Casting

Casting Director

A casting director works with the director and producer to source talent and arrange auditions. They listen to the directors requirements and find the talent who are suitable for the project. They have an extensive knowledge in upcoming talent, existing actors and have contacts for their agents. Their responsibility is to find the right actor suitable for the role which includes researching experience, ability, reputation, availability and box office appeal.

They also work closely to the accountant to prepare casting budgets. All cast including extras are run through the casting director. Main cast will need to audition infront of the director. 

When I worked on 'My Best Friends Wedding' over the summer, I was appointed to be the directors assistant as his assistant had to fly back to china for a few days. I had an opportunity in sitting in with auditions to see how they approached the casting. I had already met up with the casting director in the pre-production meeting, Urvashi Chand. 

Urbashi hired a room in Spotlight - a casting agency in Central London. Things I saw and learnt were, auditions were recorded by someone in the back filming, Urvarshi had a scripts ready for everyone in the room watching the audition. 

• Urvashi has an assistant who brings the next cast into the room going through the list. Each audition is in 30min time slots.
• The director asks the person to sit down next to him. It is quite informal. He asks questions about the actress and gives a chance for them to speak about their background and why they want to act and why they want the role. 
• The actress then plays out the role from the script. If the director likes them, he would ask them to go through the script again but directed in a different way. This is to see if they can take directions well.
• After the audition, he would discuss with everyone else about the acting, the actor and ask for their opinions about them including mine.

Taking this into my own production, this is how we would run the auditions.

Searching for talent

After finalising ideas for 3 stories I have all the information needed to be able to write up a casting call.

We managed to keep to a small number of actors so it would be easier to manage with cast, crew and location availability. Also we have decided to use the same 3 actors throughout the films, we feel that based on short films keeping the same actors will give the actors more screen time, and as a series it would look interesting to see them playing different characters such as the successful series American Horror Stories.

Deciding payment for actors was difficult because we would like to pay for the actors the minimum wage, but as we have to raise the money we wouldn't know if we can raise enough money to hit the target for our budget. I researched into wages for actors at 'Equity', who is the UK trade union that represents performers and other artists working across the live and recorded entertainment industry and supports The Actors’ Guild of Great Britain. I couldn't find the information I needed so I have emailed John Ainslie a representative of the South East England branch about the basic requirements. 

At the moment we have discussed about paying £90 per actor for all 3 films. So £30 per film would be appropriate considering we will not be paying travel expenses. With not paying for travel expenses we are hoping actors applying for the role would be living nearer the shooting location.

Information given in casting sites will be as follows:

Title: Actor and Actress wanted in a series of short fantasy horror

About the project:

This project will entail a series of 3 short adaptation of fables each episode about 5mins in length. The project will be in the Fantasy/Horror genre shot in the beautiful countryside with amazing landscapes in Kent.

What we are looking for:

2 Male actors

1 Female Actress

What we want from you:

We will need you for all 3 short films in which the stories will not correlate with each other apart from the fantasy/horror genre. Each film will involve 3 characters, so you will be working with the same 3 actors throughout the film. 

It will require you to be able to attend make-up tests and costume fittings as both of these departments will be tailor made to your fitting.

As we will be shooting between January and March, the daylight will be shorter so you must be punctual, especially as we will require time to apply your make-up.

Shoot dates:

January - March 2016

What you get in return:

Each actor will be given the opportunity to take a lead role in their own episode, so it will give you a chance to shine in your own episode. The role entails for you to act for 3 different characters (1 character per film), so it will give you a chance to show your acting skills for future jobs.

Salary: £90 for all 3 productions.

Who else we have involved:

The chosen candidates will also be working with the guidance of Jutta Russell in the make-up department, who has worked on films such as 47 Ronin starring Keanu Reeves, Thor: The Dark World starring Chris Hemsworth and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy starring Gary Oldman.

We posted the casting ad online on Starnow and CastingCallPro as we have started getting into the industry these were the two sites we knew existed. 

We had to call for auditions twice because we didn't have a great turnout for the male roles.

I also know that Spotlight exists but you need to pay membership and most of the actors would be under agencies where we will be charged a set agreement for the actors. I decided not to post an ad on spotlight because I know from our budget for our cast we only have a set £90 for 3 films not inclusive of travel. We are not trying to exploit our actors as we are trying to give them something back, but it would be lovely to have actors on board who want to be involved in our project because they are interested in our project and not for the money only.

