Working with Actors vs. Non-Actors

At On the Leesh, we work with actors all the time. We are blessed actually with the talent that we work with. They are prepared, professional and supportive of their cast members.

For What You Can Do, we have made a conscious decision to make our “hosts” for each episode be real people. Therefore, some of our personalities are average Americans. We feature a fire fighter (thanks Jack!), a teacher (thanks Shannon!), a graphic designer (thanks Lana!) and so on. To be honest, we were worried that this would raise some problems on set.

Typically when you’re on set, you want to limit as many variables as possible. That means, hiring actors. These people are trained – and paid to remember their lines. They know what’s expected of them and don’t mind waiting around while we set up shots. Would this be the same with the other people we were going to work with?

Amazingly…YES! Each episode has taken about an hour to shoot with the “host.” They have been able to nail their lines within the first couple of takes. That means – they were able to memorize complicated phrases – Purina’s Pets for People Program – sorry Melissa. They were able to stay focused on the task at hand. They were all pros! Every one was excited to be on set and see how the videos were being made. Even Winnie – our two year old was focused and easy to work with.

I don’t want to jinx these videos, but…these guys are blowing our actors out of the water!

Thanks to all our volunteers!

Picking the Topics

When Jess, Mary, Julie and I first came up with our list of topics for our first 21 installments of What You Can Do, we came up with about 100 topics. Clearly this was going to be tough. How do you narrow down to just 21 topics when there are so many worthy issues out there.

Well first and foremost, we came made sure that we had some diversity. We didn’t want to keep all the issues domestic. There are far too many issues in the world to keep them focused on home. Still that does help narrow it down.

Next we went with issues that would make a compelling video. There are many issues where you can help in only a minute; however, many of those issues revolve around writing a check, writing a letter or subscribing to a blog. That wouldn’t make for a very interesting episode. This would definitely help narrow it down.

We also hope that these videos go out nationally, and we want to pick issues that have the widest level of interest across the country. We pushed the envelope slightly on some of these issues, but we feel strongly about our 21.

In all honesty, even if we were doing 365 episodes, we feel there would be some issues that would be have to be left off. Ultimately, this blog is the place where we can continue to explore these additional issues and spread the word.