has so persuasively argued, that such develop-
ments may extend and enrich the illusions that the
movies create at the expense of the film artists
themselves, including directors, designers, cine-
matographers, editors, andactors.^25
Casting Actors
Casting is the process of choosing and hiring
actors for a movie, and there are various ways to do
it. Although casting usually takes place during pre-
production after the script has been written, it
may also occur during development if scripts are
written for specific actors. In the studio system,
each studio ran its casting department and thus
tended to restrict casting to its own actors. Today,
professional casting directors work under contract
to independent producers and also have their
own professional association, the Casting Society
of America (CSA). Casting can be done either by
professionals hired for a particular film or by a
casting agency. In either case, the people in charge
generally work closely with the producer, director,
and screenwriter when first determining casting
needs. To aid in the initial selection of candi-
dates, they maintain files of actors’ résumés and
photographs.310 CHAPTER 7ACTING
“Synthespians”The future of movie acting is unlikely to
be changed significantly by the recent development of
synthespians: characters created not by human beings but by
computer-generated imagery. Such on-screen figures can be
convincing—such as the avatars digitally created to interact
with the Na’vi, the blue-skinned humanoids in James
Cameron’s Avatar(2010)—but that is because they do not
represent recognizable human beings and we accept them
for the imaginative creations that they are.
What happens, though, when a movie director is faced
with casting actors to play real-life identical twins, as was
David Fincher in casting the actors who played the Winklevoss
twins in The Social Network(2010)? Since Aaron Sorkin’s
screenplay is a fictional account of a true incident, it would
have been acceptable to alter the story and cast actors as
fraternal rather than identical twins. Instead, they cast Armie
Hammer and Josh Pence, respectively, in the roles of the
identical Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. Throughout
their scenes, Hammer acted alongside Pence, and through
the postproduction use of motion-capture technology and
digital grafting of Hammer’s face onto Pence’s, they appear
on the screen as identical twins, as you can see in the image
here (left to right, Hammer as Cameron, Pence as Tyler).
Using two different actors in these roles allows the actors to
develop characters with two different personalities; using
digital grafting ensures the facial similarity necessary for
depicting identical twins. While the result is totally convincing
in this specific situation, there aren’t many movies about
identical twins. You can study the process by which this was
achieved by watching The Loton Disk Two, “The
Supplements,” accompanying the DVD release of the
movie.(^25) André Bazin, “The Myth of Total Cinema,” in What Is
Cinema?trans. Hugh Gray, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1967–71), I, pp. 17–22.