Casting

Even though not a single frame of this movie has been shot, I feel like I could fill the entire DVD commentary track already. So many fun little stories...

Casting is awesome. I've always loved casting. In college, it was a great way to meet new friends that I would reuse for future projects. At my job, it's a fun way to find the right talent for the projects I'm working on. And now, here I am, casting for this feature length production. I'm getting flooded with headshots, and it's a bit overwhelming. Here's the scoop:

An actress friend told me about a site called ActorsAccess.com, which many actors use to find casting notices. So after getting a minor response from posting on myspace, craigslist, and lifilm.com, I posted there. And...wow. Within hours, I was swamped with profiles of people requesting specific roles in this film. And the site is pretty cool because it lets me organize the people I like from the others and then get in touch with them easily.

At this moment, I have over 325 women competing for the lead role. And that's without the Backstage ad going out yet.

Last week, I submit an ad through Backstage.com. It cost $55 for the submission, plus another $10 because I went a little over with the words. Since one of the roles involved nudity, a woman from Backstage got in touch with me requesting the parts of the script with those scenes (to confirm that I wasn't making a porno). I sent it to her right away. Yesterday she called me while I was in my office at work during my lunch break. As I picked up the phone, I accidentally hit the "speaker" button. Of course, the first thing out of her mouth was "your nudity was approved." Luckily no one was around to hear. It was a pretty funny moment.

The Backstage ad goes out in this Thursday's issue, but the online ad went live just an hour ago. I know this because suddenly my inbox is being flooded with headshots again. And who knows what's waiting in my PO Box right now (I can't check it until Saturday). If I had known that ActorsAccess would give me such a huge response, I would've saved the money on placing an ad in Backstage. But still, more headshots can't hurt.

What sucks about casting is that I have to literally turn down hundreds of people. And I just KNOW one of them is going to go on to be the next Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or something.

More on casting fun next time...