Motel Manager casted!

Carlos Orrala as Motel Manager

- Antoine Bandele (Director)

Nevada Casted!

Alexa Shea as Nevada

- Antoine Bandele (Director)

Main Cast ... Casted

Here is the main cast of The Devil's Company (Prologue)

Courtney Case as Jade

Rob Watt as Zachary

Alex Demir as Zane

Resa Xing Barton as Carmen

Sacha Renee-Stackhouse as Natalia

- Antoine Bandele (Director)

Casting: An Actor's Experience

Hey everyone! Courtney here. So I realize I'm a couple days late here, but oh well. So, I went with Antoine to see our call-backs for Zach and the Zane auditions. It was really exciting. I love that I get to be such a big part of this project! Reading with the Zachs was really fun, even though I felt like a huge dork. Really, just on a totally superficial level, think about the situation I was in: a nineteen year old girl who gets to sit in a room and have a romantically-tense conversation with about 5 cute boys. Not to mention we're probably about 3 inches away from each other the entire time, so needless to say, it was kind of hard to stay as cool and collected as Jade. Not that I had any bad thoughts or anything, I was very good and very professional, I just giggled a lot on the inside.

Anyway, not the point. I really liked auditioning the Zachs. Especially as an actor it made me realize a lot about the casting process that I already kind of knew, but had never seen in play. One of my teachers at AMDA (American Musical and Dramatic Academy- graduated Dec. '08) used to always tell us when talking about auditions, "just don't be bad". And it's kind of true. As long as the auditioners weren't rude or outright bad, we really liked them and wanted them to be the one. That's the thing about casting that makes me, as an actor, feel so much better, that every person who walks in the door, you WANT that person the be the best you've seen.

The Zanes were exciting to watch too and (I really hope no one takes this the wrong way) they showed me that it doesn't matter how old you are, you can still be a bad actor. That sounds awful and mean, but I think sometimes actors forget that. I always worry that I'm getting a late start as an actor, but then I see these guys and I know I'm fine.

The Zanes that were good though, and I really got a lot from a couple of them. It was just so exciting to actually be feeding off another actor with this script that I've been working on by myself for so long. I keep talking with Antoine about the other characters and what they're supposed to be and what they mean to my character. But nothing beats having another actor right in front of you to actually feed you emotion and interact with you. It got me way more pumped for this project, even more so than before. I can't wait to start working with the other actors and actually be filming!

I have to send my Thanks to Antoine for really letting me be a part of this project. I know he needed to see chemistry and everything, but I just feel real special being able to sit there with him and talk about OUR favorites... It's been great and I suppose I'll post again in a couple weeks.

- Courtney Case (Jade)

Casting: A Director's Experience

Now, the first time I've ever officially "casted" for a production of mine was last summer at the Inner-City Filmmakers Summer Program. Next to shooting and editing, this had to be my favorite part. When you write something for so long and invest your time into the characters on page it's so refreshing to see them come alive to you right in front of your eyes. I'll admit though, not everything is pretty and beautiful. You wonder if you conveyed the character correctly or not when actors come in and do something that was completely opposing to what was in your mind. But when those few actors come in and nail it ... even exceed my expectations ... I feel so rejuvenated!

Since Friday, we started casting. First we started casting the role of Zach and Carmen. I could not attend that session but if you read the post below you'll find an entry from Spencer Smith (our every-man). Instead, the way I saw the auditions was through this amazing site called Cazt (below). It's a great system. My casting director (Kevin Hidalgo at HidalgoCasting) records the video and the people over at Cazt upload it for him and he sends me the link. I watched the auditions and I get to rate the actors much like YouTube videos and even comment on them :-D! This is extremely convenient, especially since I couldn't be at the first day of casting in person.


So I watched the auditions. Like Spencer said, the Zachs that came in were fair but the Carmens were mind-blowing good. Although he said I'd have a hard time choosing between the girls I knew which one was most like the character in my head (I don't think I'll reveal any of the actors until a later post). The Zachs were much easier to filter through; there were a lot of weak performances and few strong ones. I'll admit, I was shaky on the Zachs and was even considering just bringing in an entire new batch of guys but then today happened ...

So today I actually got to go to casting in person. Today was schedule for Zach call backs and Zane auditions. We even had our lead come in to read with the Zachs to match chemistry. Seeing them act against the person they'd really be with was great for all of us. Again, though, it was very simple to pick the guy we would go with. There were two really good ones but one had more chemistry with Courtney (the lead) than the other.

Then it was time for the older chaps: The Zanes.

A little note that I wanted to point out. The guy who was in the IGN April Fools's Legend of Zelda Trailer auditioned for Zane! That was really cool! I totally didn't realize it until long after he left (photo to left, the screencap makes him look like a criminal on the news but I swear he's nice). He did a good audition but his voice didn't work for me. It was really deep and husky, which is fantastic for the Legend of Zelda trailer but not so much for a modern, small-time mob boss. If you haven't seen the trailer I'll post it below. He shows up in the first 0:35 of the video (or at least most of his voice does).



