Re: Mind. Blown.
So, after talking with a friend over the holiday and deciding we were getting pretty close to being ready to shoot one of the short film projects we've been polishing for a while, I started feeling a little nervous about the prospects of casting. I mean, we want this to be a good, solid project...not something that people would watch and go, "Man...good story, nice camera work...too bad they didn't find someone who could actually act." At the same time, we're tackling this out-of-pocket...it's something we're doing for fun, not because we're expecting a big monetary return on it (if we do it right, the monetary return might happen...but it's not part of the planning.)
So, as I often do when confronted with daunting problems, I turned to my friends. Posted something on Facebook about just testing the general interest level, explained in brief what we were doing and how it most likely wouldn't be paid...
In 24 hours, I've had over 40 individuals respond in one way or another, saying, "Yeah, I'm interested!" Granted, some of them don't have much experience. Some of them wouldn't work at all for what we've got in mind for our first project. Several of them weren't speaking for themselves, they mentioned that one of their kids, or another friend, or some of their kids' friends might be interested. But still...with the number of people who responded, and the talent level of the ones who did? I feel like we could schedule shooting for all the projects we've got on the table right now, and do a solid job of casting them (the inexperienced folks? We still need extras, we could find a place for them. And if they turned out to be good, we'd find something more featured for them.)
Granted, at this point, this is just a newly-developing hobby for me. But it's a hobby that just became a much more plausible prospect.