Categories
Issues and Actions

Filmonomics: Thinking in Casts Part I

By Colin Brown

More than 90% of directing a picture is the right casting,” suggests Martin Scorsese in the revelatory documentary CASTING BY. Producers might well reach a similar assessment for financing a picture as well since actors remain by far the most enticing lures to potential investors. But settling on just who might be “right” for that picture is another matter entirely – and a source of constant tension as filmmakers struggle to reconcile the urgent needs of the story with the erratic tastes of the global marketplace and its appointed gatekeepers.

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Casting is rarely a sequential, yes-or-no decision-making process that involves working your way down a long list of actors who have been somehow calibrated according to their creative merits and box office bankability. That would be too easy. Unless your director’s name happens to be Scorsese, more than 90% of the time will be spent casting out again and again into an ocean of uncertainty and inconsistency not knowing which way the winds will blow. You need good hooks as well as good fortune to fish in those waters, the tenacity to keep going, an unwavering hand and eye to thread that needle, and the improvisational skills to react to what’s constantly changing around you. Not unlike acting itself.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Christine Vachon and I Explain It ALL For You

Yup, here’s how we started, what allowed us to get our first films made, what secrets we learned, what models we used, and how it is all is changing.  This video is from a few years back, but it is still mostly all still very relevant and pertinent.

So, recorded live at the Spotted Dog in Birmingham, UK it’s Killer/Hope: