Hey, Question for current Chapman students:

How do you go about getting actors for your projects? How often do you use people on campus versus professional actors? Do you use SAG? If so, how responsive are they to the Chapman name? How many replies do you get when you put it out there that you are casting a movie?

If you haven't seen it in the other thread, I will be there next fall.

-cody

Easy, I use LA Casting @ www.lacasting.com. It's great - you put up your project, and actors put up their headshots if they're interested. I got more than 150 working actors who submitted for my little 5-min short. Chapman actually has something of a name on the site, because many of the actors that show interest have been in other Chapman films. They all know that Chapman students can't pay actors, and they do it for the experience and reel footage.

I only use campus people (i.e. my friends) if I'm doing a short school project for class or something. Otherwise, there's really no excuse to NOT use lacasting.com.

bump



-cody

Well, a possible excuse: you aren't in LA.

Seriously, from what I understand film schools do not give you much help in casting your projects. Sure, you may be in close proximity to 'actors' if you are at NYU - but as far as getting them, you're on your own.

Good skill to learn, nonetheless.

I recommend finding 2-3 viable humans and building your scripts/projects around their capabilities.

This is not a post about organ harvesting, trans-species embryo implantation, or anal probing. I promise.

Would Chapman give me a good education in the other subjects as well? It seems obvious their film program is good, but how about history, english and all those disciplines.

Chapman is dedicated to being a liberal arts university. It's a requirement to take precalculus, calc/statistics, a science lecture and a science lab, two english classes, two language classes (all of which you can test out of, of course), physical education and extracurricular activities, and many more GE requirements. As in any other college, the classes and professors in these subjects can range from terrific to utterly awful. It's just a matter of using ratemyprofessor.com and asking fellow students to find the good classes to take for any subject. I had an incredible art history class last semester, and a terrible precalculus class the semester before that.

Good question. I'll add that to the top.

phew. im glad to hear they have a good liberal arts program. now to find out more about them. the university itself seems reasonable in terms of acceptance.