Pre-Production: Casting Auditions

The video presented above shows the auditions which my group and I held in order to find a suitable and professional actress to partake within the production of our horror trailer, ‘Visions’. 

Within our horror teaser, we do not have any dialogue present, therefore, we are heavily reliant on the body language and facial expressions of our actors in order to present our message clearly to the audience. My group and I, however, felt that it is easier to assess acting abilities through the actors performing lines rather than acting out gestures. Therefore, within the audition, we instructed the actors to read the following lines; “I'm seeing things that aren't real. I'm seeing things that I shouldn't see. I'm dreaming things that I've never seen. This surgery was supposed to make me normal.”  The lines which the actors read out were from the 2008 American supernatural horror film ‘The Eye’. The plot of the film revolves around a young female called Sydney Wells who has been blind since she was five years old due to an accident. After going through a surgery of cornea transplantation to recover her vision, she comes to find that she's having strange visions and with the help of Dr. Paul Faulkner, she begins to find out the truth behind her visions. The plot of the film, ‘The Eye’ holds many similarities to our own plot, therefore my group and I believed that it was helpful to use this script as a basis to judge the acting abilities of our candidates. 

My group and I were extremely impressed actress, Estina Lauretta’s, audition as not only did she conduct herself in a professional manner however it was clear to us she that she had a strong sense of passion and willingness to act. We, therefore, came to the decision to hire her as the lead role of Jenna Johnson as we believe she will perform this role with confidence and enthusiasm.  On the other hand, although we realised that actress, Sakura Suzuki, came across shy within her audition, we still believe that she also has a strong passion for acting and therefore will be suitable for the role of Rachel Johnson. The actress explained to us that when it comes to performing lines, she is quite shy however acting out gestures and facial expressions are her strength. The issues regarding the actress' confidence, are therefore tackled as our script does not require our actress to speak however it is solely based upon her ability to act out certain gestures.

It was essential that both actress' which we hired for the role of character's held either similar or the same ethnicity as we need to make apparent to the audience that both these characters are related. Therefore, by hiring two actresses which are both from an Asian background will be effective in portraying to the audience that these characters hold a mother and daughter relationship. 

Upon reflection, I believe that along with instructing the candidates to perform lines, we also should have also asked them to act out the gestures they will be performing within the teaser trailer in order to grasp a better understanding of their acting abilities. However, we overall feel confident with both of the choices which we made and believe that each actress will carry out her role confidently and professionally.