Recently, an indy filmmaking friend of mine sent out a casting call for extras. I forwarded the email to my capoeira group, my professional writing group and my Austin PR list. Out of nearly 200 people, only one other person answered the call for yesterday’s shoot at the Republic Square farmers’ market. When I introduced my capoeira friend to my filmmaking friend, her eyes lit up and she immediately invited him to play a little capoeira for the opening scene.
He jumped at the opportunity to make his cinematic capoeira debut. Yet, capoeira isn’t an individual sport. Fortunately, one of the lead actors in the film also knew how to play capoeira since yours truly here was not about to get extra funky. After all, sweat was already streaming freely down my back just by me standing on the scene. I planned to go to two tango lessons after the film shoot. For once, I’d be the smelly tanguero in class! (I shared that with another tango student just before our first class and he said that I’d get another free pass at being smelly since I didn’t hit the funky mark.)
I did, however, make my capoeira lead singing debut, both off and on camera. I managed to get the crowd doing the three rhythmic capoeira soul claps as I sang. One other woman in the crowd was brave enough to repeat what I sang as a response to my lead. Unfortunately, she sang the lyrics a little incorrectly, but something’s better than nothing! At any rate, I figured I could always email my filmmaker friend once they start postproduction. She can always record the song over, using two female capoeiristas–I just hope that the whole scene isn’t deleted.
Regardless, I have another opportunity to make it in the final cut since I stood behind the principal actors during the crowd scene. I’d love to see the footage of how we did pretending to see an imaginary helicopter overhead, pretending to listen to a motivational speech and then cheering on one of the main characters.
I now have a newfound respect for actors. It’s very challenging to “get into character” with just a little backstory of what we were doing/reacting to in the scene. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see how much magic is worked in postproduction. Plus, I’m recruiting writers, photographers, and lyricists for the upcoming “Beauty in Other Cultures” roulette in September!