Great news is that in our first three weeks there have been 44 feature films uploaded onto the site… many of which are seeking to recruit crew and cast – even if they don’t post a job many are still seeking talent on the site!
We have, of course, only just started and there will be lot improvements as more members sign up!
For now, there are a couple of links that will help you -
Actor Jobs – to find our latest film castings
Movie Jobs – to find our latest film crew positions
By Jane Deitch and Glenn Bexfield, Casting Directors (Bexfield Deitch Associates)
If you’re a producer desperately trying to make your film, more often than not you’re desperately stretching your miniscule budget to cover all creative bases. You’ll shave a bit off this, cut back a bit on that, reluctantly admit that maybe the helicopter shot is a tad on the ambitious side. Perhaps you say to yourself who can I shave from the production team? Unit PR? Can’t do that because no one will see my film… Surely you don’t need a casting director? Isn’t that something that you can handle yourself? Ring round a few agents, set up some casting sessions?
Most top film producers choose not to. For one simple reason: A good casting director is a key part of the team and offers unparalleled creative support to the director and practical, financial support to the producer. i.e. they save the Producer money!
But that’s not all: an experienced casting director offers a panoply of skills, and in this article, hopefully we can provide a little guidance on what these skills are, and how you can make best use of them!
1. Knowledge of actors
That’s our job – Spotlight is seared into our brains! We go to West End theatre, Regional theatre, Fringe theatre, Student theatre – trawling for talent. (In the same way we’ll now be adding One Fat Cigar as part of our armoury to view showreels and have knowledge of new talent – particularly on the international market.) It’s our area of expertise – employing a casting director gives you access to a huge store of knowledge, covering all areas of the media.
2. Imagination / Creativity
The best casting directors are able to think creatively, offer suggestions that may seem wild but can often give the film a real commercial boost. A piece of surprise casting can work to make a piece stand out in the (very crowded) marketplace.
If brought on board early enough, a casting director can be an excellent sounding board for the director/writer during the development of the script. We read hundreds of scripts and can offer character suggestions which may make certain roles more appealing to a “star” name. Also, we can suggest economies of scale by the merging of certain roles, or by pointing out expensive one-liners.
Sometimes we can also make you aware at this point if, in our opinion, a role may be non-castable (or at least so specific in its brief as to make the available choices extremely limited). This can avoid an expensive search later which may ultimately prove fruitless or result in a sub-standard performance.
3. Pragmatism
Amazingly, not everyone is gagging to work on your project! An awful lot of time is wasted by making unrealistic approaches. A good casting director will, at the right time, offer sage advice and draw upon previous experience to know when approaches will be in vain. That’s not to say that, on occasion, you won’t snag a Hollywood star, but the casting director will facilitate this in the right and proper professional manner. When a script is sent out again and again and again to actors who are very unlikely to accept, the currency of the script is gradually diminished and instead of an exciting new project, it becomes the film that no-one will touch.
4. Contacts and Negotiation skills
Now, be honest! Do you really want to spend most of your days in pre-production setting up auditions, sorting out availabilities and negotiating deals with agents? Do you want to spend hours back and forth haggling about availability? fees? billing? trailers? travel? accommodation? back-end? dvd commentary? festival attendances? visas? Have you got the time to play hard-ball and be a diplomat all at once?
And be in no doubt, a casting director can save you money! We don’t have a one-off relationship with the agents just for your film – our relationships have been built up over years and are founded on mutual trust and respect. Because both parties want that to continue, we draw upon massive goodwill and co-operation and will deliver sound, fair deals beneficial to all. These relationships have the added advantage of an ongoing dialogue with the agents allowing us to know when certain “exciting” artists are looking for something that fits with your script.
Be aware, also, that agents would much rather deal with a casting director than directly with a producer and director. We can get much further in pursuing certain artists.
5. Judgement
Good casting directors have an instinct for performance. In casting sessions, a busy director, with his/her mind on a million things at once, can sometimes dismiss an auditionee after one reading because they didn’t give what the director wanted straight away. It’s our job to see beyond that and not let the potentially perfect candidates slip through the net.
