A couple of months ago I had a psychological evaluation.  The psychologist told me I was in the acceptable range, but cautioned that I border on ‘manic’.

I admit, I like to keep busy.  And creatively, last year has been my biggest.  After returning from South America, I’ve put most of my energy into one project – the pilot of my sitcom The Real.

It’s a huge undertaking – essentially putting myself through my own devised course in television-making.  I have learnt so much – from the writing, rewriting, casting, running rehearsals, set-dressing, location-scouting, organising props, directing, coordinating cast and crew, editing, post-production, and a thousand other things.  I wanted to do as much as possible by myself.  But of course, filmmaking is the collaborative medium, the one that incorporates writing, theatre, design, music, and photography.  Even keeping costs and (production levels) to a minimum, 25 people have helped or worked on some aspect of the production so far.  That blows my mind.

I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved and thankful I was stubborn enough to just plunge headfirst and not give up during the (many) stressful moments.

I absolutely love directing.  But I never planned to be a director.  I got a video camera and started filming things to cross-train and supplement my screenwriting.  Rather quickly, it took over.  The four years I spent running around with a DSLR prior meant I hit the ground running  – I already knew a bit about f-stops and shutter speeds, the importance of light and framing.

I spent years reading books and blogs on screenwriting (and still do) – much of what I learnt, through repeated immersion, is now second nature, things I do without thinking, that I take for granted.  My directing is not there yet – I still feel like I’m faking it.  One of the main differences is screenwriting practice can be done in private – directing practice requires participants/guineas pigs.  I need to reach the same level with my directing – to that end, I’ve reading several books on directing (I’m good at applying book-learnin’ – in my teens I taught myself to juggle from a couple of paragraphs sans pictures in an old book).  I also spent three days last week in Melbourne at a ‘directing actors’ workshop.

And next of course, I need to find some more participants/guinea pigs.

In his excellent Supergods, Grant Morrison describes donning an “ink-suit” and entering the fictional world of his characters.  It’s not a novel concept (though his use of it in mainstream comics was) – authors have been writing themselves into their stories since the beginning.  A favourite example is the unexpected appearance midway through Martin Amis’ Money of “writer Martin Amis” (at whose introduction, Kingsley Amis allegedly gave up reading his son’s book).

I’m a sucker for these kinds of metatextual shenanigans (which explains my love of Borges and At Swim Two Birds), but in making The Real the opposite has occurred.  Instead of inserting ourselves into a fictional world, we are bringing fictional objects into the real world.  We’ve made ‘for sale’ signs for the make-believe Werner Real Estate.

It’s as if we’ve journeyed across the divide (over to what Alan Moore dubbed a “unified field theory of fiction”) and returned with trophies.  Like Coleridge’s paradisiac flower, they are tangible proof the fictional world exists.  What I love most is how innocuous they appear, left propped against a wall or bookshelf, an incursion or seeping of the fictional into the actual.

The Real is becoming, well, real. 

Over the last few weeks, things have started to take shape.  Lou and I locked in our two main locations (the office where 90% of the action takes place, and the house where the penultimate scene occurs).  Our sound recordist has visited the site, and our second camera operator has confirmed her availability.  Discussions have taken place with kick-ass design company New Best Friend regarding the logos and signage we need for our fictitious companies.

But the largest task so far has been arranging and coordinating the casting call.  I put notices out on OffPrompt, Starnow and various Facebook actor pages.  The response was overwhelming – over 70 applicants within 12 days (and I am still receiving the odd application).  I sent each actor a copy of the script.  Nick, theatre director/confidante Cameron Thomas, and I then went through each CV, and selected 27 to audition.  I booked a studio space for the following week.

On the day, 22 people auditioned.  It was a nerve-wracking experience (for them and us), and we learnt so much about the process and how to improve it for next time.  I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with all of the actors that attended – everyone was amazingly talented and prompted me to start thinking on the spot of where or how I could write them into something.

There are six main roles in The Real.  The day after the audition, we offered three roles to actors.  Of the remaining three, there were 2-3 actors that we thought could do an equally good job – we asked these actors to come back in a week later and we looked at combinations of actors in different groups.  I’m happy to say that after that, we found our cast!  This morning we had everyone over for a table read over fruit and coffee, and it was awesome.

The admin side has been crazy – keeping track of all the applicants (Lou helpfully did up a spreadsheet for me), arranging auditions, disseminating scripts, fielding queries, and then responding to everyone regarding their applications, has chewed up most of the last couple of weeks.  That said, I’ve now met a bunch of cool people and am thrilled about working with the cast we have.  Everyone that has come into contact with The Real has been supportive and excited that something like this is being made in Canberra.  I hadn’t properly considered that when starting out, but now I see it as one of our strengths.