Over the weekend we held our auditions. We ended up auditioning almost 30 people from a range of different backgrounds.
There was one actor, Edward Kingham, who I thought was great. He really fit the character and I appreciated how he played the humour very straight. However, I couldn't help but feel that he looked down on our student film a little.
Another actor I liked was Paul Wilson. He maybe didn't look as good as Eddie, and he didn't quite nail the humour as well, however when I talked to him about the character, he really seemed to understand it. He told us this whole story about how when his wife left him, he stayed in his house for months, rarely leaving. It was mad, but he really seemed to understand the depression aspect of the film. He seemed like, while his performance wasn't quite right, I'd be able to mould into something that would work.
I also liked Gordon Millar. He seemed really passionate about the post-apocalyptic nature of the film. Similar to Paul, his performance wasn't quite what I was looking for, but he seemed to take directions well enough.
There were a lot of less than stellar auditions! But interestingly I found the older actors more fitting for the role than the younger ones, even though that's not necessarily what I had in mind for the role as we wrote it.
I found through auditions for Gallows, I sometimes freeze when I meet an actor for the first time, so I made sure I had some notes in front of me, just in case I was stuck for something to say. They seemed to be very effective. This is what they said:
Tom’s World
- No good or evil. Just nothing. Not even that it’s morally ambiguous. It’s just that there is nothing left.
- There isn’t a zombie around the corner. Or a family of cannibals. There’s just nothing.
- No animals. No people.
- No hope. No future.
Tom’s Psychology
- Tom lives in a box. Spends every day in one room; just room for a couple of steps forwards and a couple of steps back.
- Research into prisoners who’ve spent extended periods of time in solitary confinement.
- You see nothing living. Not even a blade of grass.
- You know exactly how many bricks are in the wall. You don’t know what your face looks like. You stare at the paint so much you can see the paint strokes in it.
- Your eyesight has started to deteriorate. You would struggle to focus on faraway objects. You become very sensitive to light. It gives you headaches.
- You get so tired of talking to yourself, you start talking in your head.
- You live off of your memories, because you have nothing else you can accumulate to move forwards.
- You begin to lose your grasp of who you are. Identity is social; we understand ourselves through our relationships with other people. Maybe it’s changed how you think about yourself. Maybe you even begin to doubt your own existence.
- You’re not really part of the world anymore. You’re no longer human. You’re no longer real.
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