Development of cast members

The process of filming has been prolonged significantly due to our constant changing in recasting, however this encouraged us to ensure we were thinking thoughtfully about who we decided to cast for our final opening.

The first person we casted was Simone.

Simone Dean

We felt as if she was a vital person as she was going to be the one acting the most throughout, it was important that we chose someone who we felt comfortable guiding and giving instructions to, to ensure we got the best outcome. Simone ensured that she was able to film on the days we suggested to her and was committed in giving up her spare time to film our opening with us. Due to Simone previously doing drama GCSE it made it easier for us to decide on someone to act as she had previous experience which she could include when acting.

Amanda Robertson

Debby Dean

Secondly, the person we had to cast as the 'drunk' mum was also someone who was available when we needed them to be. This became difficult as to begin with we decided on Amanda Robertson, again being a family member allowed for us to give firm instructions on how we wanted things to be. The problem with this came where we had to refilm small clips of our opening because of multiple reasons such as the continuity or lighting not being how we wanted. By having to refilm meant that Amanda was unfortunately not always able to film on the days which we required her to. Due to our forthcoming deadline and the shortage of time it meant we had to decide to cast another person to play as the drunk mum. We chose Debby Dean, who is also a close mum, who we were able to instruct as we pleased, however it was still fairly difficult to direct her but due to Amanda being away we had to try our best to guide Debby in order to better our final piece. An extension in our deadline meant that we had more filming time available, this worked in our favour because it meant that we could use Amanda who we had originally planned on using.

Jake Clifton

Lastly, our last casting issue was having a male actor to participate. Due to our changing storyline meant that in the end it turned out that we didn't need a male actor, just a male voiceover to be included. This helped us as again difficulties came to finding the right time to film. When casting, we had to make the decision based on who would best be able to perform and be in character, for this we chose Jake clifton, this was because he participated in drama throughout GCSE and currently does for A-Level this therefore meant that his acting would be as we expected and he was confident within his role which improved our piece massively. Due to deadlines in other subjects meant that Jake also had to prioritise his work which meant we had to find another actor because from teachers feedback there was more filming needed and shots to be included. To fix this problem we decided to use Sam Baggarley, it was more difficult in ways as he didn't have as much of a natural confidence about him as he didn't have as much experience as Jake. Regardless of this we still managed to instruct him through our piece and managed to re film as we wanted.

On one of our last feedback sessions with our teachers we came to the conclusion to change our idea slightly to take out our male actor and to alter the storyline. This therefore meant we could include some parts of what we had previously filmed but also add some new material. As a whole our final film opening had lots of altercations which made it difficult to keep people we casted consistent, however we managed to overcome these problems to produce our final piece which we are very pleased with.