thebreadseries - Tumblr blog

[thebreadseries]

“I mean, I know what’s gonna happen, of course. But, I can’t still help but hope that it will end differently.”

[thebreadseries]

An Update | The B.R.E.A.D. “Weekly” 

What is B.R.E.A.D.?

B.R.E.A.D. is a modernized, transmedia adaptation of Volumes III-V of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. This series will bring the stories of Les Amis de l’ABC directly into the present moment. Originally university students in Paris, B.R.E.A.D. will transfer the Les Amis to a modern American university where they are forced to communicate via Zoom and other social media in light of the ongoing pandemic. Where they once fought against the French monarchy, these modern Les Amis fight against unfair tuition costs, social injustices, and the right to education in a post-COVID world. Cross-posted on YouTube and Instagram, the stories and the relationships between characters will be explored in a depth no adaptation has ever reached before.

Find out more on our website, thebreadseries.com, and follow us on Instagram @thebreadseries.

[thebreadseries]

Oh, we’re late on this one! But thank you so much! We are cackling once again!! 

Welcome the late interepisodial chaos that is part four of @thebreadseries​ and onion headlines!

Yeah I am aware that word took you two times to read but whatevs - there are edits from episode 2 as well as episode 9. No I don’t know why am I making it so chaotical either and why am I POSTING IT NOW INSTEAD OF, LIKE, TWO WEEKS AGO O..o

Part One / Two / Three

[thebreadseries]

Dear Anybody From The Wonderful People Involved: Can you tell us any surprising/humorous story/experience/fun fact that's happened during the making of BREAD? :')

Jayda: “I think the most humorous surprising thing to me would be the evolution of “Scarius” from inside joke* to a summation of his actual personality (and the many reactions the name garnered) as well as how well the actors were able to characterize themselves on the fly.”

Olive: “Also the fire alarm moment, which was the best hands down, but we can’t talk about that.” 

(*During one of the first rehearsals, the actors were asked to come up with the real names of their characters. They ranged from overtly referencing the Amis, for example, Prouvaire was Penny Vare, Combeferre was Caroline von Frere, etc., to completely unique, like Izaak Washington for Grantaire, to....Scarius for Marius. 

“Is that really what you’re going with?” Lee asked at the time. 

“Yes,” Nathan said, completely deadpan. 

“Pick something more normal.” 

“Fine,” Nathan said, changing his name to Lorenzo.) 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

Any chance of a second season? Just saying fuck it and go off book, a “where are they now” moment. The first was incredible, good job guys!

First of all, thanks so much! However, I’m sad to say a second season is most likely not in the cards, both because I am satisfied with how the series ends, and two, many members of the cast have other commitments and unfortunately wouldn’t have time to work on another season. That said, I have been considering developing a new show of a similar format as this with another source material, so keep your eyes peeled for that! :) 

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

vivienne as combeferre gives me big gretchen from recess vibes (this is a compliment. i would die for her)

first of all, that is very lovely of anon to say. secondly, i had to google who that was because much like i imagine combeferre’s childhood to be, we didn’t have mainstream tv channels growing up. i watched a clip on youtube though and that sounds about right LOL

- vivienne 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

Quick Notice Regarding the Q&A

Hi all! Just wanted to make it clear that if you sent in a question for the whole cast/specific cast member—it will be answered! It just may take a bit longer because we’re trying to get answers from as many cast members as possible and most of them are lost in the (cranberry) sauce of post-Thanksgiving vacation and are a bit hard to get ahold of at the moment. 

We just wanted to let you all know so you don’t think your questions are being ignored! Thank you to everyone who has sent in an ask so far, and thank you all again for being such wonderful supporters of B.R.E.A.D.! 

[thebreadseries]

hi! my question is, was this adaptation originally intended to be a live theatre production before the pandemic, or did the idea fall into place after quarantine?

Oh golly, this as a live theatre production...I shudder at the thought. I counted yesterday and I think the nine main episodes together are close to four and a half hours long. So definitely not! I’m sure there’s a fantastic stage play adaptation of the Les Amis’ story to be made, but I don’t think this is it, haha. 

