Fun Fact: @nick.puya and I have studied with the same teacher! Ten years ago, I was a student of @berg.studios in NYC and now Nick studies with the Berg. But we only discovered this commonality today.
#castingdirector
OPEN CALL for ACTORS on TUES 4/7
We’re hosting an open casting tomorrow for upcoming scripted projects and vertical series work in Los Angeles. Casting male and female leads, supporting and day player roles who can play either 18-25 or 25-45 ranges.
We’re looking for strong on-camera talent, fresh faces, and actors ready to step into fast-moving productions.
Open call
Tomorrow
11 AM - 4 PM
7700 Balboa Blvd, Van Nuys
MUST REGISTER USUNG LINK (casting42.com/en/Spaceflea-Studios/9abeba848c8/sign-up)
Bring your headshot / resume if available
Complimentary headshots by @vibrantviolet
This is a chance to get in front of active casting teams and be considered for upcoming roles already in development.
Must reserve a place in bio to submit and secure your slot
#ActorCasting #OpenCallLA #LosAngelesActors #microdrama
Ten years ago, @jenheato and I did background on a commercial in NYC. Now, she’s the lead in the microdrama I just cast for @dramabox_us . Full circle moment! ❤️
AAPI Entertainment & Casting Summit @aapisummit hosted at @usccinema . Gathering to celebrate and empower AAPI voices in the entertainment industry. The work of representation happens in casting, on panels, and in conversations like these.
Inclusion is more than an idea where we disguise our virtue signaling as doing the right thing by merely talking about it. It’s a direct by-product of who we allow to be seen and centered in the narratives that we tell. The bottom line is: Who are we hiring and giving opportunities to? Spaces like this matter because they make the awareness around those decisions more conscious.
We build bridges so others can cross, but we also have to be honest about who has been allowed to access those spaces in the first place. Casting is one of the most potent spaces through which systemic bias is either reinforced or disrupted. And so, I left this conference asking this question:
How can we remove unconscious racial bias from the casting process where the ethnicity of a role is not integral to the character?
In that room, young Asian American actors spoke openly: some commented on either their frustration or uncertainty of where they would be able to find work in the industry where the elephant in the room is that whiteness can often seem like the price of entry; and so in stories that don’t specifically call for an Asian American character, one fear that came to surface was that there was no clear place for them.
I don’t have a simple answer other than the importance of telling one’s own stories and creating those bridges ourselves, but as a person of color myself, I see, hear and feel them deeply, and I’m actively thinking about what responsibility casting holds in being a voice in changing this.
The archetype of the character does a lot of the heavy lifting in microdramas. The actor activates an identity that already exists in the audience’s psyche. Because the audience immediately recognizes the archetype — the Betrayed Wife, the Man Who Cannot See Her — and projects their own biases onto those roles onscreen.
In THIS LETTER TO YOU IS MY LAST, Ada’s archetype emerges in her very first moments onscreen: she wakes from a nightmare of her own husband strangling her and asks, “That nightmare again?” This single line tells us everything about how long she has been enduring this, and how normalized the suffering has become.
Frank’s archetype is also immediately clear. Before Ada asks for a divorce, he tries to normalize his behavior and minimize the pain he has caused her, saying, “You’ve caught me cheating on you like 99 times. What’s left to talk about?” The writing is efficient because it is imbued with the archetype of the cheating partner and therefore the audience doesn’t need his backstory to recognize him. We already know this guy, because we loved someone like him before.
That moment of recognition doesn’t only happen for the audience. It happens during the audition process too. I felt this when @annaderusso20 and @kennyfrom_southpark auditioned for the roles of Ada and Frank. I know who this person is because of the work they did as actors to know the character on an intimate level. Because the best acting creates an experience for the audience. From their performances, I understand what is driving them and as a viewer I want to find out what happens to them, if they will resolve the conflict that has made the telling of this story necessary.
Director @rionofphoenix and Casting Director @actingwithadam , SVP of Talent and Casting at @spaceflea , on the set of MARKED BY MY ALPHA STEPBROTHER, produced by @trifectafilmproductions for @dramawave_official . Filmed on the Banquet Hall set at @5w1hstudios .
Not unlike the melodrama of a soap opera or telenovela, the heightened emotion of the microdrama is a stylistic contract with the audience, not a failure of subtlety or lack of sophistication on the part of the viewer. The audience agrees to receive feeling at that volume.
The size of an actor’s performance in this format therefore must be precise: too small and the viewer is left without an emotional payoff; too large and it breaks the contract by becoming camp. The sweet spot is a performer who can play the size of the feeling in an embodied rather than performative way.
📸: @barclaywright , @monochromatic.la
@annaderusso20 and @kennyfrom_southpark star in THIS LETTER TO YOU IS MY LAST, now out on @dramabox_us . This was the first vertical we cast this year at @spaceflea and congratulations to the entire creative team. ❤️🙌🏾
The workflow in casting microdramas has a fast turnaround. It’s not unusual to assemble the entire principal cast and background in less than a week, as preproduction for the entire project could be as little as two weeks.
Working in microdramas has evolved my understanding of how a performance breathes on a small screen. It demands different technical considerations from actors and a different eye in casting. In microdramas, casting becomes about identifying who can quickly step into an archetype with built-in expectations that are recognized by the audience in the absence of character development. The performances call for heightened emotion that is somewhere between melodrama and telenovela, because there isn’t time to arrive at the feeling gradually; the episodes are 60-90 seconds and the emotional turns in a scene therefore must often land with an immediate shift or reversal in what the character is either feeling or experiencing.
You’re looking for actors whose presence announces who they are the moment they appear and who can then operate at a heightened register of emotion without tipping into parody. Not every project achieves this successfully, but I believe that the work in this space can reach that level, and casting will play a central role in getting it there.
