Can anyone talk to me about child actors? I am going to be shooting a short that will hopefully be the prologue for my feature I've been working on...and it involves all children plus or minus ten years old or so.
I imagine it's even more difficult not only to direct children, but simply to find child actors. I'm guessing they will need release forms from their parents and everything, but the scene is supposed to take place at a school playground with many other children in the background (or at least background noise) and 6 actors that would actually have speaking parts / be on camera etc. One of the actors needs to have a good voice too as a small amount of a little more than barely audible singing is required.
I thought about contacting schools rather than rounding up a couple dozen kids and having to talk to all of their parents etc., but I'm not sure how practical either of those options are. Anyways, this doesn't sound like the easiest thing to do for a 5 minute short, but it's necessary. Can anyone give me some advice? Of course, any tips on working with kids in front of the camera too would be appreciated. Thanks so much.
Edit: Ha...was just reading my post and realized it didn't convey the message I was trying to. Didn't mean I would just grab any actors for the lead parts...was more interested in the playground scene actually being populated with, you know, kids.
I imagine it's even more difficult not only to direct children, but simply to find child actors. I'm guessing they will need release forms from their parents and everything, but the scene is supposed to take place at a school playground with many other children in the background (or at least background noise) and 6 actors that would actually have speaking parts / be on camera etc. One of the actors needs to have a good voice too as a small amount of a little more than barely audible singing is required.
I thought about contacting schools rather than rounding up a couple dozen kids and having to talk to all of their parents etc., but I'm not sure how practical either of those options are. Anyways, this doesn't sound like the easiest thing to do for a 5 minute short, but it's necessary. Can anyone give me some advice? Of course, any tips on working with kids in front of the camera too would be appreciated. Thanks so much.
Edit: Ha...was just reading my post and realized it didn't convey the message I was trying to. Didn't mean I would just grab any actors for the lead parts...was more interested in the playground scene actually being populated with, you know, kids.
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