PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Several local bloggers out there are providing behind-the-scene’s glimpses of how their respective productions come together. My favorite of late has been John Wildman’s thoughtful blog.  John is the Director of P.R. for AFI Dallas and a film fan at heart. Sometimes those two positions can be contradictory in his line of work, and in a recent post, he quite honestly discusses the push-pull of trying to simultaneously satisfy sponsors, the media and the filmmakers:

Now, I know the press on that red carpet wants and needs the movie stars to bolster their coverage because I am well aware of the Brangelina thing. However, what’s just as important (and personally – more important) is to get the other filmmakers in the mix. Because, while a picture of David Beckham posed all cozy-like next to an Audi has cashed my check with the sponsor, having Chris Hansen blog about his experience being sandwiched on the red carpet interviews between Bill Paxton and Lou Diamond Phillips while talking about his quirky little comedy THE PROPER CARE AND FEEDING OF AN AMERICAN MESSIAH is easily the bigger home run.

Because he’s gonna make more movies. And when that happens, I want him back at my film festival. And other filmmakers reading that blog will also put my film festival at the top of their hitlist.

Meanwhile, over at the Dallas Theater Center’s In the Beginning blog, Production Stage Manager Melissa Daroff discusses the fine art of hiding a microphone on a nearly naked actor.

For Cain, Abel and Eve, we used the only part of their costume where we could hide all the parts of the wireless mic- their hair. Yup, all 3 characters wear wigs and the entire rig hides up there. Imagine wearing a TV remote control inside your hat and you might have an idea of what it’s like to walk around or participate in stage combat with a mic pack in your wig!

So that explains most of the cast, but how did she handle the wigless Adam?

He is often heard through fellow actors’ mics. But there was one scene that just wouldn’t work, so we came up with the “baby mic” solution. We actually hide Cedric’s usual mic in the prop baby Seth.

And now you know.