Hi everyone,

The weekend is almost upon us and I’ll be running some errands and then probably hang out at home with my wife and our dwarf bunnies.

So what I really need is a good weekend playlist that perks me up while I drive around doing my errand-y stuff and at the same time is just nice to listen to in the back ground while sitting on the couch with a book and a good cup of tea.

So what I thought is, why not share my weekend playlist? Since I can’t very well upload a bunch of mp3s for your convenient download, I’ve pulled together a YouTube playlist for you here.

Some of the songs on my weekend playlist are not on YouTube. Sorry. Talk to me, maybe we can figure something out.

Alright, let’s start it off with something fun and upbeat:

One of my recent discoveries is the Keston Cobblers Club. Their video for ‘Your Mother‘ is just so much fun and has a really nice twist in the end. Their music is fun and light hearted. It makes you want to jump around and dance, which, by the way, I did. For my wife who was having a shower at the time, to keep her entertained. No, there is no video evidence.

Also because; suddenly, Tuba.

Next up, Linnea Olsson’s Dinosaur. Swedes have their own unique brand of Crazy and Linnea Olsson is a wonderful example. The song is fun, quirky and entirely uplifting. If you don’t like it, you’re a grinch.

Mumford & Sons with Little Lion Man, because I love it when I’m driving and because we all sometimes bollocks something up.

Palma Violets provide the perfect weekend track. ‘Step up for the Cool Cats‘ always has me moving in my office chair or at the very least tap my foot with the rhythm. But it’s still mellow and laid back enough to sit and read.

Let’s call it off by Peter Bjorn & John is a fun little tune. But to be honest I prefer Missy Higgins’ & Butterfly Boucher’s cover version of it. They just seem like they’re having all the fun. That’s why I’ve put a video of that into the playlist.

There is no laid back Sunday afternoon without Radiohead’s Karma Police. Fact.

I love the feathery light atmosphere that the Staves create with their music. In The Long Run is the perfect example and completes my mellow weekend.

We See Lights is a fun little band from Scotland and I’m a sucker for bands singing in their native accents. The sound in the video is not going to make anyone happy, but you can download the song for free from bandcamp!

Laura by Bat for Lashes has to be in my Weekend Playlist because it made me cry when I listened to it last weekend. It just holds that much emotion.

One of my all time favourite songs is ‘Needle in the Hay’ by Elliott Smith. It is wonderfully emotional, it has a certain mystery to it and it just gets stuck in your ear. What’s not to love about it?

I’ve just heard about Gin Wigmore and this playlist writing just reminded me that I still have to buy tickets for her concert in March. I love her unique voice and I really enjoy the jazzy sound of her music.

BONUS: One track that I added last minute and that I don’t own, so I can’t very well put it on my playlist is Clara Luzia’s No One’s Watching. Clara Luzia is a about to release a new record and I feel that is a whole blog post waiting to happen; which is why I’ll keep this short.

Clara Luzia is a local band and I’m always happy to support them and their only fault is that their gig is on the same day as Gin Wigmore’s.

So these are all part of my Weekend Playlist. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think and if you have suggestions for me, I’ll gladly take them.

Have a great weekend,

Finn.

A bit more than a week ago a bunch of awesome people followed through on their idea to have the world’s first live-a-thon. I’m a bit late writing about it (when am I not?) but a lot of other people already have and you can find links to their blogs below. Just skip over the next few paragraphs to see what they wrote.

What the bleeding blazes is a live-a-thon?

Sadly, it is over. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve missed not only the FIRST live-a-thon but also the most. epic. thing. EVAR. Do you feel bad? Good! You should.
The goal of the live-a-thon was to show April Wade ‘the Way of the Geek’. Actress, director, and geek extra-ordinaire, America Young got together with a bunch of friends to watch geeky tv shows and films, to play geeky games and engage in other, carefully chosen, geeky activities to achieve this goal. No small feat, let me tell you.

If feel like you missed out – as you should – the only thing that will make you feel better is contributing to their indigogo campaign. They stayed online for 60 hours straight, streaming their endeavors. The least you can do is give a few bucks. April even slept in front of the camera – that is commitment!

And why the hell would anyone do that?

As you can probably guess by now, the live-a-thon was only part of something even more epic. It was the kick-off event to the funding campaign of ‘The Concessionaires must die’. If you follow the link to their indigogo campaign you could be led to think it is just another group of people raising money for their indie film project. But it is so much more than that. They are doing it differently.

