My first professional casting as a student producer

Earlier this semester I was presented with an intriguing opportunity to produce a web series. The series is written and directed by one of the professors here at Mercer, and a couple of other students are working on it as well. The project caught my attention from the beginning of the semester. Partly because of its premise, but mostly because producing professionally is my long-term goal after graduating. If you’re here, you probably already know by now that our web series is going by the name of Mount Airy Mercer. A (fictional) professor here has found herself in a tough spot and has been crashing on campus in a secret location. So far, she’s been getting away with it, but I guess you’ll all have to tune in and find out what happens after that.

            To produce a series like this while still in school has been such a great experience so far. I’m getting hands on experience of what the role of producer expects from me before I head out into the “real world.” I may not be getting paid for it, but in 2018 college credits are almost as valuable of a resource as money is. The rest of the crew on the series is hand-picked students and alumni all under the direction of our fearless leader, an actual professor here at Mercer County. I’ll introduce them all in a later post, but here I wanted to discuss some of the challenges of pre-production that I didn’t see coming as a first-time producer.

            The first challenge that I definitely did not see coming was how difficult it would be to say NO to people! When we first began pre-production meetings and writer’s rooms for the series, our showrunner and director had a pretty clear idea for where he wanted to take it. This made for a pretty easy layout for our first few episodes, but a lot of disappointed people at the round table when they were told their ideas didn’t work for the show. It’s a really delicate balance shooting down people’s ideas. Saying “no” to someone doesn’t exactly mean they have a bad idea, and even sometimes bad ideas are good. I’ve learned that bad ideas give everyone an idea of where they don’t want their scripts and subsequent episodes to go. There certainly have been some hurt feelings along the way, but I heard somewhere the show must go on.

            Another thing that was more challenging than I expected it to be was casting. As I mentioned before, our showrunner had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted for the show, cast included. Myself and a few other key members of the crew then had the responsibility of finding people who not only met pretty specific criteria but were actually good actors. Our series is very much about the characters so finding the right cast was essential to all of us. I foolishly thought this would be an easy task given the specific requests from my showrunner. So, he set up a casting ad and we waited for the responses. I thought that since it was a small, student production that not many people would be interested. I was wrong, very wrong. Within days we had hundreds upon hundreds of applicants. By the end of the week the applications were nearing a thousand between the three roles we wanted to audition for. It was really exciting to see all of these people interested in working on our series! I began sorting through the applicants with the help of our showrunner and I was beyond impressed by the talent I came across. Some of the applicants had worked alongside some really big celebrities, it was almost flattering they applied to our show. I had to keep reminding myself not to be intimidated; I had interviewed and been chosen for this job and deep down I knew I could do it without fangirling.

            Audition day was the coolest experience so far. We were finally off campus, in New York City, and I was starting to feel a little professional. The auditions went well for the most part and I really enjoyed seeing the process played out and all my hard work sorting through hundreds of applications come together. In my mind I had envisioned a big studio and the actors being a little snooty, but it was the exact opposite. The actors were very down to earth and talented, and our audition room was cozy and personal enough to get a sense of who each actor was beyond reading their sides. A little over three hours later and our crew had come to a solid decision on who we wanted to cast. I’m very confident with the decisions that we made, and I’m extremely excited to get to work with them. Now that we had our actors chosen, it was time for me to get our production registered with SAG-AFTRA, which is the actor’s union for those who don’t know. I’ll be discussing that more in my next blog post!

            One thing I’ve learned so far when it comes to producing is that planning ahead is your friend. During the writing, casting and pre-production process there is a lot of tasks required of you and a lot more that pop up as things unfold; and at times it’s a little intimidating. Especially if you’re still a student like me and have other classes, a job, and a family to balance as well. Making lists, planning ahead, and prioritizing has really helped me stay (somewhat) sane during this whole process. As we get closer to our shoot date, my tasks are growing and becoming more important. I’ve found that planning adequate time for them and making lists of what I need to do before it comes time to do it helps me stay on task. Let’s hope it stays that way during the chaos of shooting!