Next up, we're going to talk about actors. First thing you should know is that if you don't have good actors, you should not be shooting your film. actors are going to make or break your project. I've said this many times, but this is true. A good actor will really will bring the project to a quality that you won't be able to achieve otherwise, you can always tell when a project is done, and these sort of went with the first person they met, it doesn't look good, or it doesn't feel right. And this is something I advise you not to do, because you're going to spend so much time and resources making that film if you're going to put a bad actor in front of the camera.

It's going to ruin everything, I'm sorry to say. However, there are ways for you to find actors. Nowadays, Facebook groups are a huge thing. You can post an ad and you can find a lot of willing actors that may or may not have that much experience, but that may be a good fit for your project. friends and acquaintances are going to be very helpful as well if they know actors, and if you do have an actor friend that can refer you to other people they know it's going to be very helpful to get an introduction. Also use the leverage of your previous work to show to actors, what you're able to accomplish to convince them to jump on board your project.

On the Akira project, I had no previous work that was good enough. So I really needed to struggle to find actors using you know, Craigslist back in the day and really look for the right actor, especially on the project that needed specific type of actors that were already defined in a comic book prior. I got lucky though, my lead actor contacted me through my website. Because I publicize the project I I put up the poster online and created a website for a project months in advance for the shoot. So it really happened to fall in my lap. So it was a stroke of luck, but I also advise you to put yourself out there to promote yourself your project idea so that people can find you and approach you and offer themselves to work on the project.

So going back to the Akira project, the actor is needed to look the part because they need to look like comic book characters that already existed. But there's a lot you can do with makeup and costumes, so you don't need to worry too too much about the specific look you had in mind. There's a lot of cinematic magic you can do to make actors look the part VFX and actors are something you need to learn about because this is a visual effects class. So you need to know how to tell your actors to integrate themselves within a scene that is VFX heavy. So you need to know exactly what you're going to do in post so that you can tell the actors This is gonna happen in the scene. You're looking at this specific thing that's not in the frame, but that you need to be aware of, and if you can't do that properly, it's going to be very hard, and you'll always be able to tell if the actors is looking at Nothing specifically because you don't know what you're doing.

So always plan very precisely what the VFX will be prior to shooting the shot with the actor. And always get the actor in the mood for the scene. You know, if it's an action scene that requires the actor to be out of breath, ask them to run prior to the date or ask them to be reacting specifically to the monster that's coming along in the room. These things are going to sell the shot. So all this to say we're going to be talking about shooting smartly for VFX next