This past Saturday members of the Capital Metro Marketing Team got to help out as casting directors for an upcoming series of videos that will be written and directed by one of our riders.
In April of this year some of you may remember that Capital Metro held a contest where we invited our customers to “tell us why you ride”. Our i-Ride Contest entries included songs, videos, original art pieces and lots and lots of stories. Several of the winning entries in the Video category were submitted by a UT Radio-Television-Film student named Alex Diamond. We were so impressed with Alex’s work that we invited him to help us make it easier for first-time Capital Metro riders by having him write and direct a series of short instructional videos that will appear on the Capital Metro website and YouTube early next year. The videos will follow the adventures of his main character Billy and his sidekick i-Ride Man as the navigate their way through first time rider scenarios such as planning a trip, stop etiquette, putting your bike on the rack and paying your fare.
So Saturday was a day of auditions for the series at the Vortex Theatre on Manor Road, who were kind enough to let us use their facilities. Alex and his two Capital Metro assistants auditioned roughly 40 hopeful actors and actresses to find three characters to star in the videos. After putting each through a cold reading of a few pages from one of the scripts we compared notes and had to make some tough decisions. (The complete cast list is posted on the Capital Metro website.) We’d like to thank all that tried out – we met and saw some very talented people and it takes guts to put yourself out there even if it’s only for a set of How to Ride videos. Look for the completed videos on our site sometime in January or February.
