Credits:
Written & Directed by Chris Castronovo
Cast: Jon Howland - Paul Thompson
Justin Skillings - Larry
Desiree Nichols - Gloria Campbell
Russell Owens - The Detective
Chris Castronovo - Officer John Tron
History of Help Wanted 1986-2001 (link coming soon)
About movie:
This was it. The biggest project, and longest undertaking we ever tried to do. With only a cast of 5 who's availability was limited, and a budget of $0. This movie begin shooting in May of 2001, which was shortly after "When Zombie's Rock N' Roll", but was in the planning stages long before then. "Help Wanted", our only actual movie, something that has characters and plot. I originally planned to shoot this in black and white, to give it an old fashion movie look, but it looked better in color. However, to give it an even more cinematic quality, we shot it all in 16x9 format. The movie is supposed to be a mystery, but with the small number of cast members, it's not that big of a mystery.
There is a long history to Help Wanted which is provided in the link above. My father was much like I am, and wanted to be a director. In 1986, my dad and my mom attempted to make a movie, with their friends at the time entitled "Help Wanted". My mom wrote it, and they both shot it together with their friends. However, it never got finished. A few key scenes were shot, but it wasn't enough for the whole movie. It was always intended to be a short movie, but there were people they couldn't get to play certain characters the way they wanted, and it just ended.
Having seeing these scenes that they did shoot, and watching the outtakes, I knew the basic premise of the story, and decided to rewrite it myself, so that my friends and I could make the movie that my parents were never able to finish. I added my own type of characters, and plot points to the script, but in the end, it was still very similar, and I kept key dialogue that I always found amusing growing up.
Now, making "Help Wanted" would be much different from the rest of our videos, because it was going to focus on more dialogue, and needed more actors. Naturally, my friend Jon Howland continued working together with me, and I had him play one of the lead roles. I then asked, my other friend Justin Skillings to play another role I really wanted him to play, the second lead. He had only been in one other video of ours, Formula 99 in which he played the zombie. However, I worked with him in a play at our school, and I knew he could play the character I wanted. I had put up signs in my high school, asking if anyone wanted to participate, and I got only 1 person. Russell Owens, who I had play the detective was pretty decent. I still needed someone to play Gloria though, and I didn't know many girls who could act. However, Desiree I had worked with on a play before, and I felt she had the look I wanted for Gloria. I was hoping to get more extras for the movie, because there was a scene that involved a lot of cops, but more didn't offer at my school, so I was stuck with 5 including myself.
I wanted to shoot this in good weather like spring, so when I started planning this movie in February, I had to wait a few months before we could even do any shooting. I made a complete shooting schedule over the month of May. Each different scene took a day of shooting on their own, and everyone involved was not available all the time, so I needed to organize it more than any of our previous videos. It gave me time to edit each scene individually when we were not shooting. My dad was always very proud of all the videos I made, and was always helpful and insightful on everything. I had a pretty good grasp on how to edit video, but not audio, so my dad was the official audio director of the movie.
Shooting was done at various locations, and various times of the day. Overall I enjoyed the experience, but felt I was too demanding of a director. Even with all the planning, not enough planning was done in other areas. Certain places we shot in were too dark, and not enough props. For money, we printed out copies of fake money, and in a scene where they're supposed to be drinking brandy, we kept refilling it with watered down coca cola. I felt so sorry for Justin, because he kept taking sips of it for a scene, and then Jon would start laughing and we'd have to do it all over again. Other things, shots would have to be so many times to get it right. I could've let things go, and ended early, but I kept thinking we needed more.
When shooting was all done and I had wrapped up all the editing, I was allowed to show it to several classes at school, and it was my last year there, so it was showed at a few graduation parties as well. Lots of people enjoyed it, even my teachers liked it, friends who had not participated in any of our videos, wanted to make movies with us more than ever. However, it never quite got that far. No one was serious enough, and nothing ever was put into the works again after "Help Wanted"
Now it's finally up on the web for people to see, and looking to hear more reviews. After the years, I realize it's not quite as good as we all thought when we first made it. Some of the dialogue stinks, or isn't delivered quite right, but I'm still proud of it. Certain camera angles and techniques that we used I thought were cool, and still do. Hope you enjoy it, and again if you DO enjoy, please feel free to e-mail me and I'll let Jon and the others know that some people like it!
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