This production was done through our university’s theatre program. I’m a directing major and part of my graduation requirement involves directing stage shows (obviously). I had applied to direct Caryl Churchill’s A Number back in February, but when we were all forcibly removed from our university/Manhattan back in March, the theatre program essentially told us all to start coming up with new ideas for an online season. Some of my peers decided to just do online productions of the shows they had originally applied for, but I was much more interested in doing something made for an online format, as opposed to trying to force what is a very theatrical stage play to work on Zoom. I then proceeded to sit in my bedroom in quarantine for the entire summer, staring into the Void, before the idea for B.R.E.A.D. suddenly hit me (aka, I was sifting through my bookshelf, found my copy of Les Miz, and went “!”)  

- Lee

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

So.. what was the hardest/most complicated ep to make? If I were to guess I'd say the Halloween one since you've mentioned a lot of extra footage O..o

The Halloween episode was the hardest to edit, for sure. (I am embarrassed to say how long it took my amateur film editor-self to figure out how to do that Among Us effect.) I think it took me somewhere in the realm of four days, and then when I went to export it Premiere Pro had the absolute gall to tell me it’d take another five days to encode—when the episode was set to come out in less than ten hours. Cue a panicked all-nighter where I figured out how to make it encode faster. Overall an incredibly traumatizing experience. 

That said, filming-wise, I’d actually say Episode 9 was the hardest for us to put together. Unlike the rest of the episodes which were shot in one-take, the sheer length of the episode + the fact we had four guest stars with varying degrees of availability forced us to film the episode in nine separate sections, which was a pretty mentally confusing experience—especially considering we filmed the end of the episode first, then had to go back to the beginning and act like we weren’t all just getting super emotional at the end! 

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

hi! in curious about the videos that weren’t part of the weekly episode; were they also scripted?

Depends on the video! For the most part though, no, most of the bonus videos were done fairly off-the-cuff, though we all talked about what the general idea/concept for the video would be ahead of time. 

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

I know I didn't explicitely say in my yt comment but the enjoltaire at the end killed me. Like disbelieving-laugh-with-expression-stretched-with-padding-of-a-thousand-puppies killed me. Or, you know, whatever analogy works for a burst of utter utter fondness xD Anyway, I wanted to ask - was the sctipt strictly set before you began creating the footage or did the cast members have a certain leeway in interpretation/were they involved in dialogue choices and such?

Hello hello! First of all, thank you for your comment on the last video, we all absolutely loved the review. :) 

Regarding your question—yes, the entire show (with the exception of Episode 6) was scripted. I wrote Episodes 1-4 and 7-9, and my assistant director, Jayda, wrote Episode 5. That said, if cast members ever felt like a line or a scenario didn’t totally fit their interpretation of their character, they were encouraged to speak up and 9 times out of 10 I would agree with them and change it. Some of the cast members also had a habit of occasionally changing their lines (I am looking firmly and directly at Freddie) while filming, and as long as it didn’t totally mess with the flow of a scene, I’d usually let it slide. 

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

*a vague cluster of les mis feels approaches* I have two very important questions: Are there bloopers? And <i>will we get to see them?</i> *the cluster disappeares in a sudden buzz, leaving only the sense of bemusement behind*

Hi! We actually don’t have many bloopers, believe it or not. One thing we learned over this process is that filming over Zoom requires an absolutely ridiculous amount of concentration/time management skills, so everyone was incredibly focused for the most part. That said...there IS about 40 minutes of extra raw footage from the improvised Halloween episode. I’m not sure if it’s as entertaining as you might imagine it being (it’s a lot of indiscriminate, inebriated screaming), but maybe we’ll release it somewhere down the line!  

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

hello! I wanted to ask...did the cast auditions or something of the sort to get their parts? or everyone was just assigned a role?

Yes, everyone auditioned for the series in late August. Their initial auditions consisted of reading “A Group which barely missed becoming Historic” from Les Misérables, and filming a vlog as their interpretation of one of the Les Amis as described in that chapter (fun fact: about half of the cast initially auditioned for Prouvaire). We then did a series of callbacks where we brought in people to read scenes I had written for certain pairings/trios of characters. The only person who didn’t audition for the show was Colin (Dean Spector) who is a dear friend of mine from high school and a very talented voice actor who was kind enough to hop in and do the part on very short notice from me. :) 

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

Hiii!! It was sort of a running joke in the series that Enjolras hadn’t actually read the brick through but I’m assuming that you guys did actually read the book. What did each of you do? Like did you read the whole thing, read an abridged, read the sections that had the Le Amis, listen to it on audio? Also, which translation did you read? When I found your guys’s videos a few weeks ago it somehow became the final straw that lead to me listening to the full Rose translation. I’m on Part 4 Book 8 rn. Really love it. ✌🏻&🤞🏻

Hi! Great question. I (the creator) have probably read through the full brick at least three times since I was twelve, I think, and have reread various portions (most often Volumes III-V, haha) repeatedly since then, and I think I’ve read most of all the mainstream English translations at least once? I’ve also seen pretty much every film/tv/stage adaptation as well.

