It's been a while...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been busy casting the webseries "Star-ving" and it's been a lot of fun. We've got 43 roles to cast and so far, I think we've chosen about 30 actors. We are just waiting on a shooting schedule to hire them.

The best part has been having David Faustino in the room when we were casting. He improv'd with the actors - which for some of them worked well, and for others, it threw them off a bit. This series is largely improv, so it was great to find the actors who could just go with the flow and also who could create something other than just the words on the page.

I generally think improvisational skills are extraordinarily difficult unless you have a natural talent. The ability to instantaneously come up with material (funny material) isn't something that you can really be taught - although you can certainly improve your existing natural ability. We have great improv groups in Los Angeles - the Groundlings - which has spawned a large number of Saturday Night Live alumni (including Larraine Newman, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Ana Gastayer, Maya Rudolph and many others) and the Upright Citizens Brigade - the New York group which brought us Amy Poehler. These are both great places for us Casting Directors to find fresh and funny talent. I try and see performances of these groups a few times a year to make sure I know all of the talented people that are performing with these groups.