About Luke Barcock
Cast
This year we used four cast members (a protagonist, antagonist and two other cast members) as suppose to two actors last year. Our film needed actors that were familiar with acting: with good natural acting skills, as well as the ability to run about as we needed actors that would be able to keep up with the high-paced foot chase scene. Our film had little dialogue apart from a few words in russian which meant that the actors didn't have to be fully confident with speaking during our production, thus making it easier to find cast members.
Main Protagonist Role
For our film 'The Mediator', our main protagonist needs to be a mysterious yet neutral Russian character that is supposed to leave the audience confused about his ways. The idea for this character was that he'll be a drug runner of some kind that is hired to steal a bag of drug money for reasons that the audience aren't aware of. The main plot summary for this character is that he is chased after taking the bag, eventually losers his pursuer and finally gets alone where he reveals the contents of the bag to the audience with a smirk, indicating that he got what he wanted from this mysterious organisation.
About David Rozental-Devis
One of the first people we decided to ask was our fellow Poole Grammarian, David. David studied Drama for GCSE and is now doing Theatre Studies at A levels, as well as being involved in several theatre productions which really helped us to make our decision when choosing our cast. Not only did his acting skills prove to pay off, but he also offered us support with suggesting potential locations for our film when we were really struggling to come up with any relevant areas as well as what kind of shots could be implemented into our film to improve it. An important aspect of this role was to come across as a peculiar character to which David certainly ticked the boxes. Hiring David was a fantastic choice; from his tremendous qualifications to his helpful decisions.
Antagonist Role
Our antagonist was a lot harder to find for a few different reasons. Despite him not being in the whole film, we still needed him for the majority of scenes and that meant having him at the majority of filming days too. Plus we needed more of a character type for him. He had to be a bit more intimidating and have a mobster-type of look. We knew the exact man for the job...
Luckily for us, Luke had those attributes: consistently available and was happy to act as well as direct certain scenes! He also ended up helping us at AS level, acting in out film opening,'Betrayal, so I had a great amount of faith within Luke's acting. The fact that he could act in our film again as well as now direct certain scenes and tell us what he thought would look good in correspondence to his acting was a massive addition to last year. He could pull off a convincing Russian accent if we needed it and he was perfectly fine with performing in chase scenes and looking angry. Without his expressions, the film perhaps would have lost some of it's edge or meaning. Another bonus was that Luke's step dad was able to drive his audi about for us to use in the film whenever we needed to. He also helped us by providing us with a trolley and space to set up the green screen on his driveway.
Additional Roles
In the end, we decided that we needed two more people to act in the starting scene (the poker scene which was implemented into the film as a development to the original rough cut). The actors in this scene wouldn't be seen as clearly due to the low key lighting, and as a result didn't need to be as talented at acting as our protagonist and antagonist. With only small amount of russian dialogue, we had a wide range of options when selecting this role in our film