July 29, 2010

FNB Innovator: Laurent Touil-Tartour

FilmNewBriefs had the honor of speaking with this week’s innovator Laurent Touil-Tartour about his casting platform called Let It Cast.

FilmNewsBriefs: How did Let It Cast come about?
Laurent Touil-Tartour: Everything started from the problem I faced as a Director. And by definition, where there’s a problem, there’s a solution. Always. So I had to find the solution.

Consider: I was making “Urban Wolf” and I was looking for a very specific actor for the lead. The film was being shot in France, we had a tiny budget, and we were looking for an Asian actor fluent in English but also capable of expressing a wide range of emotion without any dialog (my film is mostly without dialog), along with a whole set of other artistic criteria. To top it off, we had to start shooting in less than a month! Everyone told me I was crazy. But I had an idea.

I decided to adopt and adapt the method Stanley Kubrick had used in 1986 to cast “Full Metal Jacket.” Kubrick lived in London and was phobic about plane travel; yet he needed to cast young American actors as GIs of the Vietnam war. So he simply took out adds in the US professional press asking actors who matched the profiles of what he was looking for to film their own auditions and send them directly to him in London.

Kubrick’s idea was a total success and we know the result: a standout ensemble cast and the discovery of an incredible actor (Vincent D’Onofrio). This was back in 1986 when few people even had access to a camera! Of course, being that he was Kubrick, it’s easy to understand not only how everyone scrambled to find a camera, but also that he was able to interest top talent to participate. But when you’re a young and unknown director, it’s an altogether different story! Despite this, I, too, had something going for me: I live in an age where cameras are available everywhere, and even more, I live in the age of the Web: the most incredible medium to reach individuals of all kinds and garner participation.

So I basically adapted the Kubrick method to the modern world.

FNB: How does it help ease casting on a film?
LTT: Let it Cast does for casting something similar to what Avid did for editing: it not only makes it easier and more efficient, it also transforms it into something more powerful and creative.

Letitcast.com presents actors with a breakdown and description of the parts, but also with a video of the director or casting director, which further presents information on the style and tone of the project. This provides actors with significant information to construct a really rich proposal for the character. The production can then choose to have the actors audition any way they want: present scenes from the script or through a variety of other ways, and in fact, we’ve seen some very creative audition requests! Actors then film their audition themselves and can thereby express their vision in a way that’s just not possible in a traditional casting situation. The result is extremely vibrant and revealing of an actor’s talent. There’s just no quicker or better way to evaluate an actor you don’t yet know and decide which ones are the most suited for a call-back. To use a metaphor: it’s like going from ordering an unknown dish straight from a menu description versus getting to sample a bite beforehand. And as far as discovering new talent, well you simply can’t beat the Internet when it comes to finding the right person no matter where they may be located.

FNB: How else did you maximize today’s technology?
LTT: We also took it a step further to make the whole process easier and more efficient. After the actors send in their auditions through the website, all the parties involved in the casting decision can manage the selection process online using an amazing tool set which allows them to sort through not only the actor’s self-filmed auditions, but also those which the casting director has filmed. What makes this tool stand out is not only that it was built from the ground up with the input of casting directors and directors, I also managed to interest a friend of mine, Yoktan Haddad, who is a very talented web developer — a real genius — to jump on board and build the whole system with us. The interaction of these two sets of skills and mindsets allowed us to innovate in a variety of ways so that we didn’t just use technology to streamline the casting process as we knew it. We were able to harness the particular strengths and transformative nature of the Web to rethink and further develop the entire casting process so that it could become not only more efficient, but more artistic as well.

The results were so convincing on my film that I started showing the site around to all my director friends. They, too, thought it was amazing and they all wanted to use for their next film. So that’s how Let it Cast went from being a personal tool to one which has now benefited from the input of dozens of film professionals who have made it the remarkable tool it is today.

FNB: Will you talk about a couple successful casting experiences?
LTT: Thus far the service has been used on nearly 20 casting calls in France, and every single one has been a success with respect to their particular objectives. The most telling measure of this is probably the repeat usage we’ve gotten from casting directors, and that every director who’s used the service thus far has told us that they’ll never go back to casting any other way. As far as they’re concerned, a page has been turned.

