Starting the casting process

- I believe that 50% of directing and a significant portion…of the quality of your production…is properly casting to begin with.…If you are thoughtful and thorough…with your talent selection you will save yourself…not only time, but possibly money and frustration as well.…The casting process begins by carefully articulating…what you want in and need from your talent.…Let's talk about something called writing your breakdowns.…Breakdowns are complete synopses…of the characters contained within your scripts.…This is where you're going to describe each character…and what you're looking for in it.…

What breakdowns do is they maximize communication…and minimize unwanted response.…A breakdown typically looks like this.…Your character name, its gender,…age range you're looking for, ethnicity if applicable,…and usually a one line character description.…And then if you require any special skills,…you can list them there.…This is an example from a web series…I produced called The Broken Continent.…We were looking for about 65 different types of actors,…