Casting the Best Performers for Your Project (Rerun)

Originally released Oct 1, 2023

The choice of who is cast in a role can make or break a performance. In this episode, host Candice Bloch talks with casting director Anne Chapman all about the art and business of casting a project. Anne draws on her decades of professional experience casting projects of all sizes and styles as they discuss the methods and evolution of the process, the importance of chemistry, the difficulties of casting historical figures, advice for those interested in the career, and more.

To learn more about Anne and her casting company, visit: https://www.annechapmancasting.com/

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Transcript

0:00:02 - Director
Quiet on the set. Roll 2 Cameras, Speed, and action. 

0:00:10 - Announcer
Welcome to Media Monuments presented by Women in Film Video in Washington DC. Media Monuments features conversations with industry professionals speaking on a range of topics of interest to screen-based media makers. 

0:00:26 - Candice  Bloch
Thank you for joining us. I'm your host, Candice  Bloch, and today I'm sitting down with casting director Ann Chapman to talk about finding the right performer for your project. Ann has more than 30 years of casting experience in film and television, ranging from feature films such as Lincoln, loving, big Stone Gap and Harriet, to short films, commercials, museum films and over 135mm student films. Her boutique casting company, based in Virginia, specializes in independent and small-scale film and television projects. Ann holds a BA in theater and film and a master's in cinema and has been nominated for Casting Society of America's Ardios Awards three times. She was the 2015 film honoree for the Teresa Polk Prizes in Excellence in the Arts and was a 2018-2019 University of Cambridge visiting scholar. In addition to being a member of the CSA, bafta, bafta and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, ann teaches casting for VCU Arts Cinema. She believes wholeheartedly in helping to illuminate the path for upcoming actors and delights in watching careers progress. 

Welcome to the show, ann. Thank you so much for having me. First, as a note to our listeners, in case this is an issue, we are recording this during the WGA and SAG After Strikes, so if there's any specifics about current projects that can't be talked about. That is why that is the case. So, while respecting and standing in solidarity with the strikes, we'll move forward and dive into the world of casting. So, first and foremost, how did you get into this industry and how did your journey lead you to casting? 

0:01:55 - Anne Chapman
I am from Nebraska and I went to the University of Kansas, so pretty much most of the plays that I had ever seen I was in or involved in in some capacity, and my degree from Kansas is a theater degree in acting and directing. And my senior year, while we were directing scenes, we had the opportunity to do a casting session for them, hold auditions. I had never been in the room when I wasn't auditioning for something, and seeing that experience was such a light bulb moment for me and I thought this is where I want to be forevermore. And my professor, he was amazing. I think there were six or seven scenes. A whole bunch of people had auditioned. 

We were going through everyone, figuring out the right fit for which actors to go with which scenes, and then he made this amazing comment. He said if someone could find a place for this actor in their scene, that would mean that everyone who has auditioned will get a role. And I had never realized that it could be kind like that and I think a lot of that was in my own head. I hadn't experienced it and so I had put these things out there and, having been on that side of the table and in the room. That was in 1985, since then, the conversation is always kind and I just thought this is where I want to be and that's where I've stayed Well that's wonderful. 

0:03:30 - Candice  Bloch
So when someone has their script and funding and they're getting things underway and they want to begin casting it, what are the different methods? I mean, you talked about auditions and all that, but what are the different methods that a filmmaker can use to find their performers? 

0:03:46 - Anne Chapman
Depending on what their budget is and how big the project is and how many roles there are. Some people are writing it's something for themselves and their friends. They find their actors amongst their very small group of friends in student films. A lot of times it's your roommates or someone in your class or something like that. But the opportunity to reach out to a casting director gives you the opportunity to see actors from further afield or actors that you might not be aware of. So even if you have a very low budget passion project, no budget student film, it's always worth having a conversation with a casting director to see if it's something that they can work with or somebody they can send you in the direction of. So I would always recommend or suggest or encourage people even to have just a one-off conversation with the casting director about your project so that they can give you some helpful temps, but I also hope that you work with the casting director. 

0:04:45 - Candice  Bloch
Yeah, because not everyone has the budget, as you said, but it is a useful tool and it's nice to know that you can get value even out of one quick conversation. 

0:04:53 - Anne Chapman
And I'm a jury member in a lot of film festivals and watch a lot of films, and the things that take you out of a film are bad performances and not being able to cure the film. You're usually very forgiving of everything else and so in the long run might actually save you money and your project will go further if you have found really good actors and have a good sound person on set. 

0:05:20 - Candice  Bloch
That's very true. Can you just talk us through a little bit of the process, like what that looks like from auditions or like casting calls and all of that? 

0:05:28 - Anne Chapman
So a casting director is the person that needs to understand the creative needs of the director and the practical needs of the producer, and you need to sort of be that shock absorber to make sure that all of those needs are being met in a way that keeps everyone happy and we're able to move on with the project. I spend a lot of time either going to theater, watching television, watching films. I go to a lot of festivals. I love to be aware of actors, even if the actors that we search for in a big project, when you're really doing a big search and looking under every rock, I might not know a single actor that we end up casting. I might meet them in that process, but I know the system to invite those actors into that process so that we can see them. It's changed a lot since before the pandemic. We are at a sea change in the way that casting is practiced and I can guarantee you we're not going back. So doing a self-tape or a virtual audition is the way that it is always going to be from now on. So there is actually now a whole sort of cadre cohort of actors who graduated during the pandemic or became actors during the pandemic and have no memory of in-person auditions which is so wild to me because I have 30 plus years of memories of in-person auditions but people are figuring out how to make that work. What will happen is you get a phone call from a producer or a director or somebody recommends you. You request to read the script. Read the script, have a creative conversation, a casting concept meeting with either the director and the screenwriter or the director alone the producer a lot of times is there Figure out if you're literally on the same page about a tone and you know that for the casting director, that this project speaks to you and you'll be able to have a common language with what the director and the producers need. And then you write character descriptions. Either you're writing the storyline yourself or that's given to you by the production and the character descriptions are. It's not like describing the character that you're reading in the script. It's interesting parts of the character to get the interest of the actors and why they would want to audition for, participate in this project. It's a little bit of a fishing expedition and you want to make it very interesting for them. 

And then we put together it's called the breakdown. It has all of the essential information on it Everything from who the production company is, union, non-union, day rates, location, how many days you'd be shooting, what the audition process is going to be, and we put that out into the world, including on the women in film and video listserv, which is an excellent place to reach actors. And then we wait for our collective inboxes whichever those inboxes are to be populated by actors' information. Now, obviously, we have written our own lists of people that we're interested in before the submission process even happens. List making is a huge part of casting. 

My experience is primarily in out of the major markets. 

I have worked in New York and Chicago and a little bit in London, but usually I'm in the mid-Atlantic. 

So working in Los Angeles and New York on studio projects is a different casting world to the world as an independent casting director that you work in. 

So then, once the submissions come in, I use my keen eye and the skills that I have accumulated over many years to sort of gut check who would be good candidates to send a self-tape audition invitation to, and we've worked out with the director and the producer and the screenwriter what the sides are, and the sides are the pieces of the script that the actor will be auditioning with. 

It's usually about four pages. That's part of what the SAG strike is about right now how many pages actors are required to work with in an audition, and then another part of that and I'm in full solidarity of both of the strikes what the turnaround time is for an audition to come back. So you send the invites out along with the sides and, whenever possible, the full script so that they can get a sense of the tone of the project that they're working on, because it's very hard to give a full-throttled audition for, let's say, the film is 120 pages long, or 110 pages long and you have three pages of it and a storyline that's two lines long or three lines long, so hopefully we get to send the script as well. 

