The Whole Picture

So I just want to start off with saying that I'm not addicted to coffee. I'm addicted to the vanilla flavored coffee mate I put in my coffee. I had always thought it was the caffeine I needed in the morning, but it wasn't until I actually looked at the creamer ingredients that I discovered the culprit. Case in point: Water, Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed and/or Soybean Oil, Less than 2% of the Following: Natural and Artificial Flavors, Crack, Maltodextrin.

Whoops! Should've looked at the indredients when I bought it!

Oh well.

Now, with the webseries, we are ALL cast! All our top picks accepted our offers, and we couldn't be happier. We shoot our first episode Wednesday. There's just one small thing....One of our actors looks a helluva lot like Carrie Fisher. And apparently she gets that a lot.

So guess who had fun peppering in Star Wars jokes? This girl! And what's hilarious, is that I ALREADY HAD a Space Balls and Star Wars joke in episode 10.

When you put together a cast, any cast, a play, a short, a film, a webseries, you have to look at the big picture. You line up all the headshots when you're done casting and take a look at your top picks. Do they go together? Do the relationships look real? If there are characters who are related, do they look like they actually could be? I remember watching FRIENDS for the first time and really appreciating how Monica and Ross looked like they actually could be siblings. I read later that they had brought Courteney Cox in for the role of Rachel, but when paired with David Schwimmer, looked a little incestuous, so she got Monica instead. These things are important!

Just like honoring the fact that one of your actors looks like Princess Leia. It's the big picture.

In fact, I once did a short film where there was one very obvious lead, a nerdy, nervous girl at a bar with her supporting hot, slightly slutty best friend. I was called in for the hot friend (what?! okay!!) and when I did my monologue, they were so impressed that they told me later on set that I was thisclose to doing the lead role but that the it came down to the big picture. The other girl they liked looked like she could have me as a friend. When they reversed our roles, contemplating me as the lead, it didn't look like I could have the blond girl as my friend. Now, I have no idea what that means either. Perhaps nerdy brunettes just can't have a slutty blond friend, while a nerdy blond can have a slutty brunette friend. I don't get the reasoning either, but the fact is, casting and directors look at the entire whole when deciding which piece of the pie you fit into. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your awesome audition and has everything to do with your look. It's the whole moving picture.

So! Let the force be with you.