Kids dancing outside classrooms. Uberstylish girls singing with perfect pitch on the stairs. A young couple rowing at the tops of their voices before stopping to ask ‘shall we take that from the top?’. And an almost unbearable urge on my part to pull on the leggings and leg warmers and start limbering up.
It can only mean one thing. Puffin entered the world of Fame at the Brit School, an institution who’s distinguished alumni include Leona Lewis, the Kooks, and a certain Ms. Winehouse (heard of her lately, anyone?). We travelled to Croydon, the UK’s latest hotbed of performing talent to cast the part of Sara in our version of Kate Modern – regularly updated dramatic 'vlogs' - based on Melvin Burgess’ latest novel Sara’s Face.
Melvin is rightly known as the Godfather of Teen Fiction, and he first soared to fame himself in 1997 on publication of the hugely controversial Junk. Since then, his books have never shied away from combining difficult issues with fantastic storytelling.
Sara’s Face (out in Penguin paperback at the end of Jan) focuses on celebrity, image, and cosmetic surgery. Lead character Sara is 17, gorgeous and desperate for fame. The story is told partly through transcripts of her vidlogs, and it’s these, along with some new and exclusive material from Melvin, that we’re going to be shooting and releasing as ‘webisodes’ on Penguin’s teen site Spinebreakers.co.uk early next year.
Coming over all Simon Cowell wasn’t necessary, as the actresses who turned up to the auditions were seriously talented. Still, they had a difficult task. The clips need to feel entirely natural and Sara, who’s beautiful, manipulative and damaged runs the gamut of emotions from ecstasy to horror. The director reckoned these girls’ abilities easily surpassed those of the groups he gets sent when he’s casting with big TV stations. Each girl brought her own interpretation to the role and any one of three particularly talented auditionees could land the part. It’s time to roll back the tapes and watch them back to find out who’ll be lucky.
As well as the videos, spinebreakers will be hosting a vlogging competition. Entrants can upload their own rants on the subject of beauty, and how far they’d go to get it onto the site from early next year to win state of the art video recording equipment.
The eight professionally shot and acted videos based on Sara’s Face will be broadcast on spinebreakers in January. Don’t forget to watch them. In fact, remember remember remember remember remember.
Jodie from Puffin
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