A lot of this actors have to sign NDAs. I have to sign in NDA many times and a lot of the information is watermarked to your name. You work, the actor works on the project At this time. The producer and the director are just waiting on that process. They have many other things that are on their plate. In the conversation with the director you will find out do you love to see a whole bunch of options or do you only have time to see three to five options? 

And we send them a link and they look at the link and then we have a conversation and even if an actor might not speak to them if I have an experience with that actor and can say I really think that this is someone that we should pay attention to you know, there's all those sorts of conversations and even before that, if an actor whom you think is very right for the role but hasn't gone in the direction that you know that your director would be looking for, you can ask them to do a retape with a redirection or further direction, and that also is part of the SAG strike. What is required to make that happen, because this is all time. It's actually a job interview and the actors are not being paid for this, so it can be a lot of work for them. Obviously, I'm a casting director, but from my perspective, auditioning is definitely part of the job of an actor. That's just part of the full. 

0:11:54 - Candice  Bloch
Yeah, and I know some actors don't like to audition at all and, as you said, now things are a lot more virtual. Do you think? Other than maybe the time of having to wait for a retape? Is there anything lost in not having that in-person interaction anymore? 

0:12:11 - Anne Chapman
We can do numerous takes when you're in person and we can really finesse it and work it and play with it, and so I do definitely miss that. But I love to see that with the director. If it's a director's session for a callback, then you see that then, and if I'm the one doing the callback, then we definitely and it's a virtual callback we definitely make that happen then. But I have to say, from an actor's perspective, they have the opportunity to audition for so many more projects than they were able to when everything was in person, literally because of the time of the day and how long it took to do that, but also because you're not having to travel. The travel expense is not there. So it's a double-edged sword, because that means that casting directors are seeing so many more actors for roles than we used to see, but the other side of that is actors are having the opportunity to have their work in front of so many more people. 

0:13:06 - Candice  Bloch
Yeah, it sounds like a pluses and minuses for all of the changes and evolutions of this industry. Obviously, you want to make sure you get the right person. Can you talk about the importance of chemistry between your performers? Because I know if you're doing self-tapes you might not be able to put people together right away and then yeah, so maybe talk to us about chemistry and also not only between the performers, but chemistry with the crew and the people, that you know how well someone interacts with the whole team. 

0:13:35 - Anne Chapman
That part of it, that sort of back-end part of it, is lost from seeing people in person, because you can sort of get a sense of how they move in a room and do they have nervous energy? Are they calm when they're sitting? Do they ask a million questions? I often say that how actors live in the waiting room of a casting office is akin to how they'll be on set before they're in front of the camera. 

So if they are very chill and happy, we're not going to have any issues. But if they are making everybody miserable, that's something to take note of. But you can definitely do very successful chemistry reads virtually and I've watched them and we've continually cast people that need to have a lot of chemistry in the project and they have not met each other until they get to set. It didn't used to be that way and when it's a very big project, we still try to make that happen. But that is all budget. For a lot of the projects in the Mid-Atlantic and independent projects and smaller projects. That's not going to happen. So you also have to do your due diligence. That's why everybody loves IMDB Pro and you see your connections. Oh, this person worked with someone that I worked with in the past and you can call and say, were they a dream to work with? And hopefully you get a yes, and when it's silent you're like yeah, Good to know. 

0:15:03 - Candice  Bloch
This is all important information to take into account. 

0:15:06 - Anne Chapman
I can speak specifically of when I did not get positive feedback of an actor on a project, but they were so right for the project that I was working on and that they were auditioning for that. I actually had the conversation with the actor to find out what was going on in that other instance and I remember and this was a project that I was working on with a good friend of mine, erica Aruvold, and she was in the room and we had done the due diligence and I said I'm happy to ask, I'm going to ask, and I asked the question and the actor said man, I knew that was going to come back to bite me in the butt someday and I was like today's the day, so let's talk about it. And we had a really good conversation about it. We were able to put the actor forward, the director made the decision to cast them and they did an awesome job. I'm totally open to understanding. 

