MANCHESTER BOUND was originally intended to be the company’s July story.  The idea is to shoot a film a month, commencing in the summer.  The company model is to keep shooting until November, when it gets cold.  Being a black folk and an African at that, I abhor the outdoors in the winter.  I choose, therefore, to pursue other interests during our hibernation period – writing is at the top of that list, followed by editing. 

2006 being the first year of devotion to features, AFRICAN DILEMMA was the first release, although it was shot the year before.  But there was the icky event of leaving the day job, editing DILEMMA at night, moving to a new apartment, relocating my 5 year old son to a new school as a result of that move, and then releasing DILEMMA.  Yes – a hectic early year, to say the least.  By June though, we had to commence shooting again.  Therefore, AFRICAN YOUTH came first, MANCHESTER BOUND would be July.  We would take August off to release DILEMMA 2, return in September with another story, and so on and so forth.  We were on target too, even shot the first day of BOUND when lo and behold! we had to stop.  I had to cancel the shoot for technical reasons.

We have relied entirely on a combination of luck and serendipity (I know that now) with our previous productions.  African actors are the hardest to find because, well, Africans are more often than not in America to do anything but be actors.  Therefore, we have relied mostly on word of mouth, this person referring that person, in casting the African actor.  Americans are another story.  For every role that requires a non-African, about 100 people vie for the spot.  The process is overwhelming, actually.  And even with casting non Africans, the company has again relied on word of mouth, this person referring that person, etc. 

With DILEMMA and YOUTH, this system worked like a charm. We were often blown away by how good these actors turned out to be, their dedication to the craft, etc.  It was foolish on my part to believe an entire production company, shooting about six months a year, six different stories, could continue to rely on this archaic and non-professional technique.  We were stung hard on BOUND.  To begin with, the script was written for a specific African kid, raised in England whom I came across in that someone-referring-someone way I just mentioned. 

I sat with the kid, whose name happens to be Mike, over at what has become the company office, a local café called Settepani.  He told me about his life, more or less, and as I sat across from him drinking my tea, the idea for BOUND materialized.  It would be another month though before I could commence on the script since we were working on YOUTH at that time.  It usually takes me about 30 days to write these stories.

The kid committed to the role, but as we began pre-production, he suddenly dropped out – two weeks before we began principal photography.  I found myself all steam ahead without a lead.  Mike had to be recast.  Luck and serendipity acted again and we suddenly found a kid, a Sudanese tall giant who could not manage the English accent but who was a charm to work with in every other way.  Other negative factors began to rear their ugly heads but determined to keep to the schedule, we commenced shoot.

It took only that first day to make me realize we were going nowhere fast.  Some of the other actors, all of whom came to us without the audition process could not quite manage their roles.  Looking through the camera’s lens, I saw what the audience would no doubt see - we had to recast. 

It would not be accurate to lay the entire blame on the cancellation on the shoulders of the actors.  The production itself suffered for lack of crew participation.  It takes about four folks to shoot these stories – four  committed and professional individuals.  We do not play or tarry.  We get work done, working about 10 to 12 hours a day, without scheduled breaks (we found this slows folks down, eat when you can, rest when you wish but by golly, we get between 15-20 scenes done a day!) 

For BOUND, we had five folks committed for crew.  On day one, there were just three.  Grossly under-manned, exhaustion hit us like a brick.  A quick conference followed and we knew BOUND would be postponed, there was no getting around that.  And what of DILEMMA 2?  We thought its release could run parallel.  We accept we are human and our best intentions aside, what we can accomplish we will.  What we can’t, we won’t.  What’s more critical is our method of picking actors.

Henceforth, it was decided every role had to be broadcast to the acting community.  Let us be overwhelmed by headshots and resumes.  Let us set up auditions and so forth.  Let us pick the best person for the roles.  And God knows, there are African actors out there.  They will find us as sure as we will find them. Tomorrow, August 9th, our first official audition process takes place.  I will keep you informed - VIGIL

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