Finding Talent for Videos

As you increase the production level of your videos, you will arrive at a brand-new challenge - acquiring talent. How do you identify potential personnel for your videos and how do you evaluate those people to ensure they are the correct choices for your projects?

For the purpose of this article, let's group talent into two general groups: models and actors. We'll define a model, not as a person with the potential to appear on the cover of Vogue, but as someone who will appear in your video. An actor, on the other hand, will probably have a limited acting requirement and will appear to either deliver dialogue or at least convey some type of emotion.

Securing a model merely involves finding someone who has the appropriate look for your piece and is willing to be shot. Many times, the best way to cast a "young mom" model, for example, is to just go find a genuine young mother and convince her to appear in your project. Locating and evaluating an actor who will actually need to deliver lines and convey some emotion is a little trickier.

The Project

Let's suppose that you, as the member of your local service organization who owns a Mini DV camcorder and a computer-based editing system, have been asked to create a video that publicizes your upcoming club-sponsored Kids Day. The purpose of the video is to highlight what will take place on Kids Day and to encourage local businesses to get involved. You need to script this project and then secure a host or hostess to be the on-camera talent and to lead the interviews. Then, find a couple of older folks, a young couple, a high-school student and a few kids to enact short scenarios depicting what will happen during Kids Day. These scenarios will be loosely scripted, but you'll probably let the actors create some of their own dialogue to try to keep it sounding more authentic and less scripted.