Casting Problems

Whilst trying to cast a presidential figure for our political speech our group met a number of problems such as:
- correlating free time,
- the location and
- finding an authoritative figure who looked the part.

These were minor issues however as the most significant difficulty was finding an adult who was willing to take part. One of the candidates we considered raised the point that the speech and set up, if filmed, put on the internet and taken out of context, could tarnish the reputation of the person who had read it.

For the point of our narrative the speech condemns the British media and removes public and private access to free speech in an Orwellian style future.

Fear of Footage Manipulation: Two of the potential actors for the presidential role were teachers and were strongly advised not to perform in our video for these reasons.

This highlights an interesting issue regarding the press and the power the media industry has to manipulate information, aided by the ever growing internet, and also edit original material distorting the truth. These teachers felt that their careers could be put in jeopardy in the future, implying, perhaps, that the media holds more sway over what we think and do than we would freely admit.

Solution: In the end we chose to film the full length speech because we had found a slightly younger actor who was willing to participate. After the speech was filmed we decided to edit it down, not only to reduce the length of the speech but also to remove some of the superfluous and more provocative phrases.

Younger actor:
The younger age of the actor portraying the politician actually worked in our favour.

The Double: - It created a new dynamic for the narrative as it seemed to imply the use of the double, typically a mythological or religious story idea (eg. Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel etc.) which has become a  prevalent convention in gothic horrors, fantasy and thriller narratives.

Comparisons: - It subtly provokes the audience to compare and contrast the two characters and creates an almost preordained conflict.

Not Right Verses Wrong: - Coupled with one of our potential taglines, the inter-texual phrase, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ we hope to intimate that there are two perspectives of the dystopian world and not simply that one is wrong and one is right.

Jon, our actor, could be aligned in appearance to our current Prime Ministers which helped to add  depth and reality to the shots of the speech. We explored the concept of Prime Minsiters in life and film here.

[David Cameron (Left), Nick Clegg (Middle), Jon (Right)]

They all have:
- dark hair neatly styled,
- pale skin,
- slim built,
- clean shaven and 
- middle aged or younger.
We aimed to dress Jon in a similarly smart way as well for authenticity.