How to Cast a Documentary Film

Video Transcript

"You know casting a documentary is a little bit like casting a feature film. You have to make sure that the people that you get are good on camera. You know some people are really good on camera, you know, and of course some people are bad. So when you're finding people just do like a test, or meet with them in person ahead of time before you do the interview and usually you can get a sense of how they're going to be, you know. If they speak clearly or if they get really nervous. So, you know, you kind of have to do some research and you got to like meet up with the people and find the next person and all that, and in turn if you're doing one on some type of health care related thing, let's say diabetes or something, and you need to find people to interview, you know, contact support groups, contact organizations and they'll be more than happy to help, you know, once they find out you're working on a documentary. So it's kind of word of mouth type of thing where you'll find most of your good people. You want a documentary that's not scripted, you know and you have these people answering the questions you find similar threads because a lot of the people that you interview you ask them the same questions and some people, you know, answer them better than others. So you want to take the best, you know. If you have a question that, you know, is being answered somebody may answer part of that better than other. So, you know, mix and match these people. You'll find threads. If somebody says something and somebody else says something that kind of adds to that and makes it more powerful. Well, you're going to find that and so that's where the creative aspect of the editing comes in. So, you know, as you're going along you will kind of find kind of how the documentary goes together and it'll kind of take its own shape. Another thing, if you have voice over’s during your documentary that's also a big casting thing, because you need to find somebody that does the voice over very good. I mean somebody who does emulation who basically does that for a living. I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself. So, you know, you can find people who can do this professionally or you could find like an actor or actress, you know, have very good delivery with lines so I would recommend doing that."