We hope that COVID-19, lockdown, and the uncertainty across professional and personal lives haven’t hit you too hard. Having shut down our physical production, we’ve taken some time to regroup and find the most meaningful way forward while our industry is on pause. This thinking time has made us realise that our recent technological advances are now more useful than ever, and ironically we were preparing for social distancing some time ago without realising it!
It’s now hard to imagine a time when Zoom, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams weren’t part of everyday life. So many people have gone from being oblivious to these video conferencing programmes pre-lockdown to using them comfortably across work and play.
After the Day Zero/ drought challenge in Cape Town two years ago, we began developing our virtual casting service. We officially began offering this service, using Zoom in a customised way, in May 2019 and though it was always effective and produced celebrated results, it involved much explanation when we initially invited people to use it! Now, people are confident scheduling, sharing and running meetings with screen shares, linked resources, and hilarious virtual backgrounds.
Can you believe that we have used Zoom in 53 of approximately 100 jobs briefed this past season?! Some castings were split between studio and online, though we have the capability to run an entire casting remotely. This approach, which we originally pioneered as a way of broadening our potential talent pool for jobs, and to accommodate advert budgets which wouldn’t stretch to directors flying in for casting as well as to shoot, is perfectly applicable to these COVID-19 days. Though the industry is currently on pause, when budgets open up and pitches are approved again, we’ll be able to get talent sourced, cast, and signed off while maintaining social distancing or even lockdown measures.
The traditional casting process involves emails and calls to share and understand the brief, the budget, the schedule, and the vision. These are, of course, all possible in lockdown. In both traditional and current circumstances our reach out for talent begins via reputable agents with quality talent. This largely involves online research, so again can be performed remotely with no real alteration. The same is true of all the preparation which would bring us to a traditional casting day in one of our studios, though of course when casting online we don’t source props or organise refreshments!
Then comes the virtual casting day! Rather than 70-80 of actors arriving at one of our studios per day, 40 actors receive a Zoom link, and all they need is a stable internet connection and computer or tablet (or even phone!) with a camera. They simply need to complete a sign-in app and then join a Zoom waiting room.
The scheduled and queued talent then enter a virtual casting room individually, where their photo is taken, details checked, and performance recorded exactly as they would be in our studio, but this time from their own home. Precisely as in person, actors are directed by the casting director, or even the director who usually watches the submitted recordings after this day, but may attend the first round of casting online.
All of our usual quality control is then performed behind the scenes (all beats of performance hit, focus correct on headshot/ident, correct information attached etc.) and the information for each performer is uploaded for the client to see on the cloud.
Callbacks are also successful over Zoom. They require more organisation on our end to accommodate talent, client, casting, and creative who are potentially all in different time zones, but we love making it work and everyone looking good!
In our physical callback studio we’ll often have different actors read together, rather than individually as in the first round of casting, and we recreate this in virtual castings too. A callback Zoom session can therefore include many screens. It’ll be even easier now that most people have learnt the etiquette of when to mute your mic and how to pass attention without cutting over each other!
The rest of the casting process was always email and phone based, so again no changes are required to move the successful talent through availability, contracting, and wardrobe preparation.
We can’t wait to be back in the full swing of casting for clients across the globe, and are looking forward to using this technology, combined with everyone’s newfound confidence in the realm of video conferencing, to bring together clients, talent and creatives from around the world.
We’re embracing this time as an opportunity to slow down too, to refresh and restore after a successful season, and to get our creativity out and playing. We hope that you can also find benefit from a more restorative pace at the moment.
There’s also an exciting launch coming from us soon, which we hope will also keep you entertained…