Creative differences is a thing, it's real, and so I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and grace. But if someone is continually late with a bad attitude and not prepared, why work with that? That makes it hard for everyone Exactly. 

0:16:22 - Candice  Bloch
But, yeah, that also does speak to the kindness that you saw and helped launch all of this. That you keep that as well and at least are open to giving people multiple chances or second chances, that's great. 

0:16:33 - Anne Chapman
And I think most casting directors are very kind and love actors and want the best for the actor and think of themselves as alright, let's see how this, we can make this opportunity happen for them. How can we help this along? 

0:16:47 - Candice  Bloch
That's wonderful. So you kind of hinted about when chemistry or the wrong person is cast, it's distracting. I'm a little bit, I know. I personally am one of those people that watches stuff and will criticize if there's terrible chemistry and it pulls you out of a story. I ask my friends there's still some characters that I'll watch a movie and I'll still have to text them every time and say this is so great except for this one interaction. Do you watch films and have that mindset all the time where you're either praising or judging films? 

0:17:21 - Anne Chapman
Well, continually within this past week, two films that I was looking at for particular reasons I had this chemistry is amazing. You cannot see the fire on the screen and wow, this is incredible to watch and it brings you along even more on their journey. And then other times where you're like this is not helping at all. I'm jaded. I'm like, okay, what was the political reason that this person or that person was cast in this project? Who do they know? Who are they related? 

0:17:55 - Candice  Bloch
to. 

0:17:55 - Anne Chapman
All of that sort of stuff. Yeah, and you know the times you notice it is when it's really working or when it's really not working. Most of the time it's just going along great. 

0:18:05 - Candice  Bloch
Another important thing in casting the right person is if you're casting like an older or a younger version or related people or things that need to have visual similarities, does that make it exponentially more difficult to cast the right people, because you need not only the best performer, but some sort of at least not distractingly dissimilar appearances, or how does that layer it up? 

0:18:29 - Anne Chapman
Yes, in all capital letters and for exclamation marks. 

Yes, it's huge, and I've worked on a lot of period pieces and a lot of historical period pieces. 

So not only are you looking for family members that will look like the actors that are portraying the family members, like this young child could look, like they are the child of these two actors. It might be a historical film where there are these are historical figures, and everyone has an opinion of who those people are and what they look like. Just look at all the Elvis films that are out right now. That's the first thing that everyone is going to look at, and obviously then they have to have the gravitas to be able to carry off the character or whatever, and so that's why a project like that is an international project, and I've had the opportunity to work on both Lincoln and Loving, classic historical figures that are world renowned, that everyone knows. And so your casting office is just covered with photographs, not only the photographs of the roles that you're auditioning for the actors that are already cast that you're working off of, but also every angle that you could possibly have of that historical figure. 

And then also you have to take when you work on a period piece, you tend to get a lot of historical information from the production. So what are the photos that they're working from? What are the photos that are most important for them? For that production? 

We did an open call for Tad Lincoln for Spielberg's Lincoln in Richmond, virginia. So this was a Disney Steven Spielberg big project and I thought that I was prepared for the amount of people that came. And when I sent the specs for the open call back to the Disney peeps they doubled the size. They're like, nope, we're going to need even more. Wow, and they were right, it was. It was a day out for so many people. It wasn't just the child that was auditioning for the role, it was their grandparents and their brothers and sisters and like a whole family outing going to be seen for. And all of us who were there at the open call that were working it, all the people that the assistants that we had hired to help us. We all had the photograph of Tad in the in the scope of the film, the age that we were looking for like literally on our name tag Do you look like this? Wow? 

0:21:02 - Candice  Bloch
Hunting for doppelgangers. 

0:21:03 - Anne Chapman
Yeah, Also to make everyone that was spending hours there waiting aware. If you are not within this realm, we don't want to waste your time, but maybe this isn't the right audition for you. 

