BEHIND THE SCENES OF "THE FBI VAULT" - PART 3

However, our audience was not interested in becoming actors (except for one - thank you Tara) so I decided to move ahead and use actors - but not the actors I usually work with; actors I have never worked with; and in the beginning of October the following casting notice was submitted to "Backstage":

"Casting "The FBI Vault," a virtual murder mystery. Seeking five actors, as diverse as possible, to be five "suspects" of the mystery. All you need is a phone or a laptop. Production will work with talent to develop about five minutes of personalized scenes, dialogue, etc. in which you are a suspect and possible killer. It's all done in your home by yourself on your time. Once all the scenes are broadcast, audience members vote on who is the killer."

I received over 160 submissions and 36 of them struck my interest and stated they wanted to be a part of the project. And it was at that point, that I decided to change the plot from a real FBI story to one of my own: the murder of a millionaire who was trying to fund research for a vaccine to stop a pandemic. And I chose to set it for the early 1950's and the polio pandemic as the time period, etc. 

I developed a basic plot and concept: each actor would have just 4 lines. And to the 36 actors, I sent the following email which indicated my intent to make two different versions with their instructions, etc.:

"Hi everyone – I’m doing this by mass email so thank you all for participating. We have actors from all over the world so this will be special…hopefully.

You have been divided into groups. Group A the victim is a male millionaire, Group B the victim is female. Same story just sex reversed. In each group, one of you is the victim, 5 of you are suspects/killers, each with a motive, and one of you is my assistant.

This all takes place in an interrogation room. Do your lines shooting horizontal camera position and put each line or beat in a separate file. If you can have the background as a blank wall, that is preferred but not required. For the props, whatever you have or just shoot it so that it appears you have something. Use your skills as there is no direction other than the victim is rich, the suspects are each nervous as the audience can choose any one of you as the killer. The assistant character is “bad cop/good cop” bit.

Email me at killing@killingkompany.com if you have any questions or need to have me set up a Zoom for you to film your stuff."

However, out of the 6 actors this was sent to, only 13 submissions were received, only one version could be made, 7 of the submissions were used, and based upon that, I was able to refine the plot and how the production/contest will operate, all without the actors having to make any changes to their submissions.