If you’re currently holding casting sessions / auditions for your next film, you’ll want to be as organized as possible. This blog post will help you organize your casting sessions, and we’ll also go through important casting techniques use by professional casting directors and filmmakers.
When you bring actors into your casting space you’ll want to ensure you use a casting schedule to organize your days. When you’re auditioning actors your days will likely be long because you can only see so many people during the course of a day and casting is one of the most important pre-production steps in the independent filmmaking process.
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Message by: Lights Film School
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Important Points to Consider When Casting for a Film
1. You’re not trying to make friends. You’re trying to fill the cast for a great film. The majority of people who show up for your casting will not be able to fill the character profiles you’re trying to fit. Don’t be mean, but don’t make false promises or give actors a false sense of hope if you don’t think you’ll be calling them for a call back.
2. A great way to meet actors as an independent filmmaker is to hold open casting sessions. When you do this you’re inviting a mixture of talented and untalented people into your casting space, but you might find a few acting gems and get glimpses into character ideas that you might otherwise not think about. It’s a great idea to build a database of local acting talent if you a filmmaker. One great resource to use is meetup.com (a professional networking site). You’ll be able to start a filmmaker and actor collaboration group where you can work with a local actors and filmmakers on various creative processes (i.e. developing and shooting short scenes just to test out script ideas). This puts actors in a non competitive environment and it gives you the opportunity the network, build an actor database and build your reputation with local actors.
3. Look for actors with experience and a passion for the craft. Don’t cast someone simply based on looks. If the actor can’t make a genuine connection with your character then the script will sound contrived and you’ll jeopardize your entire production. Looking for acting talent should always be your first priority.
4. Film the casting session. Don’t rely on your memory or quickly scribbled notes.
5. Make the actors feel comfortable. By default an audition is a competitive process and actors tense up because of this. Even great actors become nervous as the thought of auditions. A good rule of thumb is to allow the actor to do at least 1 take where you let them know it’s “risk free”. They can do whatever they want with the interpretation of the lines.
6. Especially at first, allow actors to use space however they feel comfortable. It’s great to watch an actor’s body language but if they feel more comfortable in a stationary position or sitting down, then allow them to do a reading like that in order for them to get comfortable first.
Remember, you want to hire someone for the part. Intimidating the actors or making them feel uncomfortable will only work against you as a filmmaker. Even if the actor senses you’re burnt out by a long day of casting they will start to doubt themselves. They may interpret your poor body language or lack of enthusiasm as “They don’t seem interested. They probably found the perfect actor earlier in the day and they are just auditioning me because they scheduled me and they don’t want to be impolite by kicking me out”. If you make an actor feel like this they are likely not to expose their true “self” to you.
7. Try to compliment at least 1 part of the actor’s performance. If they feel their doing a good job, that could help them build momentum for the second take. As a casting director it’s important to not only look for the bad in a performance.
8. Ask the actor if they have any questions about the script, the story, an interpretation.
9. Don’t forget to let them know what the process is for call-backs and how you’ll go about letting people know if they got the part of if they didn’t get the part.
10. Always bring copies of the script for the actors to read off of if they need to.
11. Try to see each actor for 15- 30 minutes. This gives you enough time to talk about your production, make the actor feel relaxed, run through the lines a couple of times and even give the actor a bonus read for another character. You may have envisioned an actor for a particular charter but they may surprise you in the audition and really emotionally attach with one of the other characters.
Enjoy the casting process!