Producing a Story, Step 7: Casting

You’re really on your way to producing a great show.

You’ve spent a lot of time working on your story, hiring a writer, finding an executive producer with a team of people to budget and model the show, and now you have a director. So much has gone into putting together the right creative team to usher the show into the next stage, developing a small portion specifically aimed at attracting investors, often called a “workshop.”

When I was in college, I produced several shows ranging in variety, from skits and musical acts to concert series featuring bands from around Nashville associated with the college. For each of those productions, there were several stages of auditions. Can you imagine having to audition musical acts in a city filled with musical talent like Nashville? Luckily, I never went through the audition process without a creative team that knew what I was looking for as a producer. The creative team selected the right actors and musical acts to fulfill the vision we laid out early in the production process. Those were primarily small budget shows geared towards academics and learning for those involved.

While the creative team works on massaging the story and bringing attention to the most substantive portions, productions with larger budgets will often turn to a casting director to find the talented individuals to portray the story on stage, television, or the big screen. To dive further into this, I asked former Broadway casting director Justin Bohon to share his thoughts from inside this role in the industry. 

Justin told me he sees the role of the casting director as “...one who fulfills the vision of the director and creative team. The casting director must read and analyze the script, listen to the creative team’s vision, understand the nuances of each character and then produce options, in the form of actors, who become the vessels for the piece.” 

That’s a tremendous job, with a lot of responsibility and pressure. He later expanded on the responsibilities of the role by saying, “As a casting director, it is your ultimate goal to be able to predict the thoughts and responses of a creative team in order to pair them with the ideal actor for each role. The best casting directors are not only able to fulfill the creative vision of the team but are also able to find actors that are equally talented AND creative to work with.”

I feel I’m able to relate to this a bit from my own experience in television. As an associate director, I’m constantly trying to anticipate the thoughts and responses of my directors. Rather than thinking about casting, I anticipate creative direction for graphics, camera cuts vs. dissolves, music selection, and knowing the rhythm and cadence of each decision. Once you’re familiar with a creative team, you start to see how they work together and it’s like the production takes on a living form. 

The ways of a creative team are only something you learn once there’s a good working relationship established. Justin told me, “Procedures and criteria change significantly from creative team to creative team and from project to project. Often, due to this fact, a director or creative team will use the same casting director for multiple projects regardless of genre because of the shorthand in communication they develop.”

And that’s not just true for casting directors; it’s the same for directors and any other competent leader. The key to success as a leader is surrounding yourself with the best team and listening to those around you. Often, you’ll hear leaders say the people they surround themselves with are more intelligent than they are. Think of it in terms of a President’s cabinet; the cabinet is most successful if an expert fills each position. The same philosophy is true in business, and like it or not, entertainment IS business; the casting director is the “Secretary of Actors.”

There’s a brutal underbelly to being a casting director. With great responsibility, it also seems to be underappreciated. When you think about award shows and the names of the people who get thanked while accepting a trophy and honor, you don’t often hear the name of the casting director included in the list. You hear the producers, the director, the wardrobe supervisor, and others who help artistically inspire the performance, but isn’t it funny that the person who plays matchmaker rarely gets a mention? This is considered to be one of the hardest parts of the job. A casting director has to be okay with this fact, or as Justin told me, “In it for the artistry, for the love of assembling the perfect pieces to complete the casting jigsaw puzzle and have a desire to serve the work in a way that will hopefully have a profound effect on the given audience.” In other words, a servant’s heart – love and dedication to an idea more significant than yourself, the knowledge that the people who matter, know.

As has been the case in this blog series, Justin mentioned something that has become almost an unintentional theme. It’s about the character of the performers chosen to play a role. He said, “A good casting director has a wealth of knowledge about the current talent pool. They know which actors are not only talented but which actors are positive, contributory, and personable during the creative process and, most importantly, can adapt and change instantly when shifts in the focus of a piece change due to new discoveries made by the director and creative team. Bad casting directors are the opposite of the above and are ego-driven, rather than collectively and creatively driven.”

Once again, character and integrity are counted as among the most critical assets to a production, and a casting director is talking about his role in being the guardian of that. Of course, skills and talent are necessary, but how great is the casting director’s responsibility to be in-charge of gatekeeping the crucial role of a person’s character and its effect on a project as a whole? 

From a casting director’s perspective in the spirit of influencing transformation in the industry, Justin says open-mindedness is the most important thing to make the industry more effective. But that open-mindedness extends beyond the resistance to being a nay-sayer of ideas before you hear them. “That extends to process, gender identity, cultural, ethnic background, physically challenged inclusion, etc. All of the pushed aside and compartmentalized artists that are openly or implicitly viewed as ‘other.’ I would ask that they bring those individual’s stories to life and to allow focus and light to be shined on uniqueness rather than typical beauty or status. I don’t know that it will make the process easier, but I do believe it is our responsibility and that it is a measurable action that will contribute to art and life in a profound and positive way.”

Good character, inclusion, open-mindedness, observance, intuition, humility, and communication are what make casting directors great at their jobs. These are the qualities you should be looking for when seeking someone to take on this crucial task to produce your story. Once this job is done, you’ll have a cast of talented and creative individuals to make your story the best it can be to attract the investors you need and hopefully keep your audiences coming back for more. 

What else do you need for good storytelling that might enhance your production and catch a potential investor’s eye?

Let’s go with sound.