Deepfake casting
If you can create a deepfake of basically any actor, couldn’t you cast a film this way?
Instead of bringing actors in to read sides in an audition room, you could film a prototype of the scene with a random actor and then try out various different actors in the role, using AI to superimpose their faces and recreate their voices.
Then you could cast the best one.
Of course you could make a whole movie this way.
It’s not legal (or won’t be) but presumably you could get away with deepfake casting more easily than you could get away with making a whole movie this way, as it would never be released to the public.
I don’t know if I like that these things are possible, but they are interesting to think about.
The SAG short film agreement is now the short project agreement
The SAG Short Film Agreement is now the Short Project Agreement.
As of August 1, 2018, the SAG Short Film Agreement and the Low Budget New Media Agreement have been deprecated. Short films are now covered by the Short Project Agreement and they still have to have a budget under $50k, have a runtime under 40 minutes, and be filmed in the U.S.
The Short Project agreement does NOT cover episodic projects like web series, so those will still have to use the New Media Agreement.
There are two big changes.
The first is that all principal actors (non-extras) have to be covered under the agreement. The non-union actors won’t gain union eligibility by working on your short film, but you have to treat them the same as the SAG actors. Background actors also have to be covered.
The second change is to the way that distribution is treated. Under the previous Short Film Agreement, any deferred salary had to be paid before a short film was distributed online, even if it was to a free streaming service like Vimeo or YouTube. Now, the deferred payments aren’t triggered until a more serious distribution event happens, like a profitable sale of the film.
Most people didn’t follow this rule anyway, but it’s good that they changed it to keep up with the times.
The stress of the big 3
Last night we looked at another location. I’m not going to post photos of it because the owners lives there (as opposed to just renting it out on AirBnB). It’s a promising option. I’m hoping that we lock down the location this week.
We’re working with Compass Casting for… casting. Auditions start and (with luck) finish next week. Two of the big three are close to complete. We’re still talking to DPs, which is the last of the big three things that you need to make a movie. Or that we need at least. I’m breathing a little bit easier now.
The most stressful time is when all three of those are complete unknowns and you’re talking to people but you can never really talk to them because you don’t know that you’ll have one of the other things in place, which means you can’t really be sure of your dates. I prefer to work linearly. It’s easier for me to hunker down and work through something. It’s very unnerving to work on three things that are all uncertain and all rely on each other.
I think that after the first time, it will be easier and I will be confident. My first short film felt like this, only 10x worse.
Tonight I’m going to see Hinds at Lincoln Hall with some friends so I can check out and relax a bit until it starts again tomorrow.
Breakfast, Windshield Wipers, Kinko’s
Yesterdays travels were long and we returned home at night. No rest though, we had to meet up with a friend to talk about our plan for casting the film (after a jaunt to Costco for a windshield wiper blade and sundries).
Had a few drinks while we talked about casting which had me just exhausted, so I woke up in a bit of a haze this morning and had to run out to meet some old friends for breakfast at my friend’s new apartment. He’s going to Barcelona next week for 10 weeks and the thought of that, I envy it.
The film has a weight and sometimes I wish I could toss off that weight and go to Barcelona and forget about it. But of course, I wouldn’t forget about it and how would I live with myself after such a cowardly decision?
These are good friends and we can only get together about once every two months, because of our busy schedules. I always feel energized after talking to them and I think about how much better life would be if we all lived within a few blocks of our best friends and could get together without planning.
After breakfast I emailed for about 4 hours, following up on yet more leads for a possible location (we’re looking for a single family home in Chicago or within a 3-hour drive) and putting together a table read for Wednesday to see how it plays on its feet.
I went to Fedex Office (formerly Fedex Kinko’s, formerly Kinko’s)1 to print out eight copies of the script.
The print job was messed up so I had to wait for 15 minutes while new copies were printed.
The very nice man who helped me filled the time with his thoughts on Avengers Infinity War, about which he had many detailed opinions and I tried to smile and nod along because I haven’t seen it.
Then I picked up snacks and drinks for the reading, put air in my car tires for another road trip tomorrow (this time to Appleton, WI), replaced the frayed wiper blade, and emailed invites to actors for the table read.
I love road trips.
What a bad name for a store, Kinko’s. ↩
Actor reels, web series, and casting
I started some preliminary casting this week for the feature I’m putting together.
Which has led me to watch a lot of actor reels.
My thought is that actors don’t put enough thought into how they are presenting themselves online.
A lot of the reels have some bad clips in them. By bad I mean that they don’t show the actor acting well. And/or they have clips with very low production design, audio hum, poor lighting, etc.
I know that actors usually don’t have control over the final product and the production value, so I don’t hold this against them. I know they have to build up their chops and get in reps and take student films and gigs for practice and experience.
But you do have a choice in what you put into your reel and what you post on your website. Quality is much more important than quantity.
A better option, if possible, would be to show a single short film that you made, which really shows off your ability. I know, that’s hard, and if you aren’t going to produce it yourself then you have to wait until you get cast in something like that.
