This is the only role I’m going to address before the launch because this is the only role I feel can be blogged about without ruining a large part of the story.

Going into casting, we all knew that the three leads would be a challenge to find ideal actors for. We knew that Mark Sandler (The Sadist) would be especially important and vital because the character is so dynamic, and that a high percentage of the story revolves around him.

Craig Frank rests in between takes in Compulsions.

When you approach casting a role like Mark, you tend to get sucked in to the darkness of the torture scenes. Thus, it was important to us that we look for actors who effectively play both sides of the character. Mark isn’t a sadist 100% of the time, you need to make sure that the actor can address the human side of the character. Bring in some sympathy, and of course very importantly, make the audience root for him. This isn’t unlike manyof our modern day leading men in episodic content. Jack Bauer (24), Dr. House (House), Vic Mackey (The Shield), and Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) are all great examples of leading men who are in reality bad people, yet we as an audience will root for them. (continue reading…)

Happy Friday,

When you’re in the final steps in finishing a series Fridays aren’t the relief that most 9-5ers get. They’re just the start of yet another working weekend! Anyway, lets get to today’s topic.

Annemarie Pazmino looks over her lines.

In the early stages of the project I remember having a conversation with Tubefilter’s Marc Hustvedt about the show. He asked me if we were going to cast a bunch of web TV actors for our ensemble. At the time I told him that I didn’t think so, it’s not because we didn’t want to cast Web TV actors, it’s just that we were ‘casting’ a pretty wide net and were going to pick the best person available, web star or not.  So naturally with the sheer number of people that we were having come in to read that weren’t part of the web TV community, I figured the Web Actors would get dwarfed out simply by statistics. It turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. (continue reading…)

Morning Everyone,

Almost didn’t have time to write this one, but let’s get to it.

Nathan Atkison directs Janna Bossier in Compulsions

John Frankenheimer once said that “Casting is 65 percent of directing”. During our pre-production process our Director Nathan Atkinson would repeatedly recite very similar notions. The idea is that with the right actors you can pull off your characters correctly and give them that realism and believability that’s especially important in a series like ours.

Remember yesterday‘s post about exploring inner evils? Well that’s not something you can properly execute by just handing off roles. Even in our rushed pre-production schedule we made sure to do our due diligence and go through a casting process. Nathan and our Producer Michael Tohl sat through a full two weeks of auditions and callbacks before I got to finally sit in with them and watch tapes. We then sat and discussed for hours before finally nailing down our actors.  The results? An ensemble cast that we are confident will at the very least turn most heads, and at the very most? … you’ll find out for yourselves on December, 1st.

That’s it for today, please feel free to ask questions in the comments below about a specific subject you’d like to see addressed in this blog.

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