Bryan Cook, Randall Hunter
After several months of filming, Bryan Cook, a talented OCU film student has wrapped his movie “Touching the Sun”. He brilliantly cast two adults and one adorable seven year old boy in this movie. Of course, one of the adults was me as co-star “Steve”. I would like to claim starring role status, but that goes to Randall Hunter and Landon Simms.
The movie tells the story of two commercial airline pilots who are retired in a company wide downsizing. Dale (Randall) is upset about this and does not know what to do with his life. Steve (me) is happy about this and looking forward to what the next phase of his life holds. Ryan (Landon) is a young boy who lives close to Dale and is the catalyst that gets Dale out of his funk and gives him a vision to what life has to offer. They do this by building an airplane together. Not the flying kind, but a push car. Steve attempts to get him out of his melancholy, but Ryan succeeds.
Landon Simms All scenes had been filmed with the exception of one in which I was involved. Bryan’s proposed scene required a rock climbing wall. In an earlier scene, described in an earlier blog, I went to Dale’s house and tried to get him to go rock climbing with me. Dale declined. In this last scene, I am at the gym to play tennis when I see Dale coming down a rock wall. Bryan’s problem was finding a rock wall location whose owners were willing to let him film. He contacted Westminster school in Oklahoma City and they gave him permission to film their wall.
Last Friday, we assembled at the school since they were out for the day and began filming. I brought my 13 year-old granddaughter along so she could watch the filming and to see what actually goes on in making a movie. This scene, when seen in the film, is about 3–4 minutes long and it took a little over three hours to film. She found this very interesting.
Bryan asked Randall and me go through some drills prior to starting to film. He directed us to read the scene without putting any emotion into the reading. We just read it blandly . Then he asked us read it again by emphasizing loudly each adjective and then to read it again emphasizing loudly all verbs. Harder than it sounds. Not having studied English in the 50 years since I attended high school, I stumbled some.
Last but not least during the read-through he had us SING the lines. I told my granddaughter to hold her ears because I have a terrible voice. So we sang the lines and I sounded like a wild warbling wounded walrus. Randall on the other hand, has a pretty good voice. When finished, I asked my granddaughter what she thought and she laughed and said she recorded it with her cell phone and sent it to my son, her father. I used to like her.
The last exercise was to study the other person. I looked at Randall and commented on his mannerisms, hair, eyes, clothes, posture so forth and so on. Each time I might say something like “you have gray hair”, he had to repeat it virtually word for word. If I mentioned him moving a finger, he would repeat what I said and then he did the same reverse exercise with me. The thinking behind this drill was to get us to be more in touch with the other person when we started saying our lines. Interesting what you get to know about another person when you study someone that closely.
Bryan CookThe filming went smoothly. At least, from my standpoint. I am sure that Bryan wanted to pull his hair out a few times or chew his arm off to his elbow. I don’t remember Randall blowing a line the entire session, but I did a good job of it. However, only once did I flat forget a line. About half way through one part, I just drew a blank. Could not remember what came next. I have practiced this scene for several weeks and I could not believe I forgot words. I have been pretty proud of my memorization skills. A few times, I put words at the front of a sentence instead of at the end where they belonged. Bryan also had me say some lines different ways. Minor mistakes were corrected on the next take. He had close-ups of us, wide shots of us and all together we were there a little over three hours. And, then we were done. Steve has been a part of my life for the last several months and I was sad our filming had come to an end. But, I am anxious to see the finished product and see my masterful performance.
If the movie is less than 30 minutes, there are a number of film festivals Bryan can enter and other festivals if it is over an hour long. The period between 30 and 60 minutes is a limbo area. He will try to make it an hour movie and then it can be called a feature film. This actor hopes it makes that length. I wanna’ be a co-star in a feature film! As a new actor, I need to have a reel. This is a series of shots that show you in various roles which can be sent to casting directors so they can see how you perform. With two productions behind me, I will now have several choices to place in my reel