0:21:16 - Candice  Bloch
We talked about specific roles, where it's for a specific person or look or historical figure, but when it doesn't have to be specific, is there any instance where you can kind of encourage a more for I guess pun intended casting a more diverse net or wider perspective, or maybe saying does this character need that exact description or can we loosen that up a little? 

0:21:37 - Anne Chapman
bit. I've spent my career, my casting career, trying to find the best actor available for the role and have always pressed the directors and the writers and the producers or whoever I work with on the role, like who can this role be played by? But that's always followed up with. But who else can we also consider? And I'm always very interested in yes, I see who was cast in the role. I want to see who was called back for the final callback and see how many different variations of that, and that's when I'm watching more diverse populations of actors who weren't necessarily seen previously, those callbacks. 

so those are the people that you're going to be seeing next year or the year after or the year after that in major roles and that is very exciting right now because the callbacks are amazing and extremely diverse and casting directors, you know, have a duty. They have been hired to fulfill the needs of the production, but also when there's a secret, like amazing actor, and you have the opportunity to put them in front of all of those decision makers, I try to make that happen whenever possible. 

0:22:46 - Candice  Bloch
Yeah, so it sounds like you do keep a kind of catalog. I was going to say Rolodex, but I feel like that dates everyone of people that are great and they might not be great for that role, but you keep them in mind for future potential roles. 

0:23:00 - Anne Chapman
Right, I am all about the Rolodex the mental. 

Rolodex of actors in my brain and I still have literally bookcases full of headshots. I love to look through a headshot. You can cast so much faster with headshots and resumes. Then you can clicking on all the links. It just is a faster process. You can physically do the thing faster, but also there may have been somebody that you have forgotten and when you see them in front of you again you're like oh yes, and you know, when people say that actor is very specific, I love that because I know at some point that very specific lane is going to be a major, really cool role in a project that I'm working on and I'm like there they go off to the races. 

0:23:45 - Candice  Bloch
It sounds like you have this big thrill in discovering new talent and helping people on their way and you teach and all of that. What's the sort of inspiration that you get with in the passion for working with young people and students and helping people start their careers? 

0:24:01 - Anne Chapman
That's interesting and I have that passion about watching young casting professionals start their careers too. I'm on the training education committee for the Casting Society of America and I think I benefited from very strong mentors, very loving mentors, when I was in college and just after college and at the beginning of my career, and they made it safe to ask any question and not only would they say this is what we're going to do, but they would add and this is why we're going to do it. And that was such an aha, because then there was no reinventing the wheel. You understood, yeah, I could go down that rabbit hole, but in the long run we've done that 50 times before and it's easier if you do it this way. 

I love giving actors an opportunity that they might not have had in another venue and students films are awesome for that and I've met so many people who either were lawyers or doctors or caregivers for a very long time but had a love of performing either in high school and college or even in middle school and have found themselves where they can start, you know, participating again. And five or 10 years later you start seeing them in other major productions that are in town and you know the first gig they did was in a VCU student film, which is awesome. And then there's all those filmmakers in the cinema program at VCU. They're going on to careers. They remember those actors and so they're all coming along together. It's lovely to watch actors aha moments and their confidence moments, and student films and independent films and smaller films are also a way for actors that are many times cast in supporting roles to have a lead and understand what it feels like to carry a film and what the responsibility of that is. And then we teach casting at VCU. So you know I have an amazing intern right now and her resume of things that she's gotten to work on for the past year and a half. She will be ready for any office the minute she graduates and starts looking for casting work. 

And VCU has been lovely about giving actors opportunities. From the beginning of the cinema program They've paid every actor with a line. It's 15 years plus now, and that's different when you're being paid for your work, and this is what all the strikes are about. People need to be paid for their time and their work and their talent and their skill, and so I just love watching people gain their footing. I remember what that feels like and I remember thinking I have no idea how to do this. And then, oh, I do know how to do this and oh, let me show someone else how to do this as well. 

