look that I didn’t yet know I was searching for.

Even with this discovery, we still needed to figure out costumes.  The more classical classroom was a start, though.  Knowing that the room would be more old-fashioned, we decided that costumes should be kind of a mash between an asian style and that classical design.  I decided to give every character a color, based on their personality, so that when looking for clothes we could go by style and color.  Ryan, being the reliable friend to Shane, took on a lot of dark blue and brown colors, and often a vest.  Kyle, being the youngster of the group who didn’t know yet how the world worked, took on a lot of green colors, in reference to him being the “Green” one of the group, and I wanted him to look the closest to a traditional japanese school uniform.  Script was initially given lots of reds, and anything that would show that Script had an ego.  Kentucky, being laid-back but talented, was given Orange.  Cym was given blue, as she’s much shier than anyone else, and the wild dog character was given black, to show how he’s just given up on everything.  Shane was given grey, as his inner conflict is revealed throughout the series and he’s often conflicted.  I had already wanted to incorporate color scheme to help tell the story, and that, like the characters overcoming their personal issues, the colors could begin fairly desaturated and work up to the color, as though the characters were earning the color.  Seeing as how I’m still working on post-production, this is one of the elements that I’m still tweaking.

Now with the beginnings of a look down, fight choreographer set, and scripts being written and revised frequently, we were ready for auditions.  We would continue to narrow down the look, especially when Sarah Pierpont, our trusty Director of Photography, would reveal the camera that had not yet shaken the world of indie production.  Chelsey had scheduled auditions, reserved the classrooms, and planned more meetings with the Adam, as we figured out how auditions would go, while I continued to write the scripts, collect feedback, re-write them, collect feedback, etc.  Chelsey and I began hanging flyers for auditions all over campus.  Not just auditions, though.  We would need a production crew to make this work, so we also began hanging flyers about crew positions.  We wanted everyone to be clear that we couldn’t offer any pay, just a great experience and a credit.

With the campus littered with Audition and Crew Call-out flyers, Student Seven was about to take its first steps into the production phase.

Until next week, keep an eye on your honor!

-Sam Sher, Director

In late August/Early September of 2009, Student Seven had a Producer, Director, and Writers.  Because of scheduling conflicts and workload, John Quick decided that it would be too difficult for him to act as Director of Photography, and so we were short a DP.  I asked Jeremy Davis, a fellow GameZombie member and a talented DP if he would be interested in shooting the series, especially as he he owned his own camera, dolly, and light kit.  He said he was down and we were set.

After pitching the idea to some friends in one of the first GameZombie meetings of that fall semester, my friend (and the writer/director of “Tycoons“) Kaleb Havens suggested that we talk to a man named Adam Noble about helping with fight choreography.  Up until this point I had assumed that the fights would be fairly simple.  I mean, how hard could it be to stage a fight scene?  (Note: very hard, if it’s going to be any good.)  Chelsey and I decided that it would be worth it to pursue this Adam Noble, so we sent him an email and waited for a response.  Little did we know that this was the beginning of the puzzle pieces that would really make Student Seven legit.

In the meantime, scripts were on the way.  I wrote up a script for episode 1 and sent it John’s way.  He liked it a lot, we tweaked some things, and huzzah, we had a pilot!  Granted, this pilot would change many times before we went into shooting, but it was a start.  In the first draft of the script I included two characters to act as members of a rival student group.  I named them “Chad and Dick”, as this combination seemed to reek of douchebag.  I decided here that they would wear pink button-downs with popped collars, and just be over the top asshole bros.  While many things in the pilot changed, these two characters lasted through the entire series, and became awesome villains.

Another thing that I started thinking about during this time was Art Direction.  What would the show look like?  What kind of feel would the episodes have?  What would the characters wear?  John, Chelsey and I had many meetings about this.  I knew that for this to be successful, or even interesting, it COULD NOT, MUST NOT, look like a student/amateur production.  Whatever route we took had to have a solid direction and commit to it.  Luckily, we’d given ourselves plenty of time to figure this out.  At this point, I was very much trying to sell up the concept of this being a live action anime.  I wanted to color correct everything such that it would look animated, or super-stylized.  Every episode would be fast paced and peppy, and I wanted to find a way to make a practical live-action version of that anime shot with the crazy lights and colors.  You know the one.  I spent many nights searching the internet for a color correction scheme that would work.

Here is a good place to point out just how much a project can change as more people come into the fold and an idea matures.  As you, dear readers, can probably surmise from the trailers and photos, I did not go with these anime-ish ideas.  Not that they wouldn’t have been great in their own way, but certain things came into play that changed my mind, I believe for the better.

By this point school was starting, and many telecom students were getting busy with projects.  Chelsey and I knew that whoever we got to work on the show with us would have to be dedicated, because it would be all too easy to just start blowing us off.  One day Jeremy Davis, our DP, came to me and said that he was afraid he would be too busy to commit to such a huge project, and rather than struggle around schedules he thought it would be best to just back out.  I’ll admit I was slightly panicked at this, as we had auditions in just a few weeks and now had no DP, but I was glad he’d come to me up front about it.  Jeremy is a great guy who I love working with, and a super talented DP, but his departure is one of the best things that happened to Student Seven because of who we got ahold of after him.

Earlier in the year, during my final semester at IU, I had a class with a girl named Sarah Pierpont who I knew to be both really cool to work with, and incredibly talented and professional.  That summer I’d PA’d (Production Assistant) on a set that she DP’d, and with no other ideas I called Sarah out of the blue one afternoon and asked if we could meet for lunch or dinner so that I could pitch her a project.  The next day (or soon after) we met up at Sushi Bar on 10th so I could frantically pitch my crazed idea about sword fights and anime action scenes to her.  I explained the story and the characters, showed her some pictures of looks that I was thinking about, and tried my best to give the hard sell.  Luckily, she liked the idea, and came aboard.  In that moment, a huge chunk of puzzle piece snapped into place and Student Seven got exponentially better than it would have been.

Also, Chelsey and I got a response from Adam Noble, stating that he would be interested in helping out with our project, and had someone in mind to choreograph the fighting as he was pretty busy.  We planned a meeting and much excitement was felt.  That electric feeling that creative types know well when getting the ball rolling on a major project was in high gear in those days.

Together, Chelsey, John, Sarah and I began meeting constantly about art direction details, which evolved A TON as we talked through it, and about auditions.  With our core pre-production group assembled and complete, the ideas started rolling.  Next week I’ll get into more details on that, as well as our first encounters with Adam Noble and Adam Rector, who really changed the course of Student Seven into the fantastic entity that it became.

Until then, enjoy “Shane Week”!

-Sam Sher, Director