Thursday, June 22, 2006
casting and stuff..
The Hard Life of a Mouvie Produceur..(french accent here)
So your director missed his plane.. you got angry, you got sad, you went clubbing, got a lil'tipsy, slept and found a solution for your biggest issue.. the already set up and announced open audition..
you decide to do them yourself and tape them so you can shortlist the actors with him before he sees more..
so for 10 hours you're in an office listenning to the same parts over and over again, some good some average some horrible. Some bland "reading" , some "overacting".. from amateurs and pros.
see. casting has been an interesting issue for us since forever.
- we don't like the way nollywood acting style
- *I* personally don't believe in Good Acting, i believe in Good Direction
- we want the actors to look good (or at least interesting)
so we've had some lucky episodes on that part.. the 2 leads were found incredibly fast.. we had a first choice as far as the female lead that latter got complicated for many reasons..
at that point we just had to go to Calabar and just cast.
and we found.
well, first of all, we found the Guild and it's regulations that kinda make sense but could have been problematic in our case.
i.e. "they don't exactly have everything we want."
Thanks to the mediation of an official body, the misunderstanding got cleared, options were openned and cooperation became the rule.
i still feel quite weird about it. It sounds like the only thing the Guild care about is registration. a database ? some guidebook about the working conditions ?
so anyway..
on that bloody saturday we found almost all the female parts.
let me even admit that on a personnal level, at some point i was happy to talk to anything but a-beautiful-young-woman after a point..
then Uchenna came, we watched the tapes, he approved most of our shortlist (or at least the ones me and koko agreed on).
and then we went to have him meet the one we shortlisted for the lead female part..
she wasn't at the audition (we taped her the day before)
she never acted before
she didnt know if she "wanted" to act when we first talked to her
but she's a model, a very pro one. conscious of every inch of her body at any moment. perfect. Uchenna approved. I think he was also happy that his akward way to question people (well he quickly got better) didn't scare her off, lol.
so that was resolved, the other female parts are more and less set too (and when it's less, it's because we're still torn between 2 or more choices).
The male supporting cast..
First we had blantant luck.. people bringing someone who brings someone who brings someone..
found a dancer with a great diction, found a 7 feet guy with huge hands...
and we had another audition.. less hectic, no tape this time.. and we found pearls too.
so our cast ?
IT'S DONE.
(well there are 3 or 4 minor minor parts that are yet to be taken)
why aint i posting pictures ?
i let uchenna take care of that, lol
yeah this was written a few days ago..
aflakete the wunderkid at 1:01 PM