Actors are what make films interesting, inspiring and time worthy. If I found myself in a museum of the finest art and looked over to see a man or woman weeping in front a particular painting I would find it quite unsettling. If I found myself in a run down, crumbling Movie Theater watching a particularly touching performance, my own teary eyes would find no discomfort in looking across the row and seeing another viewer barely holding himself together. Without acting, films are just a bunch of pretty pictures; acting is what makes the artwork real. This means that casting the correct actor for a part is enormously important! With that said though, casting does not always have to be intense or stressful and when it came to our five minute narrative projects, casting was an enjoyable and easygoing gathering of like minded creatives from two very, but in many ways not so different cultures. Over two long nights, our groups split up into rooms and met the numerous actors that had come down from Cologne to try their hand at acting for one of our films. Though we could only cast a select few from the large group, it was a great learning experience for all of us, in front and behind the camera. From how to make the actors comfortable before they open up in front of strangers, to giving productive feedback and direction in order to discover the actors range and ability to adapt, we had a lot to wrap our heads around. As I was only part of one group, I can only describe one case of development through the two night mad house. Our first night, we were rushing, we spoke fast, rolled through direction without much discussion with the actors, and became a bit disorganized and flustered. By the end of the first night we had calmed down a bit and found a few pieces of direction that we really thought helpful. On the second day however, we really found our groove and started to see a lot more out of the actors because of it. Our direction became less about the end feeling and more about the process of getting to that feeling, and our opening night nerves were done away with.
What really wrapped the experience up as an inspiring and helpful one, were our last pair readings with those who would become the actors we casted in the film. We had played with opposing motivations a couple times before, but this time we left the girls in the room to decide why the girl in the script had to leave the house at all costs, and us boys went out into the hall to decide why the guy had to stay in the house. We walked in and the energy was already at an excellent level for the scene. What made it even more exciting was that the actors were speaking in German, so our entire understanding of what was going on was based on vocal tonality, expression, action and of course our German translator Maren's reactions. The scene took on levels that we were not prepared for and show cased a level of improvisational skill that almost convinced us all to forget about the script and let the actors take care of everything. The actors guided us from excited battling with regret, to honesty battling with forgiveness seamlessly and emotionally, ending with the two holding one another with their eyes centimeters apart. What were the motivations? The man had just lost his job and in a drunken sorrow slept with his girlfriends sister, and the girl had arranged an elaborate performance with all of her friends to propose to her boyfriend. Through the two nights, we discovered what worked and what didn't. I heard from a couple of the other groups about their approach and it seemed we all learned the same things but in different ways, from asking them to play the scene as if they were a cartoon character to telling them to act the scene as if a swarm of bees was surrounding them. What matters most is that our narrative shorts went off without a scene and we all found the correct actors for the parts we called for. Many of the actors and crew members were quick to become friends on Facebook and it has been mentioned numerous times that we will all soon meet up in Cologne to get the local student tour. We casted actors but in turn we ended up casting friends, maybe life long friends and perhaps one day in the future, collaborators. The shorts will be in post-production soon and I know I am not alone in saying that I am excited to see how they all turn out!
Written by Maxx Grummer
