Casting for Iron Sky
September 24th, 2008 @ 9:07 | by Timo VuorensolaWe’ve finally started the casting process for Iron Sky. This is a *very* interesting process we know that is going to be one of the most important tasks (in addition to script, of course) in the pre-production phase, that we need to complete with utter and uncompromising excellency. The reason for this is because we have quite a high requirements for the cast but we also have quite a small budget for the most well-known A-list international stars. So we need to make some excellent decisions, know where we play our resources!
There’s gonna be many rounds of casting to be done for Iron Sky, since we are looking for quite a few actors. But first we started with the most important - the main actors. As you may know, the main cast for Iron Sky is coming from Germany, but in addition to that we are looking for some roles from US as well. We were lucky to get in touch with a very respected casting agent from Germany, Uwe Bünker of Bünker Casting (love the name also :), who knows everyone from German film industry, and was able to provide us with some great ideas to start with.
This was my first time in official castings. I had organised some in my life before, but never with professional actors, so it took some time to adjust with the fact that these people had actually memorized their lines, thought about the scene beforehand, and were able to give me quite a big repertoire of different approaches. There was no weak link, so the decision is going to be pretty though once it’s time is (which is soon), although I do have some favourites. Might be we need to keep on looking for one of the roles still, I don’t want to rush with it anywhere too fast, since it’s a very important role that needs a perfect match.
At the same time I had a good possibility to think some of the issues that we are going to face once we get things going. First, the language: of course, we required a perfect English for the main roles, but how are we going to approach the German accent issue. When the Nazis speak with each others, they will speak German, but when they speak English, I’m still a bit debating on how heavy accent there will be. Also, I noticed a bit of a problem with switching from one language to another in one scene. Having two languages (although other is only about 20% of the film, and English is the main language) is an European way to go, Americans would *never* allow two languages in a script (unless the foreign language would be *very* minimum), and would play with accents to mark different languages. I have to say I hate that. But then there are subtitles… which aren’t any good either. Ugly, white text on beautiful picture. What a waste of good pixels. It’s an endless discussion, which we need to work out. I’ve also seen some creative uses of subtitles, that delighted me, too bad I can’t remember which film it was.
All the actors in the casting were well-known German actors, some of them even big “stars” in Germany, or soon to become ones, but luckily I had no idea of that, not being German, and I wasn’t too starstruck :) Ignorance is bliss.
We also took a trip to Tempelhof airport for a bit of scouting - what an a-MAZING place! And the undergrounds! We sneaked into a guided tour into the undergrounds of the airport, built during the Nazi era, and boy what a wonderful tunnels there are!
I try to add some pictures soonish!
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