Post Casting Decisions
After extensive research on auditioning dancers and the protocol or the etiquette that comes with it, I have been able to come to a final decision. I had to make the dancers endure difficult and improvisation tasks to see how well they can perform even when I make them fail on purpose. I designed the tests (see previous blog post) to see how they can handle pressure, I had to look for signs of fatigue, repetitiveness of movement, and how obvious they can represent the elements of each tasks. most importantly out of all these factors, is the attitude and how the can deal with instructions. As personal feelings come to this, this is the first time I actually cast an audition, this was a great opportunity to apply all I learned, and by the end of the casting I grew more and more confident.
Each dancers CV was important, it gave me a foresight on the professional experience, it gave me a forehand on what to expect. however looking at the cv was not the wisest thing to do, it made me think that just because someone is more experienced and had done more work does not justify how good they actually are on set, do they complain? will they trust in our idea? are they even commited to time. so at the time of the audition I had to imagine like I have never had seen them before, and when I told them the elements they had to convince me of each one.
The day of casting, we (the whole crew) expected 3 performers to come in, one of them did not make it, luckily the one that did not turn up has barely had any experience. we where left with two dancers, for the sake of not putting their names online, I'll give them the aliases "Performer X" and "Performer Y"
Buy just by looking at the CV's, I got the perception of:
Performer X
- Very experienced
- Always the lead in her other productions
- Can perform many genre's of dance
- Also a choreographer.
- Experience in front of the camera
- Maybe a little old for the role.
- Hair too short
Performer Y
- Minimal Experience
- BA Graduate
- Not a lot of camera work
- Right age
- Great looks for camera
After recording the audition and looking back at the tapes I have come to my final conclusions in analysis terms, they are as follows:
X
- Seamless improv skills
- Human like movement (we wanted something that can abide this feature)
- Moves can switch to be robotic at times
- uses legs way too much
- uses the physical elements to her advantage
- can spin around smoothly, however stops suddenly.
- makes a fall look good (even when she nearly slipped)
- can really stretch herself to get maximum hight
- Not very varied with air like movements
- uses the scarf prop beautifully
- she can be very creative when given rules and boundaries
- on her toes way too much
- likes to use her hands to hold elements
- doesn't show too much emotion
Y
- Very fluid
- Can spin very very well
- Great at sliding
- uses all joints in her body, even her fingers
- her face is very emotionless, (Great for the video)
- gets tired too quickly.
- sweat is obvious (will affect Make-up)
- Looks great on camera
- Great posture
- can play with speed very well
- can be very weightless at times
- start stop very natural
- her moves are very repetitive
- cannot tell the difference between air and water through movement
Conclusion
As a conclusion I chose dancer X, as she is the best person to work with in creating a choreographed piece, and because she has been at it for many years, she can teach us all we need to know in terms of past work, and how the usual professional workflow. in a sense, she is not just a great dancer, but a teacher we can learn from. although she as not visually appealing for our specific theme, and is not as fluid as dancer Y, however, with time, we can achieve the looks we want, and because she was the best at being able to repeat a routine, we can almost remake any action without the fear of not being able to do it again.
All my crew agree with the decision as they all seemed to favour X, they all made the decision on the day of the casting, I disagreed however. As a director I have to look at the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario. I have to make sure I can nail down all the pros and cons. although not all the time I will go with what the majority will say in the group, as a director, I have to make sure all aspects of the film work together in harmony. each person has a specific role, my role is to bring together every role and make sure it works. things might be obvious at the time that they might seem good, but as a final piece, does it really? I'm grateful to work with open minded people on this group, who are able to accept any idea and work with what they have, sometimes you need people to ground you and snap you back to what's realistic, even if we don't agree at times, we all want a masterpiece at the end.`