So here we are. Thirty days until lift off. We’ve got most of the supporting roles cast and next week, we will be auditioning the leads. Getting experienced actors who both look the part, and can get under its skin, is a delicate balancing act. Compounded by our low budget.
What to do? Well, for the roles we’ve cast to date, we’ve been fortunate. We were able to tap into a talented, experienced pool of actors via friends. Jason has lived and worked in Hollywood for two decades and he knows a veritable shit-ton of people in “the biz”. And working with folks you know, both in cast and crew, can make the difference, as a friend put it, “between a production that really flies and one that soars.”
But we are still left with some department head slots unfilled and the leads uncast. I’ll get into the crew and equipment next time, but for casting we’ve used two sites: NowCasting and ActorsAccess.
Both sites allow you to post casting calls, to receive resumes and reels from interested candidates, and to organize them. NowCasting produced nearly 200 applicants, from which we’re scheduling dozens of auditions. The site allowed us to pre-screen at the project level (e.g. union, v. non-union), or at the role level (e.g. by age, special skills). This alone saves us from hours of time wasted at an open call. You then do your best to describe each role and to pitch yourself as a project. Remember, if you’re a low budget film, even if you’re offering the lead, you’re asking someone to give their all for weeks. For little or no pay. They better like the project. They better like you.
The extra cool thing for us was that within minutes of my posting, someone called me and advised me on how to improve my post! A few nudges later and it was live. Even coming off of a holiday weekend we had dozens of resumes within the hour.
When an actor submits for the role, you see their headshots, resume, reel and contact info. You can mark them yes, no or maybe. You can copy or move them to a role you think might be more appropriate or file them for later projects. In fact, we have auditions lined up for actors in roles we hadn’t intended on casting this way. They don’t have to submit in order for you to try and audition or cast them, you can search for actors yourself and add them to the project as well. You can schedule with a point and click.
We haven’t posted to ActorsAcess yet, rather our Casting Director has used that site to find actors appropriate for the leads and we’ve found some of our most promising talent that way. After our casting sessions next week, we may decide to go ahead with a post to ActorsAccess. We found that most of our actors were listed with both, but depending on how they were listed, we couldn’t always add them to our schedule so it’s best to use both. Why not? They’re free and have a wealth of talent listed.
Speaking of our casting sessions next week, our Hollywood HQ can’t hold that many peeps. Nor could we afford to rent casting space at upwards of $200 a day. Enter Cazt. Cazt is a social network for actors, with a number of really sweet services. You can record your audition and watch or share it online, read feedback from the casting directors or notes from your acting coach. As an extension of that service, they also allow casting directors and producers use their casting facilities. For. Free. As a bonus they record and upload your sessions for you. In our case, I’m in NY, and this is the best way for me to see the auditions and for Jason to review them for call backs.
We’ll be in there next week from Wednesday through Friday. We couldn’t be more stoked. I know I said we’d touch on marketing in this segment, but I lied. I’m a producer.
In part three we’ll review a little bit of how casting went, where to get crew and indeed get into the marketing. Maybe. In the meantime, here’s a link to part one if you didn’t catch it.
