Casting.

Every single person I went to uni with, and have worked with in castings, has some sort of horror story regarding a casting. Whether it was a kid, who didn't understand what he was being asked... so just stared blankly into the camera, or a guy who not only read his lines, but also the actions in the script... or even that actor who just does not get it...

Casting is a hard thing to get right, and this is especially true when you have little money to try and entice people with. At the moment, for overhead, we are trying to find our lead guy. This is something we knew was going to take time, and we were happy for it to, because he needs to be SPOT on... and I think we have pretty much succeeded (Stay tuned, casting recalls are happening this weekend!) but it proved a little harder than we initially thought!

Jack Vs Life, shown above is one of our references for the type of character we are looking for!

To find actors, firstly I contacted every single agent I have the number of, from callsheets from commercials I have worked on. Some I knew directly, others I hadn't had contact with before, but the listed added up to about 50 people altogether, from both the north and south.

We received some applications from these, but seeing as we weren't sure on rates for the actor yet, we did not have as many as we liked. So then, I carried on and email a large amount of University lecturers who had taught students drama. The age group we need are the 18-23 playing age, so we thought recent graduates would be perfect. This proved successful, and we did have a few applications again, but we still didn't find our guy!

We even tweeted at popular youtube vloggers... jackvslife retweeted us!

So we carried on. Star Now and Casting Call Pro were our next port of call... but many people who applied just didn't have the right look, so we decided to go for a more direct approach. We sat down and went through all 500 18-23 year olds who matched our criteria on Casting Call pro, and contacted every single one that we thought might be right for the part!

And we seem to have hit the nail on the head... I'm not sure whether we didn't think of it first to be honest, but we have had a great amount of response, and the best thing about it is that we handpicked everyone, so we know they already look right, now its just whether they act right!

So the next stage was the audition. We wanted to do this slightly differently. As our series is based on an internet blogger, we asked them to film themselves doing a blog, and email that to us!

Its proven a brilliant way to cast this role. We instantly know how the audience will perceive our actor, and the chemistry they can get across on screen, as well as being able to tell what they are like as themselves, rather than another character. Of course, it wouldn't work for all projects but its great for this one.

Those people that we think are our favourite from this initial audition will meet with us this weekend to see if they work well with Jack, and how willing they are to get involved in the project also- as this will be a huge part of the project.

I'm really excited at the possibility of having another person on board sooner rather than later. Stay Tuned! I'll keep you updated with how we get on!