As for the rest of the cast and crew, our production designer, Manon, was very familiar with the musical and book, but for the most part the rest of the gang had essentially either seen the musical or nothing at all! (Except our Combeferre, Vivienne, who had read an abridged version in one of her French classes because sometimes life imitates art, what can I say?)

That said, as soon as rehearsals started I forced everyone to sit through what is a now infamous three-hour-long powerpoint presentation explaining the entire plot of the book, the historical context surrounding it, and a biography on Mr. Hugo himself. It was incredibly thorough (some would say too thorough, and by “some” I do mean the entire cast). In addition to that, each cast member was provided with an abridged version of Volumes III-V of the book, as well as even further abridged sections that highlighted their roles in particular. We did about two weeks of character work before the main rehearsals started to make sure everyone had a solid understanding of the original text. 

For the purposes of the series, we primarily used the free digital translation by Project Gutenberg as it was the easiest (and most legal) text to distribute in an online format, though some cast members also bought physical copies of the text. I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the Rose translation! I think it was one of the first ones I read.  

- Lee 

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now!

[thebreadseries]

apologies if this is a weird question, but...what was the budget for this show? i'm genuinely curious!

I’m not entirely certain if we’re allowed to disclose this or not since our...ahem, modest...budget came from our university, but I will say that 90% of our funds may or may not have gone to Halloween costumes for Episode 6, because priorities. 

- Lee

Have a question for the cast and/or crew of B.R.E.A.D.? Ask now! 

[thebreadseries]

we never learned what B.R.E.A.D. stands for and i will not leave until we do

There are actually two meanings—the name of the show, and the name of the organization.

The show’s title stands for: Bring Revolution Everywhere and Die.

The group’s title stands for: Bring Rossiter’s Evil Ass Down (courtesy of the elusive drunk Combeferre) — a phrase, I might add, which has been said more than once in the series, but to my surprise, nobody picked up on!

- Lee

[thebreadseries]

~ Calling all viewers of B.R.E.A.D. ~ 

By popular demand, and in honor of the release of Episode 9, the full cast and crew of B.R.E.A.D. will be answering your questions and comments here on tumblr for as long as y’all want to send them! We’re open to any and all questions and comments, but please keep them relatively kind and respectful otherwise we’ll be sad, you know? And won’t respond because ~good vibes only~ in this household. But y’all have been awesome thus far so we expect nothing but the best of vibes :) 

For your convenience, we’ve included the full credits list from the series below, in case you want to direct your question towards a specific actor or member of the creative team. That said, if you call us by our character names, that’s fine, too. We’d probably all answer to them if you saw us on the street and called them out, it has been like three months. 

B.R.E.A.D.  Created by Lee Melillo Based on Volumes III-V of LES MISÉRABLES by Victor Hugo  Produced as Part of the 2020 Fall Fordham Theatre Studio Season 

Cast: Enjolras – Freddie Bredemeyer Grantaire – Kevaughn Reid Combeferre – Vivienne Blouin  Courfeyrac – Trystan Edwards  Prouvaire – Genesis Yi Bahorel – Ethan Mock Feuilly – Melissa Bautista Joly – Kana Seiki Lesgle – Charles Ko Marius – Nathan Brenn  Éponine – Saman Peyman Cosette – Nikki Nunziato Dean Spector (Javert) – Colin Flaumenhaft 

Creative Team: Writer, Director, & Editor – Lee Melillo Assistant Director & Guest Writer – Jayda Jones Production “Stage” Manager – Olive Fox Social Media Manager – Taylor Samuelson Production Designer & Cinematographer – Manon McCollum Production Manager – Will G. Adams  Assistant Cinematographer – Micah Waid Social Media Assistants – Matthew Green, Aurora Winger