Attaching a cast... Drama Drama Drama.

So Jane and I spent an entire Sunday at the IFP Independent Film Conference last week and one of the things that pratically every panelist agreed upon was that to get your film financed nowadays you need a name attached. Any name, any role. This is frustrating to hear yet exciting at the same time. It shows a shift in the industry; that bigger-named stars are taking a closer look at Independent films - beyond the paycheck and into the meatier stuff.

This is why Mike and I have really stressed to Jane the importance of flushing out the characters in the script - making them unique and interesting and really intense roles that any actor would covet. Clever dialogue, interesting situations, a new outlook on a familiar situation.

This week was a big deadline week for us all. Initially we had wanted a business proposal to target financiers, but then we realized that the cast is the first major hurdle (in addition to the initial pitch to our private backer). So we in essence abandoned the proposal and went to work on a cast attachment packet. Outlining the visions of our director and writer, a breakdown of characters, and visual references to both the characters and the locations we envision. As producer I also gave a brief overview of finances and why we went the short film to feature film route. I think I'll post the note once I finish it - I've kind of hit writer's block! In addition to this packet we've each submitted our top 3 most-wanted actors/actresses for each of our leads. Of course the top 3 ended up turning into the top 4 or 5. We're holding a "whittling down" session tonight and will aim to really target actors who are based in NY (to avoid travel costs) and possibly those with smaller more approachable representation.

Also, as a side note, at IFP we learned about SAG's Diversity incentive. One of the leads of our film is written as Indian and several of the supporting characters are open ethnicity. It was wonderful to hear how large unions like SAG (and off-shoot SAGindie) are looking out for smaller independent productions by offering incentives for diverse casting - I think it is a plus industry-wide.

Always so much to do in a film project!

-Traci x