For my second artifact, I am holding online auditions for the part of the main character in the short film written by the online community that I have set up. I advertised on starnow.com and so far have five applicants. Earlier, I sent them an email explaining more about the project and gave them instructions on how the casting procedure will work. I attached the audition scene to the email so that they can get straight to work on it. I chose the first scene where we are introduced to Sarah as the audition scene, as I thought it would be a good guide as to how the actresses look on camera and how well they suit the role. Here is a copy of the email.

_________

Hello,

Thank you for applying for an audition for the GroupFilm project. I am glad that you would like to be a part of this exciting project. As I wrote in the advertisement, the idea of the project is to create a short film that is written and directed by members of an online community. The one rule of the project is that the community never meet the actors in the film face to face. All production will take place with webcams and mobile video phones.

As you have applied for this position, I will assume that you have both a webcam and a mobile phone capable of taking video. This is essential for the project to work.

The next step is for the online community to decide upon the suitability of the actress for the main character, Sarah. Sarah is a 26 year old who has taken to chatting to people on the internet. Recently, she has been talking to a character called Chris online. She seems to enjoy talking to him, until he gets a little weird. It turns out that Chris is actually stalking Sarah, and turns up in the last scene of the film. Scary!

For the online community to decide upon an actress to play the character of Sarah, we are holding online auditions. The script attached to this email is the audition scene, and is the first time that Sarah decides to let Chris see her on webcam. For the audition, we need you to act out the scene to webcam, and then send us the video. The online community will then vote and decide which actor is most suitable for the role. We will then cast that actress. The script itself has some sound effects (such as a kettle boiling) and voiceover in. Please do not worry about these. On the voiceover sections, just allow enough time for the voiceover to be inserted afterwards. Same with the telephone conversation, just leave enough of a gap to allow the voice of the other character to be added in afterwards.

As for sending the video in, you have a couple of options. You can use the site http://www.megaupload.com which is a free upload service. Just upload the file, making sure that you put my email address olivertom@gmail.com in the recipient's email field. Or, if you have a youtube account, just upload it onto there and send the link to me via email, again, to this address.

I am setting the deadline for audition videos as Tuesday 12th at midday GMT, so please make sure you submit your video before this time ie. asap!!!

Again, thank you for applying, and we look forward to seeing your audition video,

Tom Oliver

GroupFilm creator.