In typical crime/drama films; castings usually consists of a few A list stars to attract a bigger audience. This is because many more people know A list stars so would make them more incline to go and watch the film just purely based on one of more actors/actresses. For instance; in a crime/drama film a character like James Bond played by Daniel Craig a very well known face to many people. Also the same with the character of the Kray Brothers played by Tom Hardy who seems to be cast as dark outcasts, gritty and uncompromising. With A list actors/actresses like Tom Hardy and Daniel Craig audience members can already expect to either see a crime, drama or action film. This is because these are what these types of characters are normally in films that contain these type of genres. Audience members usually know what type of film that they getting into. In our film, we need to cast two females; one a boss so she is very powerful and stern while another one is the victim who is seen as the damsel in distress. For instance for the victim we need an actress like Jennifer Aniston who plays many roles with soppy comedic love stories as the character needs to be a very weak character compared to others in our film. While the character of the Boss needs to be played by someone like Noomi Rapace who plays many tough uncompromising females roles like ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’.
To begin our casting process, we created a list of people’s names, (as seen in the picture below) who we thought could be a potential actors/actress.
We contemplated casting young/middle aged people to get a wider range of options for character representation. We narrowed our list of actors who we believed to two for each character, so that this made the casting easier swifter and cleaner as there were less people being casted for more than one role. Here is what we narrowed it down to:
Auditions
Hitman (Max)
- Archie Lovegrove
- Lewis Odrich Demaille
Victim (Alexandra)
- Addie Brady
- Tiegan Meadows
Boss (Jane)
- Michelle Brady
- Ricky Odrich Demaille
By 12th September, we casted all actors and actresses needed and who the group would be suitable for the film. We cast them by handing them a copy of a snippet of a script from Jay’s deconstructions, asking them to read the lines in an attempt to represent the character in the way that they believed at hand the best they can. We also asked our potential cast if they had any previous acting experience, to gain knowledge of their past to analyse whether that would give them an advantage.
The script we gave them to use:
– I think I should probably tell you. I was married once before.
– What is wrong with you?
– You’re what’s wrong with me.
– It was a drunken Vegas thing.
– That’s better. That’s much better
Auditions/screen test
We didn’t choose Addie for the role of the victim purely on availability. We will be mostly filming our trailer on a weekend as that gives us the whole day to film and hopefully all on one day. However, while casting Addie she made it aware that she plays netball every Sunday and works during the middle of Saturday. She was a good contestant as she takes drama classes throughout the week and during her casting process she got very much into the characters and I believe if we had of cast her she would have even got more into a character. Disappointing that her schedule was so busy.
Even though Tiegan wasn’t on the initial casting list we choose Tiegan to play the role of Victim over Addie as she had a lot of drama and theatrical experience. Tiegan does drama outside at the Harlow Playhouse but she also take drama as an A Level so she is very experience. In her casting video the group believed that she really got into her character and believed that in the trailer she would pull the victim character across very well.
In the end for the role of The Boss we ended up choosing Michelle. Even though she has no acting experience or any drama experience the group decided to choose Michelle as she came across very well in her casting video. Jackie another lady that we cast was also very reluctant to portray her character in the casting video as much as she could so she didn’t come across to the group as theatrical as Michelle did.
We didn’t choose Ricky to play the role of the Boss as the group believed that Michelle delivered her lines better. Michelle had more power than Ricky that we would want the Boss to portray in our trailer. Ricky also sadly again couldn’t commit to filming days as Lewis was her son so she would have to take him to rugby on the weekends. However, we did believe that Ricky had the best look for the Boss as the very short hair made the character seem more dangerous, and scary towards the audience when she would wear a red blouse.
We didn’t choose Lewis for the role of the Hitman purely on availability. The group believed that he played the character in the casting video very well and he was nervous to go full out for the character. However, as Lewis plays a lot of rugby including county and Saracens he is unavailable to be able to film anything on either of the weekend days which is ideally the days that we would probably film.
Even though Cameron wasn’t on the initial casting list we choose Cameron the play the role of the Hitman as he has lots of drama experiences from being in productions at school to performing in front of a large audience at his drama school. In his casting video the group believed that he really got into the roll and that he was really passionate about acting and for this reason we choose Cameron
Group Castings:
In the end, the cast members for our trailer are Tiegan playing the role of the Victim (Alexandra), Cameron playing the role of the Hitman (Max) and Michelle playing the role of the Boss (Jane).https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=9xwCKvTn8w0
Skylar Brady 