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Four-thousand, three-hundred and fifty-two.
That’s how many actors submitted their headshots for the lead role of Claire in our very indie paranormal thriller, PRIME MATTER.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I was grateful so many people submitted. But I was also overwhelmed and filled with a lurking sort of dread. As someone who is still a working actor, it was hard to not feel a creeping sense of futility followed by a dark awe at the fact that anyone gets cast in anything ever, given the amount of competition. And as the someone responsible for actually reviewing these particular 4,352 submissions, I had no idea how. Because to give each submission just ONE MINUTE of attention would require almost SEVENTY-THREE HOURS, or just about NINE DAYS working in 8-hour stretches. And there was no way this could be my only job for the next week and a half.
If you’ve never been on Breakdown Services as someone doing the casting it’s essentially an endless scroll of headshots:
One after another, person after person, each one represented as a singular static image. There is no way to filter people at this stage by training, credits, or even hair color, so the only thing you have to go off — if you’re not already familiar with many of these faces — is VIBES.
This is particularly challenging for a film like PRIME MATTER because our lead is an isolated, strange, orphan who has trouble sleeping and can’t shut out the voices of the dead. But almost every glossy headshot is selling a personality closer to “Super nice, enthusiastic, go get em kind of gal who is fun to have on set and can sell a pack of gum on network television! Go Tigers!” And what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
I tried. I swear I really did. I may not have clocked a full 70+ hours, but at least 35, clicking into profiles, watching reels, reading notes, trying to glean something about the HUMAN in front of me and whether they could bring Claire to life, but all I could really ascertain was who had a haircut that I thought looked “cool” or had done a play somewhere that I’d actually heard of.
The sheer magnitude of so many humans, all vying for a singular role…
… and singular me pretending to have a system by which to categorize and judge them. It may have been a valiant effort, but it was a fool’s errand.
Which is why, when amongst the sea of submissions, I saw a face I recognized — someone from other films I’ve quite liked — I was immediately drawn to them. So was the rest of the team, for the exact same reasons. And even better we hadn’t intentionally sought them out, they’d just appeared before us like an oasis in a desert of unknowable talent. And so we arranged to meet with them. And they were GREAT. And they were RECOGNIZABLE. And they were NICE… but they weren’t quite right. But AGAIN! They were RECOGNIZABLE. AND TALENTED! And if they were recognizable to us, they might be recognizable to OTHERS! Others… who might eventually BUY THE MOVIE! And they were undeniably TALENTED. AND NICE!!! But still they weren’t quite RIGHT.
And so we waffled.
We waited.
We negotiated with ourselves.
Until we finally convinced ourselves that we should proceed…
Only to immediately convince ourselves that we shouldn’t…
Back and forth, back and forth; a dizzying seesaw of indecision
(*which frankly should have been the biggest clue)
Thankfully this ambivalence was paired with a practical limitation of my own: Because I’ve always had the luxury of casting very talented, and in many cases very successful, friends in my projects, I have very little experience dealing with talent reps. Which meant that if we wanted to make an offer, I was going to need help doing so. And if we didn’t, I’d need help knowing how to proceed from there.
So I reached out to a Casting Director whose name I am always glad to see on breakdowns when they come my way. And I asked them to come on board… THREE WEEKS after the release of our initial breakdown and probably close to a collective ONE-HUNDRED AND FORTY HOURS of the full team perusing, evaluating, selecting, doubting, regretting, debating, reviewing, meeting, conversing and frankly? Getting nowhere ‘cept confused.
Being an actor demands incredible bravery and a very thick skin. As Dane Elcar’s father, the late, great Dana Elcar put it, “To be an actor you have to have the heart of a lion and the hide of a rhinoceros.” If you don’t, the sheer improbability of it all is way too much for the average person. It was almost too much for me on the other side of the table.
We didn’t end up making an offer to that actor.
Our casting director shared the laundry list of things their agents would have likely demanded — none of which we could have realistically offered. Besides, the entire structure of this film is based around the theory that we didn’t actually need a recognizable actor in our lead role — not that it wouldn’t be welcome if all things remained the same — but that it’s not enough of a reason to undermine the entire theory and experiment of this film, which is that if we keep the budget at a certain low level, execute our story at the highest levels, and follow-through on our described distribution and marketing strategy, we’ll see the win we’re aiming for.
Of course, it’s impossible to know what the opportunity costs of this decision will be — hiring a CD was an unplanned expenditure and now we don’t have any leads on our lead, certainly not any that we know are TALENTED, RECOGNIZABLE and NICE — but I’m still inclined to believe it was the right decision, if only because it means we’ll get to see the experiment through to its result.
And hey, in the meantime it means I don’t have to spend the week scrolling through hundreds more headshots, which as far as I’m concerned, is priceless.
Things we did this past week (WEEK 8) to move the ball down the field on Noble Gas Media's upcoming film, #PRIMEMATTER:
• Continued re-writes
• Declined to make an offer to a fantastically talented and relatively known actor... who just wasn't right for the part
• Drafted a contract for our casting director and negotiated our bond with Local 817 so we can find the person who is
• Officially engaged our composer
• Booked our On-Set Sound Recordist
• Got a solid lead on a classroom set that I'm hoping will also lead to a collab opportunity with an educational institution
• Struck out with ~16 Catholic Churches in the neighborhood that we thought would have been great for a very necessary location (thanks Sabrina Carpenter!!! #iykyk)
• Began to review and assess all our test footage from last week
My goal is to leave a list like this at the end of every week that I do a deep dive into one aspect of the PRIME MATTER process. Both as a record for anyone else who may be interested in shooting their own independent film but isn't sure where to start, and also as public accountability. When we're all said and done, we'll get to see if we spent our time working on what primarily mattered (get it? 😉), or if we spun our wheels.
#IndieFilm
#Filmmaking
#PreProduction
#Paranormal
#SciFi
#Brooklyn
#IndependentMovies
— Max Woertendyke
in Brooklyn, 3/1/26