R+P Post 27: Casting

We decided it was most beneficial to us to cast all three of us as members of the band in the music video. This way, we would minimise the amount of help we would need from people outside the media department who would have other commitments and would likely be less able to attend as many shoot sessions. Additionally, we have all been a part of the music video remake task as performers, so we have all had experience in performing to camera and in being a part of a professional music video studio shoot.

We tested whether we had made the right decision in casting us three by performing a screen test, where we auditioned Noa's lip synching and Emilio and I's performance skills.

Our Screen Test

We found that after the screen test, we were all very happy with how we had cast the band; the voice of Lisa Muller works convincingly with Noa's lip synching and overall we looked like we gelled well as a band.

With this in mind, we decided to cast the band as follows:

Casey Tyler - Noa Craig 

Description of Casey: Casey is playful, happy and likes to add her own quirks and sense of fun to her performance 

Noa Craig

We cast Noa because she is an experienced performer, having taken part in professional theatre productions such as Emil and the Detectives, as well as performing in concerts as part of the school's Jazz Band and orchestra. She is naturally vivacious and fun loving, much like Casey Tyler, and we believe she can bring energy to Casey's performance and a genuine sense of playfulness. We also thought that she demonstrated great lip syncing skills in the screen test, and that her voice matched that of Lisa Muller's very well.

Hugh Tyler - Jack Edmondson

Description of Hugh: Hugh is a showman, likes to act very energetically and gets very excited playing his guitar

Jack Edmondson

As the second most prominent member of the band, and as Casey's sister, Hugh needs to match Casey's enthusiasm. We cast myself because I have had lots of experience in performing at a big scale as an A-Level Drama student, and as I played the bass in our Echosmith remake for our prelim, I am comfortable performing with and pretending to play the guitar convincingly. 

Terence Kitchener - Tom Brown 

Description of Terence: Although he loves to have fun like the rest of the band, he is considered the most serious, as he likes to show off his keyboard playing skills and act smug when performing, and does not (like the others) tend to poke fun at himself

Tom Brown

We cast ex-AS media student Tom Brown as he is a experienced performer, both in acting, having an extra-curricular interest in drama, and a musician. We auditioned him for the role, in which we set him in front of a keyboard and saw if he could play it convincingly; we decided that he looked very natural playing the instrument, and also very entertaining playing the 'straight man' appearance of Terence.

Guy Chapman - Emilio Francischelli

Description of Guy: He is the quieter member of the band, and in performance plays the drums in the background with enthusiasm

Emilio Francischelli

We cast Emilio because he has had some experience performing in the prelim music video, and as he has a drum kit at home, he has opportunities to practice playing along with the music at home to create a convincing performance as a drummer.

Extras

For our final scene we needed to enlist the help of our friends to dress up and create an effective party set up. We created a long list of people we would ask, intending to shorten to a final cast list of extras when we knew who could attend our Saturday shoot at the studio.

Our Long Casting List - we organised who would ask each person (shown by the initials to the left of the names)

Eventually we shortened our list of extras to 5 people.

Our whole cast in costume