Main Task - Actors Research

For our film opening, we only required one actor, and that person preferably needed to be a teenager, as Peter in the novel is described as being 17 years old. Fortunately for our group, that is the age group that we ourselves fall into, so we had quite a few contacts that could possible fit the role.

When casting the role of Peter, we tried to take inspiration from characters similar to him in other novels. Having read 'Paper Towns' by John Green, I wanted Peter to be quite similar to Quentin in the fact he is trying to get the girl, and he will do anything to do that, however Peter's actions are far more drastic than Quentin's. I also liked the role of Tim Mooney in 'Men, Women and Children', as although he initially seems kind, and innocent, he soon changes into something very different.

We had quite a few actors in mind for the role of Peter, and we initially thought about having an audition process in order to pick the perfect guy. However, we soon decided that would be quite a time consuming process, so we opted to just coming to a decision as a group, simply based on what we already knew about the actors.

We had two actors in the running for the role: Tom and George. We felt that they both had the ability to act vulnerable, yet they still appeared to have a dark side, something that was integral for someone who shoots 10 people in a school. Both of these actors were of the same age as the character of Peter, and we chose to do this, as we thought the actors would find it much easier to relate to, and portray the character if they were of the same age.

As a group, we felt it would be much easier on shoot day if most, if not all of us previously knew of the chosen actor, as we thought that would make the directing much easier. Eventually, we opted for a 17 year old male called Tom Downey, as we felt he fit what we imagined Peter to look like. Although we didn't need our actor to explicitly act, Tom had previously been involved in dramatic pieces, and studied media himself as well, so we thought he would know the kind of things we were looking for when it came to shoot day, in terms of the types of shots we wanted, and where we wanted the focus of the shot to be.