So for a long time during the auditions I was underwhelmed. I was pretty frightened we wouldn't find anyone I would be completely content with, then one of the men who came in gave a solid performances and after a short break another actor came in who gave the most amazing audition I've ever witness. He actually made my eyes water.

The thing about his audition that moved me so much is that he made me ashamed that I wrote Zane, because I didn't think it lived up to his acting abilities. He made me see who Zane really was. Through his acting, Zane was revealed, Zane found his salvation. Admittedly, Zane would probably have to be my least and most underdeveloped character and this man, this actor, made me ashamed of that. What most of all the other actors did was shout and scream, making Zane seem very insecure and not calm and collected when really he wasn't that at all, or at least in my head he wasn't. A week ago my script supervisor and I were dealing with some of Zane's lines and I had a hard time defending what Zane was as a character but this actor helped me see Zane entirely. He's not a shouting and screaming kind of guy. He's very quiet and demanding and threatening but nothing outward ... but inward ... very subtle ... like Adrian Pasdar as Nathan Petrelli in Heroes. His dialogue and his voice cuts you deep and I really feared him, but he was still vulnerable and reliant on his top assassin.

Today was a good day.

- Antoine Bandele (Director)

Casting

Hey guys,

It's me Spencer Smith. I'm gaffer on The Devil's Company as well as filling random odd jobs as they come up.

Today I got to help out Kevin Hildalgo with casting for the characters of Zach and Carmen. While Kevin did the talking and all the other cool casting director stuff, I got to help out by working camera. This actress named Rachel helped us out by doing the reading. She's also helping out another ICF grad with his movie called "Car Ride with Claire"

We ourselves up in a little casting facility called "Cazt" in West Hollywood. It a pretty neat little place, pretty basic. They set us up in a little room with a desk, some chairs, and the most, or lack of a better word, adorable little HD camera in the world.

For the casting of Carmen, Antoine wrote up a little piece of dialogue between Carmen and Zane, just something for the talent to act out to see who has a better feel for the character. All of the actresses who came in brought something distinct and wonderful to the character. I had a drama teacher in high school once tell me, "There are no small roles, just small actors". All of these actresses approached the role in a such a completely different manner. I'm anxious to see which one Antoine picks.

Well, thats all from me. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of my thoughts on casting. I had a lot of fun doing it.

- Spencer Smith (Gaffer/Everyman)

First gun outting!

Hey everyone! I'm Courtney Case, I'll be playing the part of Jade in The Devil's Company. I'm really excited to be working on this project and have been since the first time Antoine said I looked cool with a gun in my hand.

So anyway, today I shot my first gun. I shot quite a few actually and I'm still learning so forgive me if I forget what some of them were. One of my teachers, Charles Currier, from my acting conservatory, AMDA took me and let me use his guns. My first gun was this tiny, antique .22 caliber pistol. Super cute, really, didn't exactly make me feel hardcore, but it was a good first shot and easy to shoot. Then, I shot two different kinds of semi-auto .45 pistols. The first was black metal, totally sleek, Jade's kind of gun and the other (my personal favorite) was a stainless steel Colt., like the one in the pciture. It was really surreal to be shooting it because I've spent so much timing wanting to shoot a gun, but I got the hang of it kind of quickly (don't get me wrong, it still need a LOT of practice) and it was just so empowering to hold on to. I liked these two 'cause that had just enough recoil and were really well weighted.

I shot a revolver next and the weight, recoil, and all around difficulty really shocked me. It was a pretty old-school revolver, but the trigger was way harder to pull and it was just in general hard to control the gun. Then I shot two of your basic police/detective looking guns, black 9mm with plastic base/handle/whatever that is... anyway, they were fun to shoot, way more recoil and therefore harder to control the targeting. These guns made me want to conquer them because I swear there were like 3 shots that didn't even make the targets and I just kept thinking, "I will learn how to shoot this freaking gun." Just for the fun of it, at the end we shot a couple shot guns which was SO intense! The other guns got me excited and I felt bad-ass, but with the shotguns, I was a little afraid. They're so heavy! And have SO much power.

All in all the experience was really great, I'm totally pumped about learning how to do this more. I'm not gonna lie, there wasn't a lot of character work going on today, it was mostly just Courtney learning how to handle a gun, but now that I can do that, then I can go back with Jade in mind and shoot her guns.

- Courtney Case (Jade)

Pre-Production: Storyboards & Casting

Storyboards for one of the final scenes of the film are complete. I even made video animatics and added some music. They are looking good! Pre-Production is going well. We had a brief meeting last week with the (so far) small cast and the casting director. Next week we'll start casting. I'll be sure to post up information on that if you're interested in auditioning.

- Antoine Bandele (Director)