Auditions

To find suitable actors for the Id and the Superego, we had to advertise the roles and use any contacts we might have to get people in to audition. We found a few actors who were interested and asked them to come in and run through some of the ideas we had for the roles with us. As my main role was storyboarding, once that was mostly done I decided to throw myself in to lots of other aspects of the shoot. I knew that this would be a useful experience and I would be able to think about how the camera angles that I had drawn would work for the camera team, whilst thinking about how each individual would work best for which role.

Molly and Gabby were our first choice for our film, and all we had to decide was which one of them would work best for which role. They both had very unique styles of acting and were clearly very good at what they did, so we had several group meetings to decide who was going to play who.

In the end we decided that Gabby, whilst she showed a lot of really intricate emotion and played off of the idea of the mirror really well, would probably be best as the Id as her facial expressions showed a really interesting childlike aspect when she was playing around with the idea of the animalistic alter ego. We liked this because the Id is supposed to be instinctual and selfish, acting on behalf of it's own survival, and very small children have that sort of vibe, as they are still in that vital development stage, where in fact, the Superego hasn't fully developed yet and so they are unaware of how not to behave socially and if they become hungry then they wont take into account that other people might need something else more.
Because of these connotations in her performance, we decided she would definitely be the best fit for the Id.
Molly showed a much more vulnerable side in her audition, and the fear came through a lot more in her movements and breath. This was a vital part of the Superego, as the discovery of her alter ego trying to escape the prison of the mirror was a terrifying one, and so Molly brought a lot of susceptibility to her performance.
Both actors had worked together in the past, and they fact that they were already comfortable together worked in our advantage, as when they were acting jointly their acting had a really nice tone to it that was perfect for our film.

In addition to myself being there, we also had the director, the assistant director, our producer, assistant producer, the DOP and camera operator. Our DOP and camera operator were able to film the auditions so that we could show them to the crew members who weren't at the auditions and we could discuss the matter as a group. We were all making notes throughout the auditions to refer back to later on. We drew a line on the floor in tape so that when we gave the candidates various exercises to complete they could imagine that was a mirror. We also provided them with a real mirror for another one of the exercises, and we provided them with some music as well.