"And We're LIVE"

Today is the day of the live stream!! We eventually got all the actors and crew in at 1:30pm (when I did say Unit Call was 12, and Actors to be in at 1). We still had time to go through a few rehearsals before we went live at 3. 

Then... disaster.

In our first rehearsal, the same actor yesterday had another breakdown. This time, it was much worse, and took me about an hour to get her back. I assured her to use the tarot cards if it was about her forgetting the lines, and just focus on her. Even then, she didn't want to go back into the studio. I remained calm, and made sure she was okay. Luckily, our spooky voice actor was there, and volunteered to be May for us. Also luckily, I made the tarot cards too so she could read off them. I gave the actor my phone number if she ever wants to talk and to let me know she got home safe. I also appealed to the lecturer's to see if we could get an extra hour (as this was extreme circumstances). Luckily, it was accepted, and the lecturer changed the email sent to everyone to say 4pm instead of 3. We also changed the Facebook event and put a status out.

Meanwhile, our new May actor was speeding through the script (luckily she read it all beforehand so knew the jist) and used the tarot cards subtly, and to be honest, she stole the show. We should have cast her in the first place. You could never have known she stepped in two hours before we went live.

We did two streams. This one failed at the end as I told everyone to clear the set to use a shot of just the setting until it was time for the credits, but actors still came in thinking it was over. I decided not to do this, as it was also boring to look at it for so long, and viewers would tune out. So we went with improvisation. Everyone had loads of different ideas, so we merged them all together, showing the deaths of the characters and George cleaning the crime scene. We also planned to have the light and the police officer finding the crime scene, however, we didn't have time in the end to show this.

We did another quick rehearsal with the improv. at the end, and it worked well. This is our back up stream in case the live show went terribly.

The actual live show went really well! A tiny blip in the vision mixer early on, and where May forgot her lines, but apart from that, it could not have gone better (considering where we were 2 hours before we went live).

We said goodbye to the actors and gave them Christmas cards. Soon after, we cleared the studio. We put the curtain back, brought the props home (apart from the shelf, which will be gone by Friday). We also wrapped up the fake grass (we might see if we can keep it in the prop cupboard as it was free and will work well with other productions). I hoovered up all the tiny bits of fake grass.

Thanks Andrew for the pic of me hoovering!