Saturday, June 5, 2010

Cast! Cast!!!!!!

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.
James Cameron

This beautiful quote by James Cameron comes to my mind when I write about the most wonderful and enchanting part of my movie making experience – OUR CAST

Flashback to March 2009. We decided to host a couple of staged-readings (almost like a play) to raise money for the movie. In order for the reading to be funny, interesting, entertaining and help us reach our financial goal what we needed were actors – GOOD ACTORS and thus began our “Don Quixote Quest”.

We did the usual suspects - put ads on mandee.com, Craigslist, and Backstage and got loads of responses. I mean there are more actors than doctors in this city. We also hired a casting director to help us, she was an absolute sweetheart, charging us a very miniscule fees.
Oh those were the days my friends, goings through each and every headshot and work experience and short-listing actors. Then sending out emails to actors, agents, managers, and anyone whom we thought would know some good actors. We also had a very limited (no) budget so we had to find a place to hold the auditions. Luckily we found support very fast from would-be investors, friends, and the co-writer’s (day job) boss.

There were three of us who were in charge of the auditions, the director, co-writer and myself. To our credit, I must say we gave equal opportunity to good and bad actors. We kept in mind that it takes lot of guts, kidneys and strength of all the things divine to come and audition. The director especially had a lot of patience and let actors finish scenes they had prepared, even if we could tell in ten seconds that it wouldn’t work. (He is a trained actor himself and knows the feeling of going into an audition and being told to stop in 15 seconds). To speak and act in front of absolute strangers, to bear the rejection and yet to still keep smiling and move to next audition with spring of anticipation in their steps – takes guts – more guts than ordinary professions.

The auditions were an epic task and we auditioned more than 2000 actors in span of 3 weeks - phew!!! Then came the tough task of selection, which is very heart breaking process. At this point you select between good actors and good actors, resulting in letting go of some good actors.

There are 3 main cast members were selected in a very unusual fashion. Firstly, our hero. Harry. Our director saw him dancing as part of a dance troupe from Long Island called Bollyarts for a Slumdog Millionaire party at Pranna, in NYC. Our “Harry” had never ever read or auditioned for anything before. He came, read and conquered our hearts with his innocence and earnestness. And he was only 18, still in high school and preparing to go to NYU to become a dentist. (He’s now enrolled in Pace’s performing arts program).

The second unusual casting we did was our main lead female – she came to read for a small part of a stripper for the bachelor party scene. I saw her sitting outside with a bunch of other girls and just something about the way she carried herself I felt she was the one. I went running to the audition room and asked the director to take a look at her. We gave her the lines and she just bowled us over.

Finally, the role of the other main lead female was auditioned over Skype. We had gone to India to cast the Indian female lead, but found no one that we were really passionately happy with. So the director went back to NY while I was finishing deals for locations. Then our India line producer recommended her name, she came in, read, went home with the script, came back that evening, read again, I sent the DVD to our director, and he said, put her on Skype with me. Let me do the “Skype” scene of the film with her live. If she can convince me this way, then she can carry the role.

I think movie-making business is a lot like Russian roulette. You leave everything to destiny and your karma. That’s what we did with our cast – we took a huge chance with them and we WON!

Lot of sales agents have mentioned that we have a no name star cast in our movie, which apparently according to them lessens the movie sales meter.

Though I beg to differ. Some times movie stars make movies, and sometimes movies create movie stars. It’s the latter in our case. New talent adds freshness, zest and a deep dedication to your film.

“Bend it Like Beckham” worked because of its actors and look where it took Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Or look at Swingers which launched Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. Every movie star was first an undiscovered actor.

Yes actors truly breathe life into a film and can make it come alive - no wonder they take home chunk of your budget ☺

Love

Muaahhha

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