We are also there as a sort of control mechanism. Good casting sets a piece apart, but bad casting can destroy it. Directors are loyal people and often like to work with the same actors again and again. This can work – but often it results in actors being shoe-horned into roles for which they are not right. Bad for the film – bad for the actor. The casting director should aim to steer the director away from such decisions.
6. Efficiency
Casting Directors take the strain of this whole process. Allow us to make suggestions for you to consider, allow us to do all the checking on the actors in which you’re interested, allow us to set up auditions, run casting sessions and introduce you to lots of talented actors, allow us to deal with the agents, negotiate the deals and to deliver a great cast.
Not to employ a casting director is a false economy – it really is a time-consuming and often tricky business to do it right. Having a casting professional in place strengthens the overall impression of a project in good shape, engenders confidence in the agents that this is a project of worth and facilitates an often fraught process.
Next time: How the Casting Process works!
http://www.bexfielddeitch.co.uk
Have Questions? Comment Below.
Things to do…
Since we’re now very close to the first phase of our launch, we thought we’d try and explain how it is possible for film makers to use our movie website, One Fat Cigar, to cast and crew your projects and apply for actor jobs/production jobs. The functionality we’re about to describe won’t all be there from our launch (we’re still testing a lot of it and doing our best to get it ready in time!), but by Christmas we hope to have most of the below working and provide a really great resource for film makers, casting directors and actors. As you can imagine this is a big work-in-progress so please bear with us – it will take a bit of time for us to iron out all the bugs before we can begin to add some additional ‘luxury’ features!
First of all, the site is designed to cope with developing projects from day 1 of script. This means that you can upload video about your project, what you’re trying to achieve, discuss it, and of course, get feedback from fans and friends. As you go through the various stages you’ll be able to add your key team members (Director, Cinematographer, Set Designer, Runner, Casting Director etc.) who will all be featured on the project profile. If you want they can do interviews, behind the scenes filming, images from location scouting, and written blogs and provide this as more info on your project – you can do as little or as much as you like.
What we like about it is that casting and crewing your project works as part of the mechanism. If you want you will be able to do video casting (i.e. upload a video/piece to camera which talks about the role you are offering and what you are seeking) and also key in certain information about the position. Otherwise, it can be done as a traditional job posting in text format.
For Actors and Casting Directors this ties in neatly, so that if you post a role to the site you will be able to a) make it visible to everyone or b) it will only appear and be visible to Actors who meet the criteria of the role – so this means that Actors have to be as accurate as they can with their primary information, but those who do see the role know they have a chance of getting it!!! (This is a priority so we should have this working shortly after launch).
Actors can then apply with their bio/cv and a brief note as well as a showreel and preferred headshot, which the production team can then shortlist. We’re working on some nice functionality for the short listing.
When we launch phases 2 and 3 for Pro members, Casting Directors will be able to directly contact Agents who can recommend Actors on their books with profiles on the site – and this will be particularly useful for movie projects, and major feature film productions. Therefore, if you have an agent, get them on the site when we launch the secondary phases – it will help you get some great roles!
Film makers can, of course, contact actors or crew directly if they like them for a particular role/position, so we’ve placed some emphasis on the showreel since, aside from the C.V. this is a real (excuse the pun!) selling point.
For Crew, the process is similar, but since Crews may have multiple skills – i.e. you may be an editor who can also work a camera – then we’ll cover for this in how the jobs are presented. They’ll still appear in your newsfeed/page and it will be easy to manage which positions you’ve applied for, which have said yes, “you’re on the shortlist” and those which have said, “not this time!” All applications are, of course, kept private and confidential to the general populous on the site.
Once selected for a role, you can be added to the cast or crew for the project, and this then automatically updates your ‘Credits/Filmography’. It’s that simple.
So that’s a first bit of insight into how casting and crewing will work. As always we’d love your feedback so let us know if there’s things you hate about other sites, and we’ll try not to make the same mistakes!
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