Echoes of Silence/Trick of the Dark update - The Beast from the East

This week both of the productions I am involved with as both Director and Producer have taken a massive hit. This was completely out of the blue for me, and it seems to be the same for many others. Though like any problem, even a natural occurrence such as this, there is a lesson to be learned in it. Commencing Tuesday the 27th the North East of England where we are situated, and many areas of the country were hit with the backend of a Siberian storm named 'The Beast from the East'. The storm came with heavy easterly winds, and intense periods of snow which lay 15 inch deep in parts. The country succumb to widespread ruin. Many institutions and businesses shut up shop for the week, and the roads were either shut or too unsafe to use. The lesson to be learned was that of course, this was predicted in the weather forecast. And of course as creative students with our head in the clouds we went about our business as usual, scheduling away not realising it was all in vain. The storm began on Tuesday and grew in intensity until Saturday. This meant that everything we had planned between then was useless and had to be cancelled. For Echoes of Silence, this meant prolonging a test shoot with the crew. This wasn't that much of an issue in fairness, as we all know when we're available to each other which is pretty much any day of the week. However we were also forced to cancel a screen-test and rehearsal with two of our main actors. This was the biggest issue as actors availability at our level can often be very limited. We are unable to pay actors, meaning as we work with amateur actors we have to work around their availability with their jobs, other projects etc. Friday was a day we worked toward organising for numerous weeks, which was completely wasted due to the storm. Next week we will work on rescheduling the things we had planned, and we will try not to let this occurrence dishearten us. It feels like we have lost a bit of momentum, but we will soon get that back once we get the ball rolling. 

'The Beast from the East'

As for Trick of the Dark, the film I am Producing, I feel quite lost with this project. Whilst the storm significantly affected the progress of Echoes of Silence, Trick of the Dark had nothing planned that week that could have been affected. We are currently in the process of casting and as Producer it is my most important task at present. We have one cast member of the three that are needed. However at the moment no actors are getting back with definite answers. At this level you deal with incredibly unprofessional and lacklustre actors who use the words 'I want to be an actor' with no dedication to punctuality, involvement, or commitment to their craft. For the meantime I continue my search for a leading man, aged early 20s to mid 30s (the Director is reasonably flexible with their age range). Other than that, there seems to be very little that I can be doing. There is no production design or costume design departments to liaise with as the costumes are sorted and no sets are required. The lines are very blurred as to what we're all doing, which comes down to a lack of communication amongst ourselves. I hope that this can be rectified next week during a sit down with the entire crew.