As soon as we wrapped our First Look shoot, our current lead announced she accepted a job on the police force and was no longer available to play Amy Stronghold. The day before, I met Sheena Georges. She was introduced to me by Ray Hopper, Sarge from our First Look scene. Sheena was coming to play an Extra until a family emergency made another cast member unavailable for the shoot. In an effort to keep the entire shoot from being canceled at a sensitive location I asked Sheena to read the lines for the Gang Leader and cast her that night. Sheena was the first cast member to arrive on set and was early, which impressed me. Our first impression was that she was too nice and sweet to play the Gang Leader. Her response to that comment was, "I'll be fine, I'm from Brooklyn!" I remember as soon as I started capturing her performance with my 50MM lens, she stuck to film. Fast forward a couple weeks, my wife and I met with her over coffee and we all hit it off. We asked her to be our Amy, which she humbly accepted. What I love about Sheena, besides her talent as an actress, is her humble heart. After reading the screenplay and spending a day with us she said, "If I am not your Amy, then please let me be a Production Assistant just to serve on this project." How do you find people like Sheena without a production budget? I have no idea. However, our cast is now complete after 9 months of searching! The next impossible task is to put together the best film crew possible, with no budget, for our shoot in the Fall. Stay tuned!
