Initial Casting Options

Screen Tests/ Image Actors

Before creating our film opening, we had to carefully decide on who would play the two characters that we wanted to appear in our film. This involved going through each possibility and through doing screen tests we decided on who we believed to be most appropriate.


Here are some of the options we discussed and eventually eliminated and the reasons for our decision.

 

 Abdullah Kiani: Option 1.
Pros:

• Tall (can create an intimidating illusion) for the antagonist.
• Young adult age range, same of our target audience.
• Would be a complete subversion of the protagonist convention being a young girl, ( for the role of the protagonist).

Cons:

• No prior acting experience.
• Busy lifestyle.
• He can not yet drive ( required for the taxi scene).
• Would be too tall to create the wing mirror over the shoulder shot.

Adnan Reci: Option 2
Pros:

• Acting experience
• Performed well in screen tests
• Young male, suits the target audience
• Could work well as a subversion of the protagonist

Cons:

• Not intimidating enough.
• Too happy and smiley to play an evil villain.

Robert Sweet: Option 3.

Pros:

• Fits the age group for the antagonist
• Can drive for the taxi scene.
• Acting experience

Cons:

• Has many duties as Head Boy therefore will be hard to arrange times to film.
• Struggles to stay focused and professional.

Jasmine Cox and Georgia Heria-Warrick: Option 4 and 5.


Pros for both:

• Both fit the generic convention of the innocent, young protagonist.
• Are in the target audience age group.

Pros for Georgia:

• She is in our group therefore will be easy to get dates to film with.
• Some acting experience

Cons for both:

• Not a lot of acting experience
• Both shy in front of the camera during screen tests.

Cons for Jasmine:

• Already in another media group as the actress therefore will have little time to film.

Therefore we decided to eliminate all of these options as we was looking for two people who were comfortable in front of the camera as well as having previous experience. Moreover, times were very important as despite having a pre-scheduled filming plan, if we needed to re-film we needed people we knew would be reliable and responsible to film with at any time. Therefore we chose Georgina McMahon and her father Charlie McMahon as they both had prior experience, were free anytime to film and performed well during the screen tests. In addition, we chose to have Robert Sweet as the antagonist understudy and Georgia Heria-Warrick as the protagonist understudy.