We’ve been casting for our feature film “Lullaby for a Lunatic” for the last month now. We’ve already held auditions for a few days a couple of weeks ago and we’ve seen many great actors so far.
We’re starting to narrow down our choices, but we’ve had difficulties casting for a couple roles within the film so we stopped by a couple of acting schools in Vancouver to scout for talent. We were invited to both Shoreline Actor’s Studio and Austin-Tuck Studios.
Michael from Shoreline Studios was nice enough to let us sit in on one of his audition rehearsal classes. Having just held auditions ourselves, it was great to see a school that preps their students for audition etiquette and strategy. They taped each student’s performance which allows the students to look at themselves from a casting director’s perspective. What I loved most about sitting on this class was that Michael firstly, has an incredible amount of energy, but secondly and most importantly, he gives each student, no matter how strong their performance was, detailed and very constructive an honest feedback. We sat in on their full time program led by Brad the next morning which was an equally enjoyable experience.
The day after we visited Austin-Tuck Studios in Gastown. The class was very different from the other classes we sat in on. Deb began her class with complicated voice exercises and then some of the funniest improve I’ve ever seen.
She then had her students perform very long scenes, from what I assumed were stage plays. This allowed her students to really dig deep and stay in a scene for a long period of time. The scenes she chose for her students were really challenging and fun to watch. And as icing on the cake her students were consistently talented and a pleasure to scout.
We got out of our acting classes around 11pm both nights. However, the time spent scouting at two of Vancouver’s most respected & popular acting schools was worth it. We found an additional dozen actors we want to call in for an audition for our film. Definitely worth the investment in time.
