“Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.” – Alfred Hitchcock
Our 2 month hunt for a protagonist for our feature film “Lullaby for a Lunatic” has come to an end. After sorting through over a thousand applications, holding open acting workshops, working closely with agencies & scouting at acting schools we have finally found our protagonist. His name is Leif Nygaard.
A LITTLE ABOUT LEIF
Leif graduated with a bachelor in modern/contemporary dance and has studied acting at the Actors Foundry in Vancouver BC. Leif is passionately dedicated and works in great depth with his preparations for roles. His short films, to name a few, have been to Slamdance, Brooklyn International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival winning awards along the way. You can see the trailer for his recent short film “Fish in Barrel” Directed by Randall Okita below.
Initially we conceptualized Leif as a supporting character for the film. He came in and read for a challenging part that we were having a hard time finding potential candidates for. Leif impressed all 4 of us at the casting table and we quickly came to a unanimous “yes” decision to call him in for a callback.
A few days later I was doing some prose storyboarding and trying to visualize the different candidates in our protagonist’s role. We had about 5 strong candidates for this role. Each actor was very different from the next and each one would color the film differently. I was visualizing all 5 of the actors in the final film. But who would our protagonist be?
I remember holding an acting workshop in my studio last year and I invited Assen, a method acting teacher from Methodica Studios to help give instructions and guidance to the actors. At one point in his lecture he told the actors to “pity casting directors”. What he meant by this was that as the casting process continues actors get increasingly stronger. By the time a casting director is doing their 1st or 2nd round of callbacks, great actors are fighting for their shot at the role. Directors don’t come out of this process with 1 clear choice. There are usually 2-5 top contenders for each role. Each great in their own way. This really complicates a casting director’s life.
I kept running different scenarios in my head with the top candidates. Laying on my floor with my storyboard finding the major narrative beats of my scenes and running the potential actors through my head. Over. And over. And over. And over. And over. Drinking coffee. Pacing. Almost coming to a conclusion. Drinking more coffee, then coming to a different conclusion. Pacing and more pacing. Then doubting myself. Trying to start from scratch…. Then while I was visualizing one of the scenes with one of the other actors, Leif an actor for another character peaked his head around the corner in my imaginary set. “How did you get past security” I asked (becuase of course I have and need security in my imagined set). He just stood there in front of me and asked “Do you mind if I just try this and you can see what you think?”. For me this was a step in the wrong direction. I didn’t answer. I just stood there and stared at him blankly. Even if I liked him it would make the other part we initially cast him for open which means we would need to re-open auditions. Not only would it be a logistical nightmare but his look wasn’t what I had imagined. If we go with Leif we would be totally casting against type and both imagined Leif and the real me knew it. But I let him run the scene in my mind becuase I needed a break from seeing the other actors anyway. Leif ran the scene and all of the sudden everything felt very different. He looked great and his performance (although different from what I expected) was very strong.
I needed to go for a walk. I asked Leif to sit down with the other imagined actors in the audition room while I go for my walk. Apparently, even though I could afford security in my imagined set I couldn’t afford trailers for the actors.
The actors sat there reading their sides and trying to not be distracted by one another. My heart was racing and I was overwhelmed with excitement. But part of me caulked it up to too much coffee and a short lived manic episode.
I came home from my walk and started studying the scenes of the film again. This time instead of running it with 5 actors, I ran it with 6. The other imagined actors didn’t like that when I got back from my jog I threw in another competitor, but they all grinned and politely said “whatever is best for the film”. I sensed most of them didn’t mean it.
What was it that was drawing me towards Leif? Well for starters, Leif is the intellectual antihero. Good looking, fit and bohemian. He can play the brooding poet, the romantic dreamer or the self-destructive artist and both his emotionality (i.e. femininity) and masculinity serve him very well.
The next day (in the real world… not in my imagination) I called Leif’s agent and asked if I could get his contact info to workshop a few scenes with him for a couple of hours. I thought it would be helpful to stop running the scenes in my mind and do it in real life.
I meet with Leif a few days later. Immediately I was struck with the thought “this is right, this is right, this is right”.
We started to workshop a handful of scenes at noon. An hour passed, two hours passed, we’ve had coffee and talked a lot about our character’s goals, dreams and expectations. We filmed a few scenes. Another hour passed. It was soon dinner time. We had more coffee. We experimented with a few more character ideas. We searched for a voice, we talked about relationships. The sun went down. We filmed a few more scenes and then watched them. The next thing we knew it was midnight. We kept digging for insight into our protagonist. We experimented with new ideas and we came up with some details for our character’s backstory. We ended the evening by projecting Leif’s short film on an 8 foot canvas. 14 hours and 16 minutes later, with only half a meal in our stomachs, wired from all the coffee and inspired by all of our ideas, I knew I found our protagonist. We were done. I also realized that I’m the reason that Unions exist.
It took an audition, a callback, many imagined scenes and a 14 hour and 16 minute workshop for me make a decision… but I got there in the end.
Welcome aboard Leif.
“Leif’s an extraordinarily strong actor – very committed and very hard working. I was speaking to Dorothy about his huge potential and called him her “Norwegian Johnny Depp”. His work in last class was heartbreaking and very high end. I also think he’s a superb guy – soft spoken and earnest, but witty and charming…a really nice presence to have in class or on set…”
-Matthew Harrison
The Actors Foundry
