Research & Development: Problems Finding Actors for Film

From deciding what I would do for my extended practice, I knew that I would want African or Asian actors to be in my film. This is because from interviewing people for my dissertation and researching into how Africans are portrayed in films I wanted to be able to produce a film that many black actors are not given the chance to play. Many are stereotyped in films to play a thug, comedian, side kick and for females a sexual character.

I started looking for actors at the end of January, I emailed these courses at universities first to see if I could find students so instead of payment I would provide a showreel that they could use:

University of Leeds - Center of African Studies and Faculty for Performance Visual Arts and Cultures

Manchester School of Acting

When it got towards the end of February and I still did not get replies from the universities even after emailing again, I tried these acting networks and academies:

Actors Lab

Ology Kids Casting

Star Casting UK

Casting Call Pro

Northern Lights

Mint Casting

ActUp North

West Yorkshire Theatre Network

IPM Academy

Last Minute Short Notice for Film/TV Group

I found one actress on Castingcall Pro (CCP) who I searched for because the views I received on the advert did not generate any interest.  

I found one character on CCP, and the rest on Facebook through friends both in the theatre and entertainment business.

For the second film, I found that through Actors Lab, Last Minute Short Notice for Film/TV and Facebook friends.

Overall, it took me 2 months to find actors for the first film and for both films I found actors a week before which was very lucky. However, I finished my script and shot list but could not film in the middle of March because I had no actors. I managed to only have to push the second film to the last week of the Easter holidays, but it did complicate the overall time I had to edit the film.

I have learnt that even though I used many resources to find actors, a lot of them wanted payment so the budget spent for actors was:

Stolen Goods: £194.50- this was to pay for travel and food expenses for all three actors

The Girl That Doesn't Speak: £260- again it covered travel and food expenses for all three actors

I had the money saved in case of an emergency when offering some payment helped to bring more interest so overall it cost £454.50. My budget for this was £500, and the rest of that went on creating the minimalistic set for the first film which I filmed in the lecture theatre at University.

I know that in the future I will need to continue networking so that when it comes to finding people with specific skills I will be able to ask more people which could have avoided having to push back the filming dates so late in the project.