0:26:58 - Candice  Bloch
So, speaking of taking that sort of mentorship thing going, you have your own little boutique production company. When did that start and what was the inspiration? When did you decide you wanted to make your own company? 

0:27:10 - Anne Chapman
So I think I started Anne Chapman casting LLC in 2010 just because it became apparent that I probably, legally and tax wise, needed to do that, and it's weird how, when you go through that process, it then becomes a thing and if you build it, they will come, and so it really I had to do it and now I've enjoyed doing it. And before the pandemic, I had a big office, a big fun office that lots of people used and lots of independent productions were cast out of Pandemic changes that. I love my office now, but it's much more related to virtual auditions as opposed to having 30 kids in the waiting room to see if they're right for roles and loving yeah. 

0:27:57 - Candice  Bloch
Well, maybe one day in that evolution there'll be holograms and people will interact virtually but together. I don't know, we'll see. 

0:28:04 - Anne Chapman
I don't know. I'm planning on seeing ABBA in London next week, the virtual show. We'll see how that feels and how that goes, but I am very afraid for actors in terms of what AI means in their career. Oh yeah, and I have a lot of opinions about it. I don't know if this is the place to, but I do not think that any actor, particularly extras, should be signing anything that is signing away their likeness to anyone. 

0:28:32 - Candice  Bloch
Yeah, for sure. Making them out of their own job. Oh yeah, 100%. We all support that as well here. But I just mean in terms of live type things and how technology is going. The way that we can interact is hopefully in a way where it's not copying someone, but we can have maybe some middle ground, some hybrid between the in-person and the virtual now to meet that in the middle somehow. 

0:28:56 - Anne Chapman
I do have to give props to the casting companies that manage auditions. They have worked really hard during the pandemic and they have grown leaps and bounds of making it easier for chemistry reads for actors. 

0:29:08 - Candice  Bloch
It's very interesting to see how we have to keep adapting. There's so many other things I could ask. I will just say we know that you've worked with WIF before and you've also recently hosted a program about casting, so we thank you for that. So, before we wrap up, is there anything that maybe you covered there that we didn't hear yet, or any final advice about casting in general or anyone wanting to become a casting director? 

0:29:30 - Anne Chapman
Oh, so it's very interesting. People wanting to become casting directors. It traditionally has always been sort of a free internship, and there are other ways to go about that now. So I would tell people that are interested in wanting to be a casting director to go on the Casting Society of America website and put yourself on some of the email lists so that you can find out the best way to go. On that, people give a bad rap to the name of networking, but in terms of women in film and getting to know who your future collaborators are going to be, I think it's an amazing thing to go to events. Film festivals are incredible. I have been hired to cast feature films by people that I met speaking to each other at film festivals. You learn so much, not only by watching the films but the panel discussions. You learned so much so I'll give a shout out to the Richmond International Film Festival. That's, I think, september 26th to October 1st. They're already. I already know that some of the panels are going to be amazing. 

And there's a casting panel at that one. 

0:30:30 - Candice  Bloch
Sounds like you are definitely a people person. So great that you have that kindness and helping give actors these amazing starts to their careers and furthering them. And anyway, we wanted to thank you so much for joining today and giving some advice and talking about your experiences about casting. If anyone wants to learn more about you and your work, where could they go online? 

0:30:52 - Anne Chapman
AnneChapmancasting dot com. That's my website, so you can find me there. Thank you, Candice . Thank you for those really interesting questions. 

0:31:02 - Candice  Bloch
Oh, of course, and we'll put all your information in the show notes as well, and thanks again for having this conversation today. 

0:31:09 - Speaker 2
Thank you for listening to Media and Monuments, a service of women in film and video. Please remember to review, rate and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. For more information about WIF, please visit our website at wwwwifasenfrancvasenfictororg. Media and Monuments is produced by Sandra Abrams, Candice  Bloch, Brandon Ferry and Tara Jabari and edited by Emma Klein, with audio production in mix by Steve Lack: Audio. For more information about our podcast, visit mediaandmonuments dot com.