To cast or not to cast: 4 reasons to use actors instead of your own employees

‘To cast, or not to cast, that is the question. whether tis noble to cast mine own employees, or cast a professional, more seasoned actor…’

Deciding whether or not to use your own employees in commercials is a hard decision for a business to make. Although we are expert at getting the best out of non-actors, we always recommend the use of professional actors or a mix of employees and accomplished performers whenever possible and here are our reasons why.

Truth

You probably want to use your own employees for one of two reasons: to save money, or to remain truthful. Surprisingly though, when you are looking for a truthful performance, hiring actors will always be a better option and you will save money in pre and post-production. Even though you are asking your employees to do what they do naturally everyday, when it comes to acting or presenting in front of a camera, the skill required to make a performance natural is far from easy; professional actors spend at least three years at drama school to re-learning how to walk, talk and hold a presence in front of the camera. For an actor, taking on a role is an art and they bring truth to every performance.

Talent

When you hire an actor you have the assurance that they’ll hit their mark, breath confidence into your message and encourage the best out of non-actors and employees that they work alongside — for them this is just another day at the office. Actors have spent years mastering the art of continuity, repetition, conveying authentic relationships, delivering lines and realigning to the awkward physical positioning required for film acting. Confidence breeds confidence and casting an actor can be the difference between someone watching your video and feeling engaged, or someone watching your video and feeling distracted.

Time Saving

A lot of time can be wasted by employees not knowing their lines, not having the right make-up and costume, or being unable to accomplish repetitive action or not even showing up. When you’ve gone to great lengths to create an inspiring video and perfected every detail of pre-production, there is nothing more disheartening than people not showing up for shoots.

During production a professional will often get it right in the first three takes, but a non-actor will usually require many more which means a lot more footage to take through to post-production. All of this extra footage takes time to be ingested and then it’s over to the editor. A great performance can be created in the edit for non-actors but it puts a heavy reliance on the skills and problem solving capabilities of the editor; they will need to solve continuity issues such as physical gestures that don’t flow naturally through to differing camera angles and also slight improvisations of lines that do not match due to poor line learning.

Hiring an actor is simply more resourceful — it saves time for the Director, Cinematographer, Editor and often the Producer… meaning you save money.

Tone

Great news! Actors come in a variety of colours, shapes and sizes. You have so much choice when you audition to discover the personality that you need to identify with your audience. By choosing an actor, you can create the image and the tone that you want to convey and in turn this effects the overall style and engagement of your video.

We have made training dramas and commercials using actors, non-actors and a mix of the both. Some of our Directors have been actors, they understand what it’s like to be on both sides of the screen and are highly accomplished at getting the best out of anyone placed in front of the camera.

We understand that it can be expensive to cast a film but we enjoy making this work to a set budget. Recently we shot a commercial for a University where we had a cast of over fifty-five on a very modest budget. We sent talent forms to all the extras who were students and created an epic feature by casting six professionals to convey the heroes in close up. Some of the students were supporting artists to compliment the heroes and the remainder were resourced as background artists.

If you are thinking of investing in a commercial or a training drama then call us for advice. We would love to share our experiences and can help you decide the best way forward when it comes to casting.

Originally published at www.doubleshot.tv.