Not only did they live-a-thon the making of now honorary geek April, they will also live-stream the making of the movie. A live behind the scenes sort of thing. How awesome is that? You will not have to wonder how they shot a scene or where the cameras were. You will have been there, watching it all from the safety of your living room! See, I told you, they are full of epicness. And no, they don’t pay me for gushing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t fully deserve it.

They brought people together via the interwebs, they inspired Angie to stay up for more than 60 hours straight to support the campaign, they do groundbreaking things and that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Support them and support a new way of film making here:

And what did the others think?

There are a few people who have written about their live-a-thon experience and how it has affected them on a very personal and heart warming level.

The Grumpy Girl wrote about how it made her decide that being seen via a webcam is not a bad thing. Here is her blog.

Angie stayed up for maddeningly many hours to make people donate money to the campaign. She writes about her experience here.

The Concessionaires must die has a website and a facebook site where you can keep up with all the good stuff.

And again the link to their indigogo campaign, because they’re fucking worth it!

I’ve never done this before. I’ve never produced a film. But recently, together with Grumpy Girl Films, I organized quite a successful casting for Snapped.

I want to share what we did to help out others who are doing it for the first time too. Because being a newbie is not an excuse for a bad casting.

Our main goal was to find suitable actresses for our two leading roles and hopefully a choice of people for the supporting roles. Additionally, we were aiming to make the whole thing a relaxed and pleasurable experience for all involved. We wanted to give everyone a fair chance because the acting part was way more important to us than fulfilling a ridiculous predetermined physical profile. We were willing to consider everything as long as it still made sense for the character. Age, hair colour, figure are all unimportant – if you can’t act, you can’t act. Hollywood already fuels the photoshopped plastic image of impossible humans, we didn’t want to perpetuate this tradition.

First, we set a date. Then we wrote our official casting call. We put a lot of research into it to make it look professional enough to attract actual actors and actresses but still keep it on an indie film kind of level. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not!

At the same time we were looking for a place that would let us use one or two rooms for free. Snapped is a no-budget film and what little money we spend comes from our own pockets. We found help at the MetaLab. They had room and wouldn’t charge us for using their “library” for a whole day. Thank you, Kay! The main room (our waiting area) at the MetaLab has big comfy sofas. Those actors and actresses spend valuable time on preparing for the role they most likely will not get. The least you can do is make them comfortable. Think of them as guests. You wouldn’t make a guest stand while waiting for you. Your mother raised you better than that!

We distributed our casting call via every possible channel available to us. I haven’t had time to look over the data yet but we reached approx. a third of our guests through agencies, a third through social media and another third through other means. I will update this statistics once I have actual numbers.
We asked people to apply for time slots, so we would be able to plan ahead and to avoid long waiting times. Coming without an allotted time slot was allowed but would mean a longer wait.
In the end, we received a lot more applicants than we could possibly handle in a day and had to put people on a waiting list. There went our good intentions to give everyone a chance.

Our time slots were 15 minutes per person. That turned out to be pretty accurate. With some people we only needed 10 minutes or less, but that made it easier to give some people the chance to try one more time. Our schedule was so full that on paper we didn’t have a single break in 9 hours. So what we did was to take very short breaks in between and it somehow worked out just fine. I’m not recommending it though. Schedule breaks!

Send your hopeful applicants their sides ahead of time. The sooner, the better but at least 24h before the casting starts. It will give them a feeling of security if they can come in prepared and it will make your work easier if they can already perform without looking at the text. Don’t expect them to know their lines though. You’re not looking for the person who can memorize lines the fastest, you’re looking for the person who is best at acting!

Prepare a bunch of copies of casting sides and character descriptions. The actors will probably have them but might be happy to pick up a copy if they forgot theirs at home. I also recommend having some sort of information form for actors to fill out. It’s mostly for you to remember them quickly without having to look at the casting videos again. We had a little photo sticker printer and a camera at the reception desk, so we could put a picture on these forms too.

Set up your casting room well ahead of time, you are on a tight schedule, but you don’t have to seem like it because you couldn’t get up on time. Brief your receptionist and your line reader, check if your camera works and that the light is ok. Make sure your chair doesn’t squeak and your phone is on silent.

Then you’re ready to go and ask the first person in!