Casting Directors – an Introduction
For actors, the casting director – or CD – is one of the most important people out there.
Essentially the CD is the link between the actor and the job.
Earlier we talked about what happens to a screenplay in pre-production. The CD goes through it and makes a list of all the characters and roles. Let’s suppose it’s a short film (a full length feature works on the same principal but it’s just bigger). The list of characters might look something like this:
- Letitia – a young woman; the main character in the film
- Wayne – a young man; Letitia’s boyfriend
- Mr Big – a middle-aged man; he is Letitia’s evil boss
- Grandma – an old woman; Letitia’s grandmother
For each of these parts the casting director needs to find the perfect actor. As you have probably realised by now, this means that for you – the actor – the casting director is an incredibly important person.
For each role in the film there could easily be 100+ actors who apply for it (multiply that by 10+ for bigger films) and the casting director is the one who has to look at each application and decide if it’s right and whether it’s worth passing on to the director.
So it’s worth saying again: the CD sits between the actor and the role and this means they are very important to you because they can give you the chance to get in a film or they can leave you out.
The first thing to bear in mind here is that because of their position, it pays to make the life of the casting director as easy as possible. If you send them a badly written application or give them extra work by making it difficult for them to find your details, then they won’t appreciate it. If, on the other hand, you deal with them in a professional way you will let them know that you are a professional, reliable, and real actor, then this can only work in your favour.
