Once upon a time, in a land far far away (also known as Belgium), I shot a Christmas commercial. It was a typically Christmassy story about a man helping Santa and getting presents in return. The man returns home to give the presents to his wife, son and daughter. All the children had to do was smile, be happy their father was home, and look excited about the presents. That was the plan. Simple enough, right?
It was a large production, and we had to do a photo casting for the little girl. So I get a bunch of pictures from a casting agency and every single girl looks perfectly adorable. We choose one with big brown eyes, two braids and a box office smile and think no more about it.
The shoot day arrives. Fake snow is in my eyes and Santa is smoking copious cigarettes next to the craft table. Our little girl turns up with her dad, and immediately starts crying. The producers circle round her trying to help, which only makes her cry more. (Fair enough in my opinion, no-one likes being outnumbered by producers…) She was totally overwhelmed. When she finally stopped crying, she looked even worse than she did when she was crying.
So, of course, we end up taking her out of the film and our family of four becomes a family of three. Shock horror in advertising. It’s the beginning of a long night shoot… The Client is already not happy and I look like an amateur. So much for my experience with children. I cover it by saying ‘single child families are underrepresented in advertising anyway, this is much more modern’. I don’t think it worked…
Casting is crucial in any project. When working with kids, possible even more so. In my opinion, there are more tools available to you for correcting an erroneous casting on set with adult actors. You can point to their professionalism or explain in strong, plan terms what you expect. Because most kids act from intuition, casting is your opportunity to find the ones who have the right intuition for the role. But, of course, it often happens that I can’t do the entire casting myself. Due to schedule, or budget, often I fly in last minute on international jobs. But there is a golden rule to save us.
- Always demand a call-back when working with kids -
From casting tapes, I can pick the kids that can act. But that’s only half of it. I can tell a lot more from the call back. Is a kid shy when walking in, but quickly opens up? That’s crucial information to know on set. Then I know to take things slow, spend some extra time with the child. Is the kid super open and energetic, but loses attention quickly? Then have them on set as little as possible and make sure other crew members don’t engage with them too much.
The second reason for a call back is simple: I want to see which kids I have a connection with. Generally speaking, most children are pretty easy to get along with. They tend not to have very strong political views, you know? But good chemistry can save you on a long, stressful shoot day.