At the same time as location scouting, the most important aspect of a pre-production has to take place, casting! It’s great having a place to film the movie, but without anyone to shoot, all that effort will be for naught. As with locations, we had written ourselves a very challenging situation. We needed to cast two young, older teenage boys, one of whom had to be sixteen, the other eighteen. The role required characters to run up and down steep slopes, bathe in a muddy river, and do a stunt that gives the illusion of a stab wound.
Multiple factors were then necessary for us to correctly decide on a cast member:
1) They each had to be a good actor- this may seem obvious but this is always difficult to find and it is too easy a trap to cast someone based on their availability instead of their talent. A decision where talent is not number one will lead to a bad film, plain and simple.
2) They had to be pleasant- One of the issues that can ruin a film is an actor who does not actually want to work on the movie. They will be waiting for the day to pass and put in no effort in their performance. In addition, negative demeanor with the crew could cause unnecessary friction. One of the key things to look for in an audition is an actor who’s attitude will enhance the morale on the film.
3) They needed to look the parts- A clear distinction between a good casting choice and a poor one is if the actor actually resembles the character in the script. When they don’t, the entire film comes off as unrealistic. The illusion gets ruined.
In order to meet the challenge of this demographic, we needed to broaden the scope of our search as much as possible. In addition to posting casting calls on DragonukConnects and Mandy, we also emailed a number of local theatres, schools, and camps. These resources helped broaden our pool of possible actors, which made it easier to make a good decision. After auditioning a large number of talent, we came up with our cast, Parker Damm, and our lead, Mitch Holson. With locations and casting resolved, two of the major hurdles of pre-production had passed.
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