UNIVERSAL EARLog III: Day 18

Another day of auditions, so it is mostly to be described with the talent's show and tell items (below). Sadly one chap dropped out because he saw A Flea Orchestra In Your Ear and didn't like it. It makes me wonder how many potential auditionees we're losing out to the forthcoming Star Wars production. A second chap arrived to read the English-language script, but left before we got to meet as he had thought it would later be translated into French. No way, André! 

Well, it turns out our lost actor is part of the society that protects the French language from the insidious Franglish of villains like us. Of course, cultural imperialism is the sinewy meat of UNIVERSAL EAR's thematic soup, and even when Harley Byrne travels two million years back in time to converse with the homo habilis, everyone speaks 2012-era Mancunian (more or less) without the question ever being raised.

Later in the afternoon, we got to meet Nina Queissner - who will hopefully be our sound recordist - for the first time, over a beer and a discussion about the immateriality (or otherwise) of sound and music and how to pirate a sound sculpture that exists only within a unique architectural space. Santé!

Here are today's show-and-tell items in full:

• A case of colouring pencils
• A flopsy-wopsy bunny rabbit toy
• A vintage pharmaceutical pestle and mortar
• An enchanted notebook of sketches, ideas and poems
• An Iain Banks novel
• A Nintendo Switch controller
• A lifelong-held copy of Le Grand Meaulnes
• A copy of the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews (brought by a 13yo who reads the relevant interview before seeing each movie!)
• A security yo-yo.

 

UNIVERSAL EARLog III: Day 11

A few infrastructural factors regarding the project have half-unresolved themselves, putting the very format of the new production into a state of quivering uncertainty, but the auditioning process has at least begun with full-hearted both-footedness.

Discretion and non-disclosure etiquette prevent me from going into too much detail right now, but I can at least share a list of the items that the respective applicants brought by way of show-and-tell, as my own show-and-tell to you, the readership, tonight.

• A Hello Kitty tin containing several enchanted charms discovered at the "centre of [his] universe"
• A notebook containing sketches and ideas from everyday life
• A pair of tap shoes (including a demonstration)
• An orange diabolo (ditto)
• The bow of a double-bass (in absentia)
• A handmade miniature flamenco guitar
• Swimming goggles
• A blue scarf from her brother in Cambodia
• The applicant's own published translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh (including a demonstration)
• A broken pineapple-shaped money-box.

Audition space canteen punkery.

GOUCLog 2

A largely uncontroversial day of chance industry encounters and clinically engineered professional conferences.

Only irregularity in the running of Universal Ear Studios today was the discovery that a shady and hitherto unheardof organisation known as "Bad Check Productions" have pinned a call for auditions on our wall display. Let me tell you this, "Bad Check Productions": we will not be intimidated. If you attempt to move in on the Institute's (albeit temporary) turf you will be CRUSHED. However, I have left your ad up and wish you all the best with the casting process.

GOUCLog 1

On my arrival at Nexus, my first duty is a phone conference with Lockwood. Yes he's well, no he's not found a wife, he has auditions but they feel empty (I picked up this last in his voice). I, in turn, turn to him for strength - I've hit the biscuits again, I confide, following a weekend clearing up bad judgement calls and ill-thought-through plans. "Aren't you listening to the tapes?" asks Lockwood. "Learning from the mistakes we expunged daily to audio cassette during the UNIVERSAL EAR shoot?" Yes, I tell him, I've learned from those mistakes, which has freed me up to make entirely new ones.

First day of auditions for Girls Of Unfortunate Climes today, and there's not much I can divulge here given the sensitive nature of the Institute's recruitment rituals. Of course, given the open nature of our temporary home at Universal Ear Studios, the public were absolutely welcome to come and spy on the process as it happened. But only Nexus Steph showed her face, drawn in by the chorus of our company anthem - a casting rite apparently not widely observed within the industry, which is news to me and GOUC Executive Producer Nexus Emily (who is sitting in on auditions and anthem alike).

We are auditioning four actors at a time for the roles of the Space Race gang, but find that two of the auditions are each two actors short. Having at first misunderstood a throwaway comment* of his during this morning's call, Lockwood has advised me that sedating the first auditionees so that we could see them together with the later auditionees would be both "unethical" and "illegal". So instead, Emily and I read the missing parts, the Exec getting quite carried away with her role (statuesque gang boss Selena Jolly, with me alternately as underlings Agnes Ivey/Neva M. Perdue). Indeed, the way that one audition works out, the invited actors finish their roles several minutes before the end of the script, leaving Emily and I to fully explore the dramatic potential of our would-be screen relationship and really develop our techniques as actors - quite forgetting to assess the responses of the auditionees. As the auditions are not being videoed, we have not only lost our two-handed tour de force forever but have to run through the entire script again. The chemistry is lost, but the actors do their best to match the pungent tension of our exemplary showcase before we dismiss them, and Emily and I break for Danishes and to bitch about "London".

In fact, notwithstanding the panel's own voyage of creative self-discovery, each actor we see today represents theirself with talent, grace and versatility. Not one stinker! And following the flurry of anxiety and logistical deadends that preceded the day, that favourite old, vaguely meaningless Linus Van Pelt refrain thought-bubbles itself above my head... "and did you notice something, Charlie Brown? The world didn't come to an end..."

I even decide not to label this new blog strand "UNFORTUNATELog 1".

