Casting Director - Indie Feature
Confidential
Los Angeles, CAThis is a Freelance Job
CASTING DIRECTOR - INDEPENDENT FEATURE
We are seeking a Casting Director to join the film as a key creative collaborator. While this is a modestly budgeted feature, casting is central to the conception of the film, and the Casting Director will have an unusually meaningful voice in shaping the finished movie.
Above all, we are looking for someone with a deep and current knowledge of the working actor pool. This is essential to the position and will be one of the primary considerations in hiring.
We want someone who genuinely knows actors: established film and television performers, emerging talent, under-the-radar actors, theater actors, and exceptional performers whose abilities may exceed their current profile.
The director has a strong conception of the characters and the film, but is specifically looking for a collaborator whose knowledge of the current acting landscape substantially exceeds his own-someone who can bring actors into the conversation that we would never have discovered independently.
Strong industry relationships are welcome, but knowledge, taste, and creative instincts are more important to us than the size of someone's Rolodex. The production team will support approaches to established talent.
This is not primarily an administrative casting position. We want someone with opinions.
The Casting Director will be encouraged to challenge our assumptions, propose unexpected choices, think about chemistry and the ensemble as a whole, and have a real voice in determining who these characters become.
Because of the independence and scale of the production, there is room for the Casting Director to have more creative influence than the position is sometimes afforded on larger, more traditionally structured features. We see casting as part of the filmmaking process itself.
For the right person, we hope this offers the opportunity to put a genuine creative stamp on a distinctive independent feature.
Location: Los Angeles
Format: Black-and-white digital
Schedule: Approximately 14 shooting days
Budget: Approximately $250K
We are particularly interested in hearing from both Casting Directors and experienced Casting Associates ready to step into a lead Casting Director role.
Salary/Benefits
$400.00
- 500.00
per day
Freelance position. Day rate dependent on experience. Total fee and anticipated scope/days to be agreed upon prior to engagement.
Additional Information
Voyage Into Night is an independently financed black-and-white detective noir film shooting in Los Angeles. It presents a contemporary missing-persons story through the lens of classical film noir, following a private investigator searching for a missing JPL propulsion engineer. As the investigation unfolds, the narrative shifts from an ordinary disappearance into the peculiar realm of contemporary UFO paranoia. The film emphasizes intimate, performance-driven storytelling, visual rigor, and focuses on a small number of principal characters.
We'd also like to get an immediate sense of your knowledge of the current actor pool and your casting instincts. Along with your application, please suggest five actors you believe could realistically be approached for the leading role in a $250K independent feature, based only on the following description:
HAL DIXON - Male, approximately 30-45. A private investigator. We're looking for something of a Robert Mitchum quality: masculine and understated, handsome in an unconventional way rather than traditionally leading-man handsome. Most importantly, he needs to be an actor who can tell a story in silence-someone whose face and presence remain compelling when he isn't speaking.
We're not looking for a fully considered casting list, and there are no ''correct'' answers. This is simply intended to give us a sense of your taste, your knowledge of actors working today, and your understanding of the realities of casting at this budget level.
Please keep the scale of the production in mind: the five suggestions should be actors you believe could plausibly be considered for a $250K independent feature.