26th October

I have received an email about pay by equity and it suggests to pay actors £110 per day. As this is a low/no budget shoot, we can not afford to pay that at the moment, but if we raised more than enough money we would try to pay the actors a bit more.

Auditions

Going through auditions to help find the right cast. The right cast will be able to communicate promptly if there are any problems, be punctual, able to act, think creatively on the spot and through this we can find out if they are available to work on days we need to shoot. Running face to face auditions will help.

Communications

We will be watching how they communicate by monitoring their emails and how they communicate back to us. We will also be able to see how much they are interested in working on our project. Communication is important because if something happens or is wrong, or if they have any concerns we need to know that they are willing to ask any questions if anything arises or tell us any problems they have before the shoot to make adjustments if necessary.

Punctuality

Cast and crew need to be punctual. In the professional industry locations can be costly and if people are running behind schedule, it means the cost of locations will rise. Sometimes locations can only be booked for a certain amount of time. If shoots are running behind schedule and as a result having to shoot another day, it can be costly because of paying locations, cast, crew and hiring equipment an extra day. 

In our case, because we will be shooting outdoors in the winter, there is only a limited amount of daylight, and actors will need to spend an hour for the make-up artists to apply make up.

Acting Skills and Creativity

We would like to see how creative actors can be rather than to follow acting school rules of acting. We like to see if the actors have listened to our stories and adapted scenarios towards the character profiles and to see if they can develop an interesting character rather than taking characters from other films and re-enacting the scenario. We like our characters to be unique, with their own personality rather than reminding audience of other characters in other films.

Face to Face

Running face to face auditions can let us see the personality of the actors. We need to make sure the actors are able to work with the rest of the cast and crew. Online profiles can be slightly different than when meeting the person themselves in real life. When actors attend the auditions, it shows they are dedicated to getting to locations whenever and wherever asked. This means they are reliable and willing to travel for the project.

Casting Form

The audition forms they will be filling out when they arrive will give us all the important information when we select the cast. The calendar they will fill out will show us what dates cast can work on, which will help me when booking locations. Questions like if they own a car will show us if they are able to travel freely without us having to worry about them getting to locations. This is because locations we have suggested will need the cast and crew to be able to get to easily via car.

Contact details and emergency contact details are important incase anything happens to the actor whilst working with us.

Allergies and medical conditions will allow us to know if there are certain scenes that affects the actor, such as back problems. Which means keeping the actor safe from damaging their backs such as climbing great heights, lifting heavy weights etc... Allergies will let us know what actors cannot eat which will help us with ordering/buying food in catering.

Asking where actors look for casting will provide us with more places to put out an ad in the future to find more people to apply for castings.

I have put a statement at the bottom of the form so the actors understand how much they will be getting paid, which does not include any travel costs but food expenses will be paid for. This is so they do not ask for more money at the end of the project which could cost us.

Final decisions with chosen actors and why.

Our final decisions are:

Yasmine Daniels

Yasmine was great with communicating back to us. Wanted to audition as early as possible, which showed her commitment to waking early for the audition. She showed excitement for the project and was determined to get into the acting industry even though she hasn't been to acting school. We loved how creative she is when approaching the scenarios and believe she can play different roles. Her personality is fun, confident but not overly confident and able to play a bad ass chick which would be great for the role of Scarlett. With directions she will be able to play Stephanie because the character for Stephanie is much more toned down, like an average chick.

Leo Ulph

Leo is also a great communicator. He always replies back promptly. Arrived early with auditions and has a lovable personality. Loved his creativity using the space provided acting from coming off screen to on screen playing the character. Slight problem was taking another character and applying it into the scenario. With this he would be great as the Hunter in Protecting nature story as he is young looking and able to improvise.

 Mathew Sandland

Matthew travelled from Crewe just to audition which shows great commitment. When asked about accommodation, he was happy to travel and stay with friends in London so he doesn't have to travel too far when shooting. Showed great creativity with the Devourer scenario. The only person who was  able to scare both Hannah and I when in character. Made great use of the camera set up, approaching to camera as the character. He shows great potential playing the Devourer as he listened carefully to the character profile. Where other actors failed to realise a devourer is not a vampire but a should eater, which means they do not need to touch the victim when eating souls. We have to be careful that Matthew does not mis-read important dates, things to bring etc... as he overlooked that the audition he applied for was a student film although he didn't mind applying for the role as he was interested in our project.