Speaker 1: directing 90% casting? Everyone, I'm Matthew Cornwall with Get Taped here in Atlanta, Georgia, one of Atlanta's original audition taping services which I co-own with my amazingly talented beautiful wife and best friend Brooke. And now on to our topic. Is directing 90% casting? This is a famous quote that is sometimes repeated as 80% or 85%. I've heard it mostly as 90% that directing is 90% casting. And it's been repeated by the likes of Robert Altman, Elia Kazan. Am I saying that right? There's no one there. Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and other directors. But what I want to explore in this video is essentially two questions. One, what does it even mean? And two, is it true? And these will be answered sort of in conjunction with each other throughout the course of this video. Okay, so let's unpack the quote first. What are we even saying? Because a director has to make a million decisions and has to answer a million questions that sometimes start years before cameras roll and then continue on until the project is 100% in the can. But all of those decisions are to service that image and the accompanying sound design that comes with it. And despite the attention that's given to the sound design and the production design and costume and props and makeup and location scouting and the writing and the rewriting and storyboarding and so forth and so on, the actors are arguably the most crucial part of the equation when it comes to a project. At least when it comes to the ultimate success of that project. Because sure, the script is so crucial. But if your actors mess it up, then it kind of gets lost. Likewise, you can have amazing production design and props, but if the actors are distractingly bad or miscast, the project suffers. Okay, so now that we can agree that the actors are a huge barrier to the success of a project or a huge factor in the success of a project, how much of that success or failure is due to the actor's talent versus maybe what the director can do in shaping that talent? Well, there's a lot to unpack there, but if you subscribe to this quote that 90% of directing is casting, then it kind of doesn't matter. Either one of those. Whether the actor's talent is at the top of the pack or whether the director knows how to direct an actor into a good performance. Because if you take care of all that in the casting phase, then you kind of don't have to worry about it. That is, the actors that you choose for your cast have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the project. Okay, so I'm talking theory. Let's talk practically. If you were to recast The Notebook with Cillian Murphy as the male lead opposite Rachel McAdams, that would be a different movie. Arguably, it wouldn't be a romance. In fact, they made that movie. It was called Red Eye, starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams. Definitely not a romance. Likewise, if you cast Meryl Streep as Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, different movie. And somehow she wins an Oscar for it. And another way to back into this idea is to think of an actor that you came to love after seeing them in a project. And so you are looking forward to their next big project. Here it comes, and you sit down to watch it, and they're suddenly not good. I've seen this happen countless times. So are they a bad actor? Even if they won an Emmy for that previous series? Or maybe it's bad directing in this new series? Which kind of doesn't make sense, because in most television you change directors almost every episode. So it wouldn't necessarily be the bad directing. Could be bad writing, possibly. But likely the actor was just miscast. And hear me on this. I'm not necessarily blaming casting for that poor decision, because there could be politics involved that took over when it came to the final decision of who was going to be cast in that role. That might not have had anything to do with the casting director. But when a director does have 100% control over the final casting decisions, and they put together a cast that they are proud of, and that they're happy with, and that they're looking forward to taking into production, well then arguably 90% of their job is done from a creative standpoint. Or to say it differently, 90% of the creative decisions that your actors will make are already kind of done. They're already kind of set in place, even though the actors wouldn't agree. What I'm saying is the creative decisions that actor is going to make to inhabit that character are already part of their DNA. It's not something they need to figure out on set. It's actually a liability if you wait until set to start figuring that stuff out. It's a waste of precious time that could be spent solving so many other problems that are going to arise during production. So if you cast an actor that already inhabits the qualities of that character inherently, without them even trying or being conscious of it, then all you need them to do is show up on set and just be themselves. So then the intuitive director, once they have assembled a cast like this, can just let the actors play. They just become like the bumpers in a bowling alley. They're just in case the actors get off track. But as long as the actors are throwing relatively good balls, and doesn't even have to be strikes every time, then the director can be largely hands-off in the actual directing process. In other words, 90% of their job has already been done when it comes to directing the actors. This allows the director to focus on those million other things that are coming up, those questions that are coming up day to day, minute to minute, that are distracting the director. And so they can actually focus on those things and not worry so much about their cast because they took care of that in the casting process. Now let me briefly talk about how this affects us as actors. Specifically when we get hired as a day player, a role that has maybe five lines or less, maybe just one day on set. In those cases, you should fully expect to get zero direction. Yep, zero. I mean you might get some direction. I've experienced the entire spectrum. But the vast majority of the time when I have been on set for one day for an under five role, I've felt ignored. And that's what the actor's ego is feeling. I'm feeling ignored. I'm not feeling validated. I feel like the director doesn't like me or that they regret casting me. What have I done wrong? Nothing. You were cast appropriately by the human behavior you already exhibited in the audition. See, most of the reason why you were cast has nothing to do with those choices you made and how you delivered your lines. It was a vibe. It was an essence that was exuding out of every single pore of you the moment you showed up on screen, or if it was in person, the moment you walked into the audition room. In fact, in those cases, and again we're talking about under five roles, utility characters, when you walked in the room or when you showed up on the screen, this is for a role that you ultimately booked, what is likely going through casting's mind or the director, if it's some sort of callback session, is, oh gosh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, they are perfect for this role. Please just open your mouth, say the lines, don't mess this up. And then when you do, when you just open your mouth, you say the lines, you inhabit the character the way you just sort of walk through your daily life. They go, yes, thank you, and they are so excited. And surprise, you get a deal memo in your inbox a few days later. So now that you're on set, hooray, there's nothing more for the director to tell you. You're you. Presumably you're pretty darn good at being you. So until you try to be someone else, or you try to really layer on more of you, like putting a hat on a hat, well then that's when they'll have to interfere. But when you just show up and bring you to the role and don't try to put anything on top of that, the director is gonna be so thankful. They may not say that because they may be distracted by other things, but they'll be so thankful that they didn't have to coddle you. They didn't have to remind you to do what you did in the audition, which was just bring yourself to the role. See, they're super stressed about making their day, or a thousand other hiccups that have arisen either that day or in the production prior to when you arrived on set. So it becomes, paradoxically, a compliment if they don't direct you. Again, for the under five utility roles. And yes, let me be clear, what I'm saying for these roles is in the audition phase, don't try to develop a character. If I'm auditioning for police officer, lawyer number two, guard, military dude, then I don't need to know what my character's high school mascot was. No, I already exude that essence of law enforcement or generic authority figure. So the more stank I put on my performance, then the less authentic it gets. And I'm actually not going to book it in that case. Now, I'm not gonna dive into the differences of what happens when you are booking larger roles, guest stars, supporting leads, or leads. Clearly, the relationship with the director on set can and should be different in those instances. But that's another video. But suffice to say, casting is a huge, crucial part of the process for the director. Is it 90%? Well, I don't know. Not science. This is art, after all. The 90%, or sometimes 85 or 80%, is just a way to exaggerate and send home the importance of the casting process in the overall project, and specifically as it relates to the director's duties. Duty. In short, casting is of paramount importance. There still isn't an Oscar category for casting. That's a shame. Well, if you have any comments or questions, drop them below. That's it for now. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you on set. If your set has an interim agreement with SAG-HAFTRA.