Casting real people
Over the years I’ve been involved in a number of projects where the client wanted to use real people as the star or spokesperson of their program. Some times they’re employees or star clients or patients that appear to be outgoing and popular with the people that surround them, folks that the client swears will be just perfect. I think you can see where this is going, things rarely turn out if they’re not tried or tested. Many a production has gone into overtime as they try to coax, beg or beat a performance out of talent that has no right being there in the first place. To prevent this, I always try to get a pre-interview session that I can record either in person or via zoom or skype. Usually it’s about fifteen-minutes. I’ll try to get them to answer some questions about the projects topic to see how knowledgeable they truly are. I’ll then have them read a short section of copy to see if I can direct them while they read in case we’re doing prompter work. When we’re finished I’ll transcribe the interview and send that off to the script writer. When you can implement their speech patterns and vocabulary into finished copy it’s amazing how well the talent will perform. You’re literally putting their own words back in their mouth.
I’ll also cut down the interview into a two- or three-minute piece and present that back to the client with whatever assessment I may have.
When the client sees the results of this piece they are in better position to greenlight or rethink their decisions on talent.
In this age of Zoom and other on-line video chat programs there is no excuse for not vetting unprofessional talent for performance purposes.
You can spend a few hundred on testing a hunch or you can gamble tens of thousands of dollars and waste hours of production and post production time on a feeling.