I really like the Cinema Lab shorts by Stephen Cone. The actors are all from a class he taught. It helps that he’s a great director, but these shorts really show off the actors in the best possible way.
I think I’d rather see no reel than a poor reel. With just photos and a resume, I can imagine what might be. When I see a weak reel, I’m forced to consider that maybe this is as good as it gets.
I’ve also seen some bad web series this week. There are a lot of reasons to make a web series, but if you’re an actor and you are making one to show off your talent — then you should really make sure that it shows off your talent.
If you’re an actor and you wrote and starred in the series, I’m going to assume that you made it to show off your talent. And if it looks bad, the writing is bad, or the acting is bad — then…
We’re all trying to get better and of course the first things we make are rarely the best. That’s certainly the case for me. But you have a choice in what you put forward and what you leave out.
The Eternal Casting of the Director’s Mind: Fishing, Hunting, and Foraging
There are three ways I think about casting: fishing, hunting, and foraging.
Fishing
With fishing, you hold an audition, post an audition notice around town and online and see what comes back to you. You throw out some lures and see who comes in.
Hunting
With hunting, you look for someone specific. Maybe a big name talent or a specific actor that you’ve seen somewhere. You know you want to work with them or they would be perfect for a role so find a way to connect with them and try to get them interested in the project.
You get an IMDbPro account and try to track down the contact info of an actor that you don’t have a relationship with and try to get them to read your script.
Foraging
With foraging, casting becomes an always process.
Every time you go to a play, you make a note of any actors you liked and jot their name down with some notes (“perfect for lead in ${filmName}” or “would make a great weird neighbor”).
This can happen when you see actors in shows, in local or even major films and TV, in classes, at meetups, through friends, whatever. I make a note of it in my phone or notebook and then when I get home I add it to a big Word doc I have with lists of actors that I liked or thought might be interesting to work with.
On The Deadline, we used a mix of foraging and hunting. There were a couple roles where I knew exactly who I wanted and made sure that they could come to the audition. Then we did a big audition and ended up with a mix of people that I had met before and those that were new to me, along with some real surprises.
For foraging to work, you have to get out a lot and see shows or watch a lot of short films.
But the truly awesome advantage of this is that you get to see actors working under good conditions — a role that that they’ve prepared for with a director.
To me, that’s much more informative than an audition — in an audition, there are nerves, they don’t know the material well, etc. Some actors are terrible at auditioning and some are great (and that doesn’t necessarily map to their actual acting ability).
So.
I like using a mix of all three.
When I started casting my last film, WHAM, I went through my lists of actors that I wanted to work with, cultivated over the past four years, and picked out names and put them in a spreadsheet next to the role. I made a column for first choice and backups.
Then I start reaching out to those actors and cross them off if they aren’t available, moving on to next choices.
My goal was to avoid holding an audition because auditions are a lot of work we and I only had about three weeks to cast it and I was working alone. Also, it was a 3-minute short — for a feature I would want to see them do a reading and meet them in person first.
That work got me about halfway there — out of six roles, one I knew professionally, one was a close personal friend, one I had seen at The Annoyance, and one I had seen in a Second City e.t.c. show.
Foraging online
For the last three roles, I did two things.
First, I contacted the agent of one of the actors that I knew I wanted to work with. Her agent asked me what else I was looking for and I sent her a breakdown of the available roles and she sent me about six headshots and resumes for the open roles.
I watched the reels of some of those actors and tried to find any short films that they had online.
I don’t really like reels because I’d rather see more than a clip. I’m usually looking for one solid performance where I can see that they can act well under good conditions.
If I don’t know them personally, I check Facebook to see if we have a mutual friend that could make an introduction. Or if they have an agent, I call the agent.
Pros, cons, etc
Sometimes an audition is necessary, but with foraging you get more control over who attends the audition and you get to write with certain people in mind.
If you don’t hold an audition, you cut yourself off to the upside of being truly surprised by someone.
An audition is also a great way to meet and see actors that might not work out for the current project but that would be great for something in the future.
If you want a ‘name’ actor, then you’re going to have to hunt.
How to Make a Short Film with SAG Actors (and not kill yourself)
NB: this post was written before SAG created the Short Project Agreement in August 2018. The Short Project Agreement replaces the old Short Film Agreement. You can read about the differences here.
This post is based on my personal experience dealing with SAG-AFTRA’s Chicago local. Most of the information I got from attending a seminar for producers, run by Kathy Byrne, Director of TV/Theatrical here in Chicago, and from actually going through the process while making The Deadline.
This is meant to be a primer for working with SAG under the Short Film Agreement to address the most common questions that come up and demystify the process.
It’s not a complete explanation of every detail of the contract1 Read the contract before you sign it!
Disclaimer: Some of this information has changed since 2016 when I originally wrote it. While I tried my best to get everything right, I may have misunderstood some things. This is not legal advice and is meant to give you an overview and a basic understanding of how things work.
For example, I’m not going to talk about how you’re not allowed to require an actor to be completely nude at an audition and that you must permit them to wear pasties or a G-string. ↩