The Process of Casting

So, I'm new to the casting process. Before Margaret Stone, I felt very...icky about watching audition tapes. I always feel strange watching people be so vulnerable in front of the camera. But you get over that quickly. Plus, we had Julia Borkowski, casting expert and owner of JB Talent Konnections, who is also one of our co-producers. She was all over this part of the process.

When you go out and throw a wide net for something like Margaret Stone, you find that you're hampered by one thing. Because it is a period piece and set in a courtroom, there are very few female parts. That meant that many of the people associated with Jason Pitts and Lucid Lake Pictures, his production company, weren't going to have their time in front of the camera. It was too bad because Jason has a stable of actors that love working with him and we were cutting almost half of them out of the picture entirely.

However, there was one actress who was cast before we even started. Sierra Ebert had the look, the emotional range, and the overall talent to pull off Margaret Stone herself. She was psyched to get into character, to put on the scarred makeup, and make the character her own from the very beginning.

And so we began our journey, scouring the area for the right people for the job. Arkansas is rife with actors who put character first. And that is something that Jason is very interested in. We had so many auditions that it took Julia weeks just to compile them into one coherent document.

But then we did it. We had our callbacks, our interviews, and our offers. We had our thirteen main actors and were ready to go. Now it was up to Jason to use his own personal techniques to get them into the right mindset.