Casting Turn-Ons and Turn-Offs

So here we are...I'm at over 700 headshots and I'm beginning to make calls and drop e-mails (if you've submitted, and you're reading this, know that this will take me a few days so don't freak out yet if you haven't heard from me at this point).

I wanted to drop some tips for actors on submitting their material to filmmakers. Now I'm by no means a professional, so don't take my opinions as gospel. These are simply my personal guidelines that I use when selecting who would proceed to the audition stage...

Turn-Offs

1. Don't bother sending if your traits don't match the casting submission. I know that somewhere, there's an acting school where they tell you to submit to every casting call you see no matter what. I'm here to tell you . . . DON'T. If you don't match what I'm looking for, I'm dropping you immediately. I'm NOT saving you on file somewhere for future considerations. There's no point for me to do that . . . by the time I get to my next film, your material will be outdated anyway (you might not even be acting anymore). So if I'm casting twenty-something men, I don't want a headshot from a forty-something woman. It's a nuisance and a waste of my time and patience.

2. Get your information right, and please proofread your queries. Again, I realize that actors send as many headshots out per day as possible, but that's no reason to be sloppy. Get the name of the movie right, get the name of the character you want right, and get my name right! It seems like this should go without saying, but you'd be surprised. Mistakes like this aren't grounds for immediate disqualification, but rubbing me the wrong way right off the bat isn't helping your cause.

3. Don't try to fake me us with your headshots. Let's call a spade a spade. If you're a heavy set man, be a heavy set man. Don't send me a headshot where some professional photographer has gone out of his way with make-up and angles and camera tricks to make you look thinner. Be yourself, because you're not fooling anyone. If the casting director wants a blonde for his movie, and you're a redhead who sends him a black and white photo, sooner or later he's going to see that you're a redhead. The second you walk into that audition, the casting crew can see what you really are. And if what they see grossly mismatches what they thought they'd get from your headshot, you're not in a good position.

4. The Internet is public domain. Everything you put on the 'net is up for grabs. This means that you might be googled, or looked up on myspace (sometimes to make sure you didn't violate the rule above). It's unfair, but it's a truth that holds to all occupations, not just acting. Never post anything you wouldn't want a casting director to find.

5. Show up. If you get an audition, show up. Only an emergency should hold you back (and you should still call). From my experience through my job, there are always a few drop-outs. Not only is that unprofessional, but it's also downright rude. A casting person went through many headshots and selected YOU. He could've picked someone else . . . someone who would've shown up. If you want to be an actor, be professional.

Turn-Ons

1. Personalized notes are great. I love any form of personalized cover letter or note with the headshot. Drop my name, tell me you like my movie idea . . . flattery will get you everywhere with me. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm a sucker for post-it type notes written in pen that are attached to headshots. Since I'm casting for a comic book movie, a few applicants have told me who their favorite characters are. This shows me that you took a little extra time to pursue my project, and that shows the potential for commitment. It's a great start.

2. Give web sites and videos. We live in a digital age. If you drop me a web site, I'll check it out. It only takes a few moments and the more images, the better. Video is also great. I'd love to see you in action. Sometimes, this helps me decide to drop a person from the running before they get to the next stage. That sounds like a negative for the actor, but it's really a plus. Remember, you're not going to fool a casting director. If you act poorly in person, you'll be dropped and you've wasted a trip. If you act poorly in a video, then you can be dismissed earlier and save us all the time and trouble.

3. Be cool. If you're applying for a small time Long Island movie, you haven't hit it big yet. This means you're in no position to be a diva. Be nice to the casting director and film director. Make your e-mails friendly. Come to the audition with a positive personality. Sell yourself. Be a person that we'd want to spend a lot of time hanging around with (because eventually, we will be).

That's about all I can think of right now, but maybe I'll add more over time.

By the way, a good place to cast (if you can't get a theater or school) is a meeting room in a hotel. You might be lucky like me and get a decked out one for a few hundred a day, and they'll set it up exactly to meet your needs.

