Like any great motion picture, you need great performers to tell the story.

Casting for Predawn began in the latter half of December 2022 through Backstage.com. This was not the original direction I wanted to go — with early expectations to work with an actual casting director. When this project started, the few goals I set for myself were to come a cut above a generic indie production with a foot in the ‘industry’. Half of that was the guiding decision to become a SAG-Aftra union signatory, which I’ll get to in another posting.

I didn’t want to post around on Craigslist so I thought working with an actual casting director would do the trick. Unfortunately, the one I thought to work with seemed to have ghosted me and time was ticking (you’re going to find the running theme in this whole production, at least until the film is finally shot, are the people that just up and vanish. It’s cool. Not offended. I’ve learned to have redundancy built into everything I do. There is always a Plan B).

The shoot may be in May 2023, but if I didn’t lock down characters now, every second closer to 2023 itself (currently writing this the day after Christmas 2022), I’ll be battling people’s availability. I’m sure the casting director I would have worked with is very busy and I’m not taking it personally.

Turns out, I am very busy myself — I have a schedule to keep — and Backstage has a wonderful casting/audition process. The casting expires on Backstage on January 17th. If you’re reading this after that date, apologies. The posting will be taken down. For the record, this is what it looked like:

Backstage Predawn Casting Post

Here’s the link to the casting notice

Already I’m seeing some of the finest talents I’ve ever seen out there and I look forward to meeting them one-on-one during the audition process scheduled for two weekends in January. I can already tell I won’t need to generate a second round of casting. Based on what has been submitted already, I’ll have the cast settled by February 1st as planned without a doubt.