So after our first casting session we had Mr. Pellegrino cast, we were pretty set on Quentin for Mikey and Jodi for Britney. We had someone coming back to read for Jakob but we still didn’t have a Cat. We asked Quentin to come back and read with our potential Jakob and anyone else we liked. Jodi came back for the same reason. We were getting close to our planned shoot dates and we still wanted to get our rehearsals in so this was important – we needed to finish off the cast. Today.
I think Josh was one of the first auditions that day and right away he clicked. He sat down beside Quentin and these guys just connected and I believed they’d been friends for years. Quentin was great at throwing out curve balls and Josh was able to just roll with the punches and they riffed off each other really well. I encouraged everyone to ad lib and improvise and these guys just worked. We saw our other Jakob hopeful again and he was still great, it was a really hard choice, but in the end (obviously) it was Josh.
Jakob was a surprisingly hard role to cast. It seems like it would be easy because he’s the normal guy – but that has a lot of potential to be boring. Mikey gets to crack the jokes and be silly but Jakob is often the one to bring it back to reality. Josh nailed this and really naturally brought out everything else we were looking for. Jakob needs to be awkward, a bit neurotic but still really relatable and Josh just did all that right away. We also got Josh to run the scene and Jodi (as Britney) and they really worked. Josh did some hilarious but really subtle things that made us laugh and he and Jodi really had great energy together.
Now the final piece was casting Cat. We saw a few more actresses, did a few callbacks of some hopefuls but it still wasn’t clicking and I was starting to get worried. I knew we’d probably find someone who would work, I was just afraid we wouldn’t find that perfect person. Thank god Shanae walked in! Pretty quickly we knew that we’d found Cat. Not only is she gorgeous but she had that inner strength that we were looking for. She was tough without being bitchy and she was able to hit the softer notes and still make things funny. So we brought Shanae, Quentin and Josh in together to read a scene and they just clicked. Everyone worked well together, they were all up for playing around within the scene and they just looked good together. We finished that day of casting feeling really good. After a review of the tapes that night it just confirmed it – we’d found our cast!
Another thing I should mention is that we weren’t just looking to hire some actors. (I shouldn’t really say “hire” because it’s all volunteer at this point). We wanted a cast that was passionate about the project and was really going to help it be a success. It wouldn’t end with shooting - we were looking for people who would be willing to give up a weekend to come to gaming event if need be or really work to promote the show and want to make more. I’m really happy that we found that in everyone.
Now the final step was rehearsals. Our first rehearsal was a big scheduled one at the casting studio. Geoff brought his friend Kevin Grenzel over to take pictures and these are where the shots in the opening title sequence came from. It was a lot of fun and we got to really work a lot of things out. By the end the cast was even making plans to meet one their own to do more rehearsals. That’s the kind of dedication we were really lucky to have. And it felt good, it felt like they really believed in the project and wanted it to be the best. They weren’t treating it like some silly little web series comedy and that was a big confidence booster for me.
Our next rehearsal was just at a Starbucks in the back corner and so many great ideas came out of it. The cast really came up with a lot of funny stuff that I was able to work into the script before shooting. And I really can’t say enough about how valuable rehearsals are, I’m pretty sure they saved us many hours on set because we didn’t really have to spend time on performances, everyone knew what we were doing. It’s also a really good time for the cast, and for me, to bond and really become comfortable working together.
That’s actually my big tip to new directors – rehearse! You’ll find the awkward lines, tweak performances and discover new jokes or ideas. It gives you a chance to play with the material so when you get to set – where the money flies out the door and dozens of people are standing around waiting for you to get it right – you can just blast through it.
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