'Till next time, folks!

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...

The lead character is now a girl

Not too long ago, I had a business lunch with a man named Michael LaVoie at Grand Central Station in New York City. Michael has signed on to be the director of photography for "Bagged and Boarded," and if you check out the demo on his web site, you'll see that he's going to help turn in a quality project for us.

Michael and I were talking about the script and brainstorming on what could be done to make it a little different. In a sea of comedies featuring a bunch of white dudes talking, we wanted this project to stand out a little more. I mentioned that not a single role in the script is ethnically specific, and we can do anything with that. Then Michael dropped a helluva idea on me. He said, what if you swap the parts of Cole and Alexis. If you remember, the original draft starred Cole, with appearances by his ex-girlfriend Alexis. But Micahel went on to say that when I switch the roles, don't change anything else. Have a female lead that goes completely against type. I kind of laughed at the idea but acknowledged how bold it was.

Then, on the train ride home, it stewed in my brain for a little. It was bold. And bold was what I needed. With each stop I passed, I loved the idea more and more. Sure, I'd have to make some plot-related adjustments, but it could work. Why not?

The original Cole was somewhat of a "Mickey Mouse" character. He was a little plain, and his supporting characters (Goofy and Donald) were carrying the story. By making Cole a girl, the character became anything but plain. She was almost iconic. Plus, what fanboy isn't going to love the idea of a cute gal hanging out at a comic book store? Suddenly, my movie hit a new level of originality that excited me greatly.

It was quite a process changing Cole to Cola (short for "Nicola," which I find to be a pretty name). I adjusted a few jokes, tweaked the story a little, and had fun with the character (but barely touched her dialogue).

After months of talk, Michael and I officially joined forces on this project (signed the contract) today. I can tell he's going to be a great force for this film, and I'm glad to have him on.

Things they don't tell you about

As you can see on the main site, we’ve started the casting process. This is always my favorite part. So far I’ve submitted to Back Stage East, Myspace, and LIfilm.com. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to launch a full-on web campaign to get as many headshots in as possible. While casting is always a blast for me, it is also a warm welcome after a long haul of the more-frustrating parts of filmmaking. Since no one really took a lot of time to tell me all of the parts that suck about making a movie, I’m going to drop them right here for all you budding filmmakers.

5. Money. Now this goes without saying, but no matter how prepared you think you are for how much this will cost, it will cost more. Before I got into this project, I read a lot of books on low-budget, renegade-type filmmaking. I thought “yeah, we’re going to get in there guerilla-style and get what we need and get out, and cut every cost possible.” And it can be done that way, but it just didn’t turn out that way for me. I’ve surrounded myself with a crew that likes to “play by the books,” which is better because it provides a more professional looking product in the end. But still, we’re not that “let’s run on to private property, shoot real fast, and take off” crew I thought we’d be. The good news is that with all of this boring paperwork and these technicalities, my ass is covered from every angle. Still, so many expenses will pop up that you’re not ready for. And things will go wrong. But speaking of paperwork...

4. Insurance. In all the books I’ve read, the chapter that was missing the most should’ve been called “Everything You Need to Know About Insurance.” First of all, you need to insure a LOT of stuff. I’m insuring the equipment that my DP uses, some of the locations that we’re shooting at…I even need to insure the auditorium we’re using for casting! In areas like where I live, it seems that no one will let you do anything anywhere without insurance. And you can’t blame them…I mean, they have the right to cover their asses too. But this is an expense that I don’t think any amateur filmmaker is ever prepared for. Plus, it’s not a walk in the park to get liability insurance. Major companies, like Geiko, don’t even handle that type of insurance in New York State. I had to make many calls before I found a friendly, local firm that would help me out. Now I’m waiting 3-5 business days for a quote for one location.