--
* Lockwood was actually suggesting I sedate myself.

Lost girl gang documentary of the future to be reconstructed at Nexus Art Cafe!

Cast and crew are required for the latest short film project at L’Institute Zoom’s temporary Nexus Art Cafe studio, as we begin production on our remake of Girls Of Unfortunate Climes.

“Climes” is the only documentary known to have been made by UNIVERSAL EAR creator/star Harley Byrne, and follows the exploits of rival girl gangs in Manchester, 2012. Beginning as a straightforward anthropological film, events get out of hand when the technophile SPACE RACE and primitivist LONELY GIRLS clash – and Byrne is caught in the crossfire.

Planning and pre-production begins Monday 28th June. The 10-minute film will be shot on digital video, mobile phones and Super-8mm over the last week of July, with a budget of £0. All are welcome to pop into the studio, observe and contribute, with the following jobs in particular still available:

CREW

Cinematographer

Sound recordist

Editor

Art Director

Costumes Director

Costume makers

Runners

CAST

The Space Race - will also play silent roles of the Lonely Girls:

Selena Jolly (“tall, beguiling”)

Eve Witherspoon (“strong but unremarkable, charmless, forceful, insecure”)

Agnes Ivey (“affable, matter-of-fact, the comedian of the group, possibly a sociopath”)

Neva Perdue (“of slight build, the child of the group, of Slavic descent”)

Milo Byers – broken-down I.T. support worker (brief nudity)

Policeman

Former astronaut (retirement age)

Please email director graeme[at]zoomcitta.co.uk with CV/covering note. All levels of experience will be considered and if you think you have something to offer that isn’t listed above, please offer it...

The project will be launched with a film night on July 16th, and can be followed at twitter.com/Nanneman, zoomcitta.blogspot.com, and our Facebook group.

Cast, extras & runners needed for UNIVERSAL EAR

This week production starts on the next episode of UNIVERSAL EAR, on an open set at Manchester's Nexus Art Cafe.

"Bloodless Offering in B Minor" is a swedes-and-sandals epic in which our hero Harley Byrne travels back to Greece, 425BC in order to record the pulsating rhythms of an immolated artichoke. But his arch nemesis BEING has arrived ahead of him and spun a web of tangled identity and multiple disguises amongst the religious community. In the balmy, fetid-smelling air of the temple of veg, Byrne finds himself attracted to his host's official greengrocer, Thersites. A boisterous and tender relationship blooms between the two men, compromising the success of Byrne's mission.

We need!

1 chap to play the REAL THERSITES (any age 18+)
->auditions this afternoon and tomorrow (Weds), shooting Thursday and Sunday this week

1 couple to snog in the background of our opening sequence
->get in touch, we'll work out a time to do it

Set decorators, prop/crafts people and runners are also needed Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday & next Monday... however much or little you can do, please get in touch (experience not essential).

Please email info [at] zoomcitta.co.uk or drop into the studio at Nexus Art Cafe, on Dale Street opposite Vinyl Exchange; or leave a comment below.

This week we will be there 10-6 Tues-Thurs and 12-5.30 Sunday.

Night cafe - extras needed

Tomorrow night 2am-6am (that's Sunday morning to early-risers) production of UNIVERSAL EAR will move into the main cafe area of Nexus Art Cafe, as the crew reimagine the "orange room" as the atelier/hideout of Harley Byrne's degenerate artist brother Santiago.

Each episode of UNIVERSAL EAR opens with a scene in which Harley must convince... his brother, a temporal cubist, to find him a path through time and space to the origin of the track he is to hunt down. This week we will attempt to get three episodes worth of these scenes - and we require extras (dressed as degenerate artists/temporal cubists) and helpers to do so.

Says director Graeme Cole: "We also need a PRIEST and a BRIDE, or at least people dressed up as those. No lines, you're purely extras. In constumes. If we get more than one priest and/or bride, well we can make that work too."

Please drop into the night cafe or message me or Graeme through Facebook if you'd like to be a part of it.

Open auditions for role of the Real Nola Luna

The production of the UNIVERSAL EAR adventure serial starts tomorrow, with our Lumpenbal launch night at Nexus Art Cafe on Thursday...

The regular lead roles of HARLEY BYRNE (hero), BEING (nemesis) and SANTIAGO BYRNE (pest/donor) have been cast, but in the weeks ahead we will be holding open auditions for guest roles and cameos.

The first audition will be this WEDNESDAY 5th May, when female actors are invited to drop into the Nexus Art Cafe studio between midday-5pm to read for the role of THE REAL NOLA LUNA in our first episode "A Flea Orchestra In Your Ear". Filming will take place this Friday, 7th May during the day.

The Real Nola Luna, a 19th century Romanian inventor, is locked in a cupboard by the Fake Nola Luna for most of the episode, but is finally rescued by Harley Byrne. They have a brief love affair before Harley realises that she, too, is a fraud in her own way...

You are welcome to just arrive at the studio, or if you would like to email ahead to book a time and receive a script, please contact the director Graeme Cole at graeme [at] zoomcitta.co.uk. The script will also be posted in the cafe foyer later today.

We are also looking for actors (M/F) to workshop with our leading man Stewart Lockwood in rehearsal tomorrow (Tuesday) between 12-1pm and 3-5pm. This is not a screen role but a series of exercises ahead of the shoot; if you're at a loose end and want a hands-on introduction to our open set production, please drop in...