#ask the bread

[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.) 

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[thebreadseries]

enjolras what do you think of grantaire exactly

Dear Anonymous Interrogator: 

I do not like this question, but Courfeyrac said I am required to answer it, so here we are. I do not know why you care. Do you not have any questions for me about our mission? Why do you all care about my relationship (or lack thereof) with Grantaire so much? Is there something I’m missing here? Prouvaire keeps giggling whenever I ask her why people seem to have this obsession, so I am keen to assume that there is some sort of book reference that I haven’t captured yet—I am, after all, only a couple hundred pages in. Why is it so long? 

Regardless, I believe you all already know my opinions on Grantaire—or “R,” as I suppose he prefers. He certainly has improved over the last couple of weeks, but he has always been a troublesome member of our organization. He’s always been here, and he’s always been a problem in one way or another. I admit I can sometimes be a little harsh, but when we’re trying to remain serious and stay on task, sometimes it’s necessary. 

I do...hope...our relationship can continue to remain stable and maybe even improve, but I’m not holding my breath, and you shouldn’t either. 

This got a little long, didn’t it? My apologies. I’ll stop now. 

Best, Enjolras 

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[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 

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[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 

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[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 

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[thebreadseries]

How long have you all been meeting?

I assume you mean overall, and not just digitally. Our group was founded on a whim three years ago by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and myself (Combeferre) after an...interesting night...at an off-campus house party we all attended. You would have to ask someone else the details, because to be completely candid I do not remember them. The other members all joined along the way. Feuilly and Bahorel were two of the first, then Joly and Lesgle, and finally Prouvaire. I am...not certain when Grantaire started coming. I’m inclined to say it was more recently, but then again, it feels like he’s always been here. 

x Combeferre 

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[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 

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[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 

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