The glamour of it all…

Last night I was a guest at a UCLA extension class on film production. I love talking about my job and I also enjoy educating potential Producers about what we Casting Directors do. I think when I break down what I do day-to-day, the reality of the difficulty of what it takes to make a film sets in and any glamour associated with what I do goes out the window. By the end of the class, a student came up to me and asked me, “What exactly is fun about your job?” What a question! I thought that I must have sounded miserable to the students, but then I realized that maybe I wasn’t expressing how much I love what I do, because, in truth, the day-to-day of making a film successfully can be very daunting and being aware of the potential roadblocks may be perceived as, for lack of a better term, negative.

So I am setting the record straight: MY JOB IS FUN AND ENJOYABLE and the best part of the job is seeing on-screen the hard work pay off.

Speaking of work, I have to finish casting “Polish Bar.” The film starts shooting March 2nd in Chicago. The Producer and the Director decided to caravan from L.A. to Chicago today (good luck to them) in order to have extra vehicles on the set, but also to bond…I feel bonded, so I opted for an airplane ticket.

One of our actresses fell out of the film, she didn’t want to shoot in Chicago, so this is a little bit of added stress to the situation because now the Producer wants to see actors in Chicago for this role. Which means more work for me. As the role is very important in the film the Director is understandably upset because he put a lot of time and effort in to getting the actress into the film and working with her for literally years. So I feel obligated to find an amazing replacement so that he feels like this is an opportunity and not a tragedy…I know it will all turn out o.k.