Have coffee with Anna Akana

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• published: 20 Dec 2013
• views: 10239

Riley Rewind star and writer via a Google Glass interview. I'm going to do more interviews like this on http://CastAndCrewCall.com/Blog If you have not watched the Riley Rewind series yet do it now: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsXW-9bShL1bE2lV_hCuK6DdrTjRdf7wz Above is an interview of sorts with Anna Akana done with Google Glass. It's basically the two of us casually talking shop and recoding the entire thing. Anna, thank you so much for your time!!! A few months ago Kent Nichols asked me if I was available for some pickup shots for a TV show... well... a short film... actually a digital series... or web series... kind of all the same in my eyes lately. Anna Akana had written (according to her... with Ray William Johnson's colaboration) a short series about a girl who could time travel, deals with some issues only a time traveler has, and some issues all of us face, like finding out someone is suicidal... and makes a fantastic story for us to enjoy and be inspired by. Suicide is a very serious topic and was handled so well by Anna and Ray (the Director). I'm very glad to see such a hard topic written into a series so well. Months have gone by and the series finally came out last week. I didn't have time to watch it until two days go... and within seconds of starting to watch I had to text Anna. I was blown away and hooked just from the intro. Perfection. HAHAHA, I didn't realize what I just wrote when I wrote it but if you have already seen the series I hope you get a chuckle out of it. I messaged her saying I was hooked and I was excited to keep watching. I couldn't help myself. Suddenly it was an hour later and the series was over. I had so many questions, so much to talk about... so I asked as nicely as I could to have a quick coffee to talk about Riley Rewind and interview Anna about it. I mean, wouldn't you want to know what it was like to make a web show and get over 4.1 million views in just a week? Don't you want to ask questions about how to actually get up and shoot something amazing? I knew that Ray and Anna self funded this project and had heard they went over budget... I don't hold back about that stuff... money is usually such a taboo topic but we even got to talk about some real budget numbers. We just sat down at a coffee shop, I recorded our conversation with my new Google Glass... so it's kind of like you get to sit down with an amazing writer and actor and have coffee with her! Here's what we talk about: Internet content or YouTube vs TV Work ethic in Hollywood Finding quality people to work with in Hollywood How much did production on Riley Rewind cost? Should actors use YouTube? How do you get a production like Riley Rewind started? Planning for the future Firing people Budget Distribution strategies Writing for yourself And now some tech talk about what I used when I shot for Ray and Anna... Before the pickup day, I got to see the trailer and was given a breif on what we were shooting... so I put together a lighting package and was excited to shoot it on the Canon C100; Kent just happened to have one so it made perfect sense. They were going to mix the stuff I was about to shoot with stuff they already shot on a RED camera... little did I know Ray was a little apprehensive about using a camera that wasn't a RED. I was confident it would hold up... and it turns out after talking to Ray breifly about it a couple days ago, the colorist/editor was very happy and said it fit in perfect. I think Ray was too! YAY! The shots I did were all of the ones where Anna (Riley) is talking to camera, her falling to the ground, and... the closing shot to the series!!! It was super exciting to see that my stuff was used to close out the show. The crew that day was just Misa Garcia and I for lighting and camera. We used all Litepanels to light everything on that day. There were a couple 1×1′s and three Sola 6′s with a Sola ENG flight kit to throw some light on the background. The Canon C100 was used with a 50mm 1.4 lens on a Manfrotto 545GBK tripod with a Manfrotto 509HD head for the talking to camera shots and the final shot. The Canon 7D was used for the shot of Anna falling to the ground. So, if you haven't already, take a few minutes and have coffee with Anna and hear her talk about Riley Rewind. I think I'm going to do some more of these Google Glass interviews with friends and others that have projects and stuff I think are cool! It's like you get to be in an interview about Riley Rewind with Anna Akana! Finally, Anna, thank you so much for coming out for coffee... PS... Question for my readers: if I do continue to do these Google Glass interviews... who do you think I should have coffee with?