Casting - A Beginner's Guide

It would have been nice if we'd been able to cast solely with our friends, but there are way too many parts in this movie for that to have been possible. The only answer was hold an audition.

The fine folks over at Box24 Studios (Dan, Tom, big thanks) let us use their space so that we didn't appear to be completely sketchy.

"Say that line again, but this time I'm going to take my pants off."

A lot of people have asked how I got people to show up, and it was really simple: LA Casting, Actor's Access, and Craigslist. They were all free, so that was a big incentive. LA Casting and Actor's Access have pretty much the same user interface, which is initially confusing but ultimately pretty useful. Hot tip if you use Craigslist: don't put "send your email address and/or phone number" in your post. It causes it to be flagged for removal. Very frustrating.

What happened next blew me away. I got literally 10,000+ replies for the 13 parts I was casting. It was really overwhelming and I started picking people for dumb reasons. "Hey, she looks like that one girl I know," "That's can NOT be his real name," "...is he smoking a cigar in that headshot?" These were all REAL reasons I used. Actors, it's true. Cheap gimmicks are the only way to get noticed.

Yes, sadly this guy is probably getting more work than you.

Other things actors might be interested to know about the perspective of someone on the other end of their submissions is that I rarely looked at anyone's resume, and only if I'd already picked them and was just curious. Just finding people with a look that might work is hard enough, I'm not going to take the time to read about you too. Reels are good, but I cared very little about your one line cameo in CSI, I'd rather see a solid scene in something I've never heard of and looks terrible just to see if you can act.

If you are not Justin Bieber in this scene, please do not put it on your reel. Seriously.

My last bit of advice here was something that I did because, as an actor, it pissed me off when others didn't do it.

Producers, writers, directors, what have you: make your entire script available for potential actors to read. It helps them decide if they even want to do your project for little or no money and it helps them prepare better for the character than one or two pages (or one or two pages from a DIFFERENT MOVIE as one student director tried to make me do).

Seriously, what are you afraid of? First of all, your script is likely not good enough to steal. Second, if it is, what are you going to do once the movie's made? Lock it in a vault so no one can see it? It's just as easy to steal a joke or concept or anything else from a movie as from a script. Get over yourself and let people read your work.

End rant, tune in next time for the actual audition.