Getting REady to be the Ghost Girl
This past weekend I had the pleasure of watching my daughter take part in a movie. It is a thriller and she is the ghost girl.
Granted, this is no Hollywood production with big names and potential for superstardom. It is as about as indie as you can get. Once it is done the movie will only be about 10-15 minutes long.
This is how people get started if you cannot leave your hometown and go to Hollywood. Want to know something even cooler? The producer/director has a listing on IMDb.com.
Let me start at the beginning.
We have known Shannon Feaster for several years as our boys have been in school together since kindergarten. They share this interest of movies. When Johnny Depp came to our town to shoot a scene for Public Enemies, Dakota and David were first and second in line for hand shakes.
Dakota has been making small videos and made his first horror short last winter. It was really good, scary, unsettling.
So Shannon and Michelle (wife/producer/makeup artist/actress/whatever is needed) belong to a collective of people making horror movie shorts. They are given a prompt and put together their own scripts. The one my daughter is making an appearance in is called The Keepsake. It is spooky and scary with a bit a realism.
A director with his actor
Shannon is filming it in a friend’s house and on a local street. If you have never been on a film set, it is a fascinating process. I have been on the set of Prison Break which was really interesting with multiple cameras.
One scene that lasts a minute can take several hours as cameras get various angles. Perhaps the actors figure out a different way to do a scene that works better. Someone does a look in one scene they don’t do in another. Or after several scenes of doing the scene the actors get a case of the giggles.
I was fascinated. While the genre is not one of my favorites, I loved seeing the creative process play out. The need to get several takes of the same shot. The need for the rest of us not to move or make a sound as the mike catches everything. I felt the same way with the TV show I watched.
It was a great experience. I only hope my daughter appreciates it later.
Notes from Rumbly Cottage 
Sounds like great fun! May be the beginning of something big! 🙂
That is very cool. Has this given her the acting bug?
She is not sure if she has the acting bug yet. But it was mucho fun.
The creative process is amazing. I hope your daughter enjoyed the experience. If she doesn’t think it is neat now, I’m sure she’ll change her mind after seeing the finished product. Neat stuff, Rumbly! ~ Lenore
I have to admit I look forward to seeing the finished product.
How fun for your daughter! What an awesome experience for her. The whole process sounds very interesting.
I remember when people were all excited when they filmed A League of Their Own in my home town. I remember people talking about what a diva Madonna was, but nothing really about the others actors/actresses.
Looking back I think it would have been great fun to be an extra in the movie.
We have had that experience twice now where I live. The first was The Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks. I was hugely pregnant and choose not to go. The second was with Public Enemy. I would have loved to have been on the set for those two as I was for Shannon’s movie.
Sounds as though this was a great way for your daughter to learn how much patience and planning is needed for all of the behind-the-scenes stuff. We’re so used to seeing just finished products that it’s easy to forget (or never know) that people work very hard to make something look effortless.
And all of that is not effortless at all. When the giggle fit happened, I understood it all too well.
My daughter is in a production of the Scarlet Pimpernel today. It’s fun to live through our children, isn’t it?
I love watching their journey into new interests.