But perhaps the most noteworthy success we had was on my film, “Urban Wolf,” which I mentioned above. Without ever leaving France, my casting director and I received auditions from Asian actors from the world over and managed to cast the lead of my film in under three weeks! This was not only amazing with respect to the selection it offered me, the fact that each actor was able to completely stage the two scenes I requested for the audition gave me great insight as to what they were like and even made me see aspects of the character I hadn’t envisioned before. So one day it was one a.m. and I receive an alert that a new audition has come in. I was in bed and I opened up my laptop to discover an audition from an actor in Hong Kong. His audition was so incredible I even cried from the emotion. His name is Vincent Sze and the film owes much of its success to his standout performance. “Urban Wolf” has received multiple awards and Sony is now handling worldwide distribution. And one of the most recurring questions I get from people who see the film is “where did you find such an incredible actor?”

FNB: When does the site open to US filmmakers?
LTT: Our official US launch date is September 2010. Aside from the personal demos we’ve already done in the US, we’ll also be previewing the service on July 31 at the DGA’s annual Digital Day.

FNB: Who is the ideal user of the tool?
LTT: The ideal user is professional, part perfectionist, part geek and eager to make it happen and get things done

What’s really surprised us is that even though the tool was initially built for me, a director, it has evolved in such a way that it now has five different types of users who each value it equally for the benefits it brings them in their work:

  • Producers who can now can now centralize all their casting assets, communications and reporting online;
  • Directors who now have an incredible tool to further their artistic vision;
  • Casting Directors who can now work more efficiently and discover talent no matter where it may be hiding;
  • Actors who can express themselves like never before;
  • And even talent agents have come to rely on the tool as a way to submit proposals through video auditions rather than through simple headshots or demo reels

FNB: Is this why its launching with the DGA?
LTT: As a director coming from France and recently landed in LA, the DGA was first in welcoming me. Kathy Garmezy from the DGA was simply terrific. When I told her about Let it Cast, she immediately asked me to come in and demo the tool to the people in charge of new technology there. It was a great meeting.

Randal Kleiser, the director of “Grease” who chairs the New Tech and Digital Day events for the Guild, was incredibly receptive and supportive. He said it was the first time he’d seen a casting tool fashioned by creative and for creative people. So he liked the tool so much he wanted to let everyone know about it and that’s why he invited us to present it at this years Digital Day event so that DGA members could be the first to preview it before our official US launch in September.

FNB: How has the site been received by casting directors?
LTT: Great! We’re changing their lives. It’s very similar to what happened with film editors when Avid arrived on the scene in 1989. Some of the editors were early enthusiasts and saw the future in it, and others were initially apprehensive about what it would mean for their profession. But we’ve found that when we’re given the chance to demo the tool and explain our approach and our commitment to not only work with casting directors but involve them at every stage of the process in shaping the tool, even becomes enthusiastic.

In short, at the end of the day the biggest user of this tool is the casting director, so they’re the ones we work the most closely with. This has been nothing but a very fruitful collaboration in France, and we’re delighted to find that American casting directors are even more quickly responsive to how they can use this tool not only to manage all their casting assets, communications and workflow, but also use it to complement their traditional search with an open call online when the part calls for it.

FNB: Is this a tool for studio filmmakers as well as independent?
LTT: Since we initially built this tool for the purposes of my small budget film, Yoktan and I first thought it was mainly a tool for indie filmmakers.

So we were surprised when we were approached by some of France’s biggest production companies like as Canal Plus and TF1. We realized that the system we had built was very flexible and could be customized in all sorts of ways so as to fit the particular needs and work flows of any kind of production, whether it’s an indie, a studio or a network. So in less than a year our service has already been used to cast indie and major features, TV movies and series, and even TV shows.

FNB: What’s been the majority of your user base?
LTT: The user base is well proportioned between the five types of users I previously indicated. All of them have been actively involved in almost every casting call we’ve run, and that makes a lot of sense since our tool is meant to foster the casting process as a collaborative endeavor.

In terms of sheer numbers, the greatest number of users is obviously the actors and talent agents. In just one year and simply by operating through word of mouth, already more than one-third of all professional actors and actresses in France have registered, and about 90 percent of those have already posted auditions. This incredible level of participation is also due to the fact that pretty much every single talent agency in France has registered on the site and spread the word amongst their clients.

FNB: Any last words?
LTT: Funny you should ask because just yesterday I was again watching “The Godfather” and I had a startling realization during the Jack Woltz sequence in the bed when he wakes up to find the decapitated head of his prized stud horse: thanks to Let it Cast, no one should ever again need to use a horse’s head for casting purposes (he laughs and winks). Oh, and you can contact us at production@letitcast.com.

Posted in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

More of Today's Headlines

Related Posts

Comments are closed.

viagra