With time running out before casting the film,
I realized that there would not be much prep time for the actors. I needed to
find a way to build a character study into an easy-to-read format for an actor
who may only have a week of prep on a complex character, so I decided to write
a diary for the lead character of Anna in the film Drowning. Ever since my 2010 film Measuring Tape Girl, which was basically a video diary, I’ve been
using character diaries as a way to build characters for the stories I’ve been
writing. Usually no one ever sees the diaries and it’s an just an exercise in
character development. With the film Drowning’s
compressed casting-to-shooting time it seemed like the only solution to
creating a character bible in a short time span. The sixty-page diary was
created over about two months and then handed off to the actor once the film
was cast. The plan is that this will help create a short hand between the actor
and I on set, where we can directly refer to page numbers in diary for
different scenes. Directly putting us into the head of the character when we
won’t always have time to have long discussions on character creation.
Hopefully this allows us to create a character in the short time provided,
without losing any depth and background required to build a back story that the
actor can build on.
Link to
Measuring Tape Girl:
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