If the writer is the author of the story, the director is the author of the performances. When casting, take great care to ask yourself:
“What kind of (insert character name here) does this actor bring to the part?”
For most parts there are the types and the clichés: Children are cute, women are beautiful, men are powerful or handsome.
There is a new idea in my head today as I look over the casting videos. While we cast for looks and performance, we should also cast for expectation and change. In good writing, the end is in the beginning. The beginning is in the appearance of the character and the expectations the audience associates with that appearance.
If I have a character who starts weak and becomes powerful, what do I cast for? The powerful man or the weak one? It all depends on acting ability of course, but humor me in saying that you have two equally talented actors, one who is six feet tall and the other five feet. Which of them is less likely to become a powerful man? Statistically speaking the shorter one.
So which one will produce a more dramatic shift in audience expectations? The smaller one. It is generally more satisfying to see a more dramatic change, one that is, in screenwriting parlance, both surprising and inevitable. Who you cast will influence both of these qualities, but it will have a major effect on the surprise element. Imagine Luke Skywalker played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and you get what I mean. Surprise that is earned (i.e. inevitable) is intensely satisfying to an audience. Nothing is worse than a predictable movie, besides one (i.e. Avatar) that ignores its own logic to get the ending it wants.
I’m not saying cast Arnold in your suburban melodrama, but there is an incredible variety of actors. Spend some time thinking about what will communicate your theme most clearly. Spend some time thinking about your audience, what they expect, and how to play on those expectations to produce a deeper result. I’m reading Georgy Tovstonogov’s The Profession of the Stage Director (out of print). In it he writes:
The only real criterion for judging a production is the power of the impression it makes on the audience.
This impression is key to remember in casting, writing, editing etc. It’s also why feedback is so important. Feedback is something film school has in droves. One could even be led to think that one of the reasons people here take so long to graduate (4+ years) is because they’re addicted to feedback.
Right now for me it’s amazing to see actors speaking the lines I’ve been writing for many months. It illuminates my characters while revealing certain sections of the script as weak or vague.
It’s also difficult to realize that the writer can only communicate so much of the story. This is one of the reasons you need a strong director, because in the end it’s the actors who are communicating the story to the audience. Casting is part of the writing process for the director, which some consider 80% or more of the job. In a city like Los Angeles, which almost compensates for its absurd production costs with a healthy pool of both talented and untalented actors, it can almost feel like an embarrassment of riches. Now the sifting begins.
Casting is Writing
If the writer is the author of the story, the director is the author of the performances. When casting, take great care to ask yourself:
For most parts there are the types and the clichés: Children are cute, women are beautiful, men are powerful or handsome.
There is a new idea in my head today as I look over the casting videos. While we cast for looks and performance, we should also cast for expectation and change. In good writing, the end is in the beginning. The beginning is in the appearance of the character and the expectations the audience associates with that appearance.
If I have a character who starts weak and becomes powerful, what do I cast for? The powerful man or the weak one? It all depends on acting ability of course, but humor me in saying that you have two equally talented actors, one who is six feet tall and the other five feet. Which of them is less likely to become a powerful man? Statistically speaking the shorter one.
So which one will produce a more dramatic shift in audience expectations? The smaller one. It is generally more satisfying to see a more dramatic change, one that is, in screenwriting parlance, both surprising and inevitable. Who you cast will influence both of these qualities, but it will have a major effect on the surprise element. Imagine Luke Skywalker played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and you get what I mean. Surprise that is earned (i.e. inevitable) is intensely satisfying to an audience. Nothing is worse than a predictable movie, besides one (i.e. Avatar) that ignores its own logic to get the ending it wants.
I’m not saying cast Arnold in your suburban melodrama, but there is an incredible variety of actors. Spend some time thinking about what will communicate your theme most clearly. Spend some time thinking about your audience, what they expect, and how to play on those expectations to produce a deeper result. I’m reading Georgy Tovstonogov’s The Profession of the Stage Director (out of print). In it he writes:
This impression is key to remember in casting, writing, editing etc. It’s also why feedback is so important. Feedback is something film school has in droves. One could even be led to think that one of the reasons people here take so long to graduate (4+ years) is because they’re addicted to feedback.
Right now for me it’s amazing to see actors speaking the lines I’ve been writing for many months. It illuminates my characters while revealing certain sections of the script as weak or vague.
It’s also difficult to realize that the writer can only communicate so much of the story. This is one of the reasons you need a strong director, because in the end it’s the actors who are communicating the story to the audience. Casting is part of the writing process for the director, which some consider 80% or more of the job. In a city like Los Angeles, which almost compensates for its absurd production costs with a healthy pool of both talented and untalented actors, it can almost feel like an embarrassment of riches. Now the sifting begins.