One thing I’ve learned the hard way, is that with casting, estimate your projected time and double it. Today, online search and email submissions are the way to go. It saves so much time, and you have so many options to find people. Agencies and Facebook sites work, but don’t forget about networking with actors too. They know who is active. When I find candidates, I like everyone to read the same script. It helps. And don’t forget to look at the applicant’s hands if they show in your footage in any way. Try and have three questions for every applicant. These will be questions about themselves. With casting minors, you take a slightly different approach. Have them act something out. Have a conversation with them. Ask them to talk about school and friends. Do they listen? Can they handle simple directions? We want our set to be fun. We want to make sure they don’t get tired. It’s easy to stay on schedule but we don’t want to do it at the expense of their interest waning.
We did an 8-hour shoot for Looking for Christmas, and our minor actor was still ready for more once complete. How? We kept her active, involved, fed, and even let her co-direct one of the scenes after her scenes were wrapped. Regardless of independent, or even student film budget, try to find money for transportation. You want everyone there on time. Some actors and actresses do not have cars, but they are great when you call action. I’ve waited on set for actors without transportation to show before. Not fun. Pay for Uber, taxis, a driver, or whatever gets them there on time. No excuses now.
So how did we get our cast for this project?
Adeline Homer / Daughter
I’ve worked with our minor age actor previously on a couple of corporate and promotional video projects, and I discovered that she is fun loving, professional and mature for her age. Adie has a real understanding that what we do on set is fun, but it’s also work that’s designed to produce a specific result. That’s not always common with young performers. So there was really no guess work for us on who was going to fill the role of the young daughter in the HOUSEFUL of CHRISTMAS project. She was our first choice, and we gave her the role without audition. And she gave us our fun blooper footage too!
Orest ‘Raz’ Kuzma / Father
I met Raz on the set of a commercial I cowrote, and I liked how easy going he was, and how straightforward his approach is. I thought I might like to have him involved if the right project came along. It did. Raz was really our only choice for this role. There were no other auditions, or anybody else we looked at, and we were very happy he was available to play our father. It’s not a big role, but Raz wanted to work with our group. Or he likes endless piles of cookies. Kudos too for his improv idea that we used in the final product. Plus, we wouldn’t have had our actress without his help (see below).
Stefaniia Sovenko / Mother
We had more of a challenge casting the mother role, because we just couldn’t find anyone that we thought looked somewhat like the daughter and could be believed as the mother. She also had to be the appropriate age, and after much consideration, Raz helped me out on this casting as he recommended a few actresses from his contact network. One of them Stefaniia, and on her quick online interview, she said and did all the right things, and we thought she might be the one we wanted. But the problem was Stefaniia is not blonde, and we really wanted a ‘lighter hair’ look for this this role. We also wanted her hair to be somewhat like the daughter’s hair style (long and braided) just to make the illusion seem more real. So, I posed the question to her – “How do you feel about being a blonde?” She said, “that sounds interesting”, so we figured out a way to have her appear as a blonde (with a wig) and then everything worked out the way we hoped.