3. Free Help. Here’s the thing about getting free help from friends. Unless they’re big into filmmaking themselves, 90% of them are all talk. It sucks but it’s true. When you’re fantasizing about a script you’ve yet to write, and you’re running it by your buddies, they’ll all be real quick to volunteer help. But when the time comes to ask for favors, either they’ve lost interest or they don’t have the time. Again, you can’t really blame them. This is YOUR project, not theirs. They’ve got other priorities. When they volunteered to help you, they were under the impression that they’d get to help with a fun part or two, and then see their name in the credits. They don’t consider that they might actually have to WORK. If you get one friend who puts in the effort to truly help out from beginning to end (for free), you hang on to that friend for life. You are in their debt.

2. Time. If you’re a nine-to-fiver like me, and you’re doing all of this film stuff in the evenings or weekends, then you understand the frustrations of time. A lot of stuff I need to do involves the bank, the post office, numerous law offices, etc. But you see, they’re all nine-to-fivers too. This simply means that none of these places are open when I get home from work. Some of them might be open for a few hours on Saturday, so every week I find myself driving around town on Saturday morning racing to get as much down as possible. Banking is the worst. My business account is with Washington Mutual, which is the best for what they offer. Yet they’re open for about five minutes on Saturdays. This is probably why they can offer the best rates for your account…because they don’t have to pay for too many employee hours. I started planning for this movie around Sept ’06, and it felt like there was so much time. But time is never on your side when you’re making a movie, and now I’m racing to make my goal to start shooting in Sept ’07.

1. Ordering. I’m learning a lot here with my first crack at a motion picture, but the one beginner’s mistake I keep making deals with ordering. As in, how to order events. I could have saved so much time if I knew how to order things a little better. For example, I filed for a business, and THEN got a business PO Box. This is minor, but I should’ve got the PO Box first before anything else (so I’d have the business address when I filed). I also should’ve written the treatment before the script, signed all location contracts before casting, etc. The problem with ordering is that so many things are dependent on so many other things. Even right now, there are dozens of next steps I need to take, but I can’t figure out which one to take first.

This might be the most important blog on filmmaking that I’ve written yet. If you’re even considering doing a major project of your own, please please print this out and tape it to your fridge. It might save you a day or work, or it might save you a few hundred dollars. The scary thing is that there are still so many unexpected things left to learn. There might be another list just like this one within a week. Who knows. That’s what makes filmmaking so damn scary. But is it worth it?

Oh you bet your ass it is.

The Treatment

Sorry it's been a little bit; a lot of things have been in the works over the past few weeks. Even though the script is done and copyrighted and ready to go, I've recently been considering a change that'll turn the whole film on its head. More on that in the near future.

In the meantime, I thought I'd write (a long overdo entry) about script treatments. Usually this would come earlier in the process, but I actually wrote the treatment for "Bagged and Boarded" after I wrote the script. Basically, a film treatment is sort of like the outline of what the film is about, how the characters develop, and so on. It's usually between 7-13 pages, but that's no golden standard. Many professional Hollywood screenwriters will do many treatments a year as they (or their employers) "pitch" the film to a studio head. Many treatments get denied...which sucks because writers don't usually get paid for their time writing treatments.

While there are no definitive rules for how to write treatments, this site sums up a few different styles well. The author has a pessimistic view on how treatments are handled in Hollywood, and that's justified.

But treatments serve a much better purpose besides going directly to studio execs. I wrote mine to present to my probable director of photographer (along with a complete script). I made the treatment sort of the "cliff notes" version of the movie, complete with each characters' dramatic needs and arcs. I also gave my treatment to the owners of the location we're aiming to use. I figured it would be quicker for them to read seven pages rather than ninety (plus, it'd make the film look more intelligent to them...).

In the future I'll be doing treatments first, before the script. This way I can outline the events like I usually do, but also sort of "pitch" the movie to myself. It's a lot easier to bail on an incomplete treatment than it is on an incomplete script.

And that's my few words on treatments. I promise to be back in the very near future; I do have a lot to talk about. Look for a casting call announcement this week, as well as an official announcement on some of our crew.