There are many ways to cast a movie. This is my way of casting a movie and it seems to work very well. Believe it or not you don’t have to work only with your friends and family. The idea is to make the best movie possible within your budget constraints so you will want to get the biggest bang for your buck.

For starters you want to consider the scripts basic concept before beginning. Try to consider your local accent and how it will fit into the movies plot. If you are in Boston and you want to make a hillbilly masacre movie, you will want to be very careful in picking your hillbilly killers of course, but more importantly you want your main characters to be palatable in any region. I live in the Midwest and we made the movie Nine Grounds. The story had two general locations: the East Coast and Cambodia. So in choosing my main characters, we had to audition people that could lose the local (Midwestern) twang.

Set up your auditions a few weeks off so you can properly plan. Most newspapers will let you advertise a call for actors for free. There may even be a few local acting schools you can notify. Most of the people will come in from the newspaper. We had around 80 people show up for Nine Grounds auditions. By the way, try to set up your actors auditions seperately from your crew interviews. Although you may gain additional crew out of your actors and possibly from people that didn’t get acting roles.

Try to hold the auditions in a studio or makeshift studio. Have personal information sheets for every actor that try out so you can easily contact them. Also, post a copy of the acting release that will be used in the waiting area for everyone to read. Have the actual audition for the actors in a seperate room so the others don’t disrupt the readings.

Set up lights and a camera so you can record the readings and go over them later. It is hard to rely on your memory. It will also show the potential actors you are serious about what your doing from the very beginning (first impressions are very important). Have your assistant walk them in one at a time and read for you and be very kind and thank them. If your intentions are to be a rude and power crazed director, the good news is you can stop here because you will never finish a movie unless you can work well with others. Also, some of those people may be excited to be extras in your movie, so be nice.

Don’t assign roles until you have a chance to watch the footage from the auditions. The camera tells the truth in these situations. Allow some of your crew to watch the footage and get their feedback. Also you may want to call a few of them back in to make sure they are right for the parts.

Have a reading of the script with all characters and read it real time. Have your crew there as well helping you organize the reading. Make a big deal of it and give a small speech at the beginning. Let your actors read from the script in character and get a feel for the entire movie. At this point something could pop up that you hadn’t considered previously. You may even need to recast at this point. This part I have found to be very important: For some reason it is inevitable that one person stands out as a complete pain to deal with. It could be an actor or crew member or even a fan. This is the time to flush them out and get rid of them. If they can’t make it through a reading without being constantly disruptive, they will destroy the production as a whole. Remove them quietly and quickly, thank them for their time and get back to the reading. When the reading is over and all the actors applaud that is a good sign. If they like the script and are excited about it, they will do everything in their power to help you see your vision.