Trick of the Dark - Casting Process

Trick of the Dark is going through a tricky casting process, pardon the pun. The issue like always when casting amateur local actors is availability. This has been one of the overbearing issues on our course right from the beginning. There are some genuinely talented local actors, but they don't make money from that, meaning they're often holding down other jobs that restrict their acting schedules. As of next year, this will be less of a problem for the course as CCAD bring in their acting and theatre course. 

To get back on track and to bring the focus back to Trick of the Dark, as the co-producer attached to the project part of my job is to focus on casting. There are 3 primary cast members, with two supporting roles. The primary cast is our priority so we got to work on that as soon as the project was green-lit. However we are still struggling and I am finding it increasingly difficult to bring actors in on the project. We confirmed one of the primary cast members very early on, someone who we have frequently worked with and know can deliver. Once that was set in stone we had two primary cast member roles to fill. 

Myself and the director had a discussion in which we bounced recommendations off one another. I suggested a particular actor who we had worked with in the past, based off of their willingness to work and their availability. The director disagreed by saying that they didn't fit the role. That is fair enough in my eyes, and it is a justifiable reason. However as producer I'm approaching this project with a lot of caution because I believe it is fragile, and I don't want to see it fall on its face without a plan B. For now I'm pushing the denied cast members into a 'maybe' pool - a one we might have to revisit if problems arise further down the road. 

There was one name that stuck with the director after I did some research into amateur actors working within the north east. Seeing as we already have a network of connections within the Hartlepool area, and we have already scoured the talent websites for anyone we don't already know, I figured I'd take another approach. This approach was based around the fact that a lot of actors we work with don't even class themselves as actors, they just enjoy doing it. A lot of them are family friends or someone who comes forward in the local audition advertisements etc. So I decided to look a little into what our competitors (e.g. local universities. Sunderland, Newcastle, Teeside) were doing and who they were casting. I came across an actor and an actress, both of which were needed to fill the roles we had left. I ran this by the director then got onto contacting them. 

Despite by findings and the lengthy exchange which occurred following these messages with the actor, we did not go ahead with casting this guy called Liam Angus. He acts in a lot of films for Sunderland University which I found out during my research on the likes of Youtube and Vimeo. As I was digging around I found he had been part of some of their award winning films. However as I was contacting him another actor who had been in some prior CCAD productions and was favoured, came forward to the director and expressed interest. The director let me know and through establishing communication we decided to cast the CCAD actor rather than Liam Angus. I found this to be a shame but ultimately it is not my decision. I did my job and ultimately I have another actor for the 'maybe' pool that may one day be our saving grace. 

On top of this, instead of contacting the potential actress I found the director told me to hold off on this. He told me he had approached an actress he worked with before about the role which she accepted. Despite all of what may sound like good news I am being very cautious. At present I have a bad feeling about the casting decisions we have made, as we do not have a structured plan in place on when we are shooting and where, which is the primary flaw of the project so far. Without that in my experience the casting is the first thing to fall in the domino effect that comes from an unorganised project. I will monitor the situation in the coming weeks and months and we may find ourselves exploring the collective 'maybe' pool of actors.