Norman Miller, 30-something. A lawyer with a drive for success but a constant worry that life isn’t working out the way he hopes it will. Often moody except when he’s with his best friend Sydney. Often neurotic but focused on his goal of opening his own practice some day.
This, for reference, is a bad casting notice.
Why you ask? Let me give you a clue. First off, “Norman Miller.” What’s the point of telling us Norman’s last name? Pretty much none at all. It doesn’t really add to the information we have given our potential actors to decide if they should submit for this role. What it DOES do is give them a bit of most-likely-useless information they can feed into their “preparation” process, deciding for themselves that Norman Miller must be an east-side New York Jewish professional with a wife, Sadie, but no kids despite the fact that the couple has been trying for several years, a fact that puts considerable strain on their relationship and has contributed to the string of extramarital affairs that both of them have engaged in. What’s that? YOUR Norman Miller is a half-man half-lizard time-traveling assassin who worships a ball of alien energy that fell to earth in the year 3741 and is unmarried as all members of his cannibal clan are. Oh, sorry. Can I try that again? So, knowing that actors-in-the-making spend a lot of time in acting classes learning these amazing tidbits about developing characters, choosing a direction, building depth, etc. why in the world would you give them any ammunition to derail your audition process and waste that precious time you’ve set aside to see 20 actors all in a four hour time span? Looking at the casting notice again it should be obvious that details like “a lawyer”, “best friend Sydney”, “opening his own practice”, etc are all fairly useless details that will create the exact same problem. So what in the bad casting notice really matters? Two things; “constant worry” and “neurotic.” Those traits are the essence of Norman. They are the archetypal character traits that you need an actor to bring to the part. You don’t need a 30-something lawyer with a best friend. You need Ross or Fraiser remember? Hey… wait a second…Casting Norman, age 32, a neurotic like Ross from Friends or Fraiser from Fraiser. Constantly worrying about life.
Now that’s a good casting notice. Here’s why.
for “moody, worried, neurotic, etc etc etc” and get tons of actors who clearly don’t fit the part at all. So don’t DO that. Don’t let the actors see themselves in a part they can’t pull off. Here’s what your casting notice SHOULD say: Bam. Done. The basics of the character including a very specific age. Weeds out too young and too hold hopefully right away. One key word, neurotic, followed by that same list of actors I used to explain to you what neurotic meant. Instantly anyone who identifies with either character gets that they ARE that person. And a followup brief sentence reinforcing what their character spends the entire movie doing. Every actor who can play a worrying neurotic will know the part is meant for them. Why? Because people who can play that part ARE worrying neurotics. They identify with Ross or Fraiser because it’s their life. Do the same for every role in your movie and you will save yourself hours of wasted audition time down the road. Now that you’ve got things narrowed down to the right type, how do you weed out the actors from the non-actors, would-be-actors, wanna-be-actors, etc? The answer is at your level there will probably be NO real actors applying for your project. You’re not paying anyone anything after all right? What you are looking for are people who can act but aren’t yet actors. And they exist. Every new batch of kid actors proves that point. Some people have natural talent. They are out there. The key to finding them is to perfect the audition process. Have them read the scene as you sent it to them and rehearsed it. Then ask for some changes. Give them a very different interpretation of one line in particular. Say that angry instead for me. Give them a subtext they didn’t realize was there, something they couldn’t have gotten from just one page of dialogue. See if they can change what they’ve rehearsed to match this new interpretation of things. (give enigmatic subtext? – like stopping a runaway horse, etc). These are the kinds of things real, trained actors are able to do. If your person-who-can-act can give you something new on command then there’s a very good chance they’ll be able to deliver your well-written, well-explained, and well-rehearsed script when the time comes.