Thriller Planning - Casting

The casting for our thriller sequence is very important to the success of the piece and how effective and popular it is with our audience. As we have already finalised character profiles, casting the correct people for each character will be an easier task, but we must ensure we have the right people to play the roles, which will now be discussed. This post was originally typed up by Beth, but I have added my own details and gone into more depth where appropriate.

 

Casting for The Detective:

Preferably we need an older male to play the role of the detective as he is in the 30s age range. This may be difficult to find someone to play this role as the only older adults we know are our parents and due to working commitments, may not be able to participate. Other possible males we could cast would be around the age of late teens or early twenties as filming is done at night and makeup can be used in order to make the character appear older. One member of the group, Beth has an 18 year old brother who could be casted. This is because he is over 6ft 4'', therefore a good height but also looks a lot older than he is. He would be willing to take on the role but also would be easy to contact if there was any changes. Another possible casting choice is my older cousin. Only a year older than us, my cousin is approximately 6ft 3" and looks a lot older than he is. Furthermore, he studies Media at A2 and would therefore know what we require of him and would have some knowledge. However for both possiblities here we must acknowledge they may not be available due to University commitments or sixth form and must take this into consideration. We could proceed to ask these two men if they would be able to play the role, and if so, when, and then see if they fit the aspects detailed in our character profile for the Detective and can hence play the role effectively.

Casting for Charlotte Adams:

We have decided that we need a young girl around the age of 12 to play this part. However we can be slightly flexible with the actual age of the child casted as we can make her appear younger through costumes and makeup. The ideal girl would need to have longer, dark hair and can pull off acting in a very mysterious and creepy way. I put forward my sister as being able to play this role - currently 13, she would be able to play this role very well, both in her physical appearance and acting capability. She has little comittments outside of school besides a few dance classes, so I shall enquire about whether she would play the role and when she could, and see if she could also act in the desired manner.

 

Casting for the Shade:

The casting for the Shade is perhaps the easiest job as their bodies and faces will be completely covered, therefore specific mannerisms and appearances are not needed. The only difficulty we may face is we need the Shade's to all be the same build, height etc as they are representing the same character, just in a large quantity. We all have mutual friends who would be willing to play the roles of these Shade's as they are all relatively the same height and build. Although the characters will not all be completely the same build, camera effects can be used to make it appear as though they are ie. the angle of the shot. Most would be available to shoot after sixth form and so on but we would have to ask several potential "Shades" as to what days would be easier for them. The majority of them have no commitments such as a job at weekends.

How to make sure our casting choices are the right ones:

 

In order to make sure these are the correct casting choices, we will hold mini 'auditions' in which we will prepare small scripts and scenarios to see if our casting choices can successfully complete in our desired effect of each character. If for example the ideas we have for the Detective do not match up with what we personally pictured, we can either help to mould our ideals onto that member, or simply try to find someone better suited. This means that we will straight away get the casting dealt with and make it one of our main priorities. This is because if we leave it to the last minute, we may face issues with certain cast members not fitting into what we want them to come across as or issues with them not knowing and arranging other events when we need them to be filmed, which would cause confusion and hence lower the quality of the end product. Taking into consideration our planning, if we ask each of the potential cast if they could play the role i.e. they had the time and then make a short script or scene for them to act out in the style of their role, our casting decisions should be the correct ones.

Here is the full post on the Cast, that links to this post. It further explains why we chose our actors and contains pictures of their appearance and their comparison to other thriller characters (it is more of a Casting update than a stand-alone post):
http://joewestonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/thriller-planning-cast.html