No cast, to full cast

Yes, here I am using the excuse yet again. It was just the pilot. Because of this, we decided with such limited time, that we would use our crew members, as actors for the pilot episode. Dreadful idea? Not quite. At the time, we did not think we would have enough time to organise a cast, however now looking back on it, we probably could have achieved it, we just overestimated how long it would take. Our only option really was to play the roles ourselves.

The positives of this, were that we could spend the majority of our time planning other elements of the shoot, such as lighting, camera, crew roles, location, and all of that super fun stuff! Not having to worry about a crew, meant there was absolutely no stress on ensuring actors understood their roles, the story, or that everyone would be turning up on time. Thankfully for us, our crew members/cast members took on the roles amazingly, and we received extremely positive feedback on the acting in our pilot.

But now… The cons! Surprisingly, as a whole there were not as many cons as you probably would expect. The only main one being, was that essentially we were down 1-3 crew members each take. It was important to keep the actors in their roles, so we didn’t want them running around adjusting lighting or playing with the cameras between the shorter, more specific takes. On the day that we were short a few crew members, this made things more difficult.

Going into future episodes, we’ve (obviously) chosen not to use our own crew as part of the acting cast, unless they are background characters. We have already sent out a casting call, and we will be holding the auditions on Thursday and Friday of this week. The day we sent out the casting, we received 38 responses, so I am certain that we will be able to form a strong cast for further shooting.

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