Casting

Hello to everybody who has been following up so far with all my blogs!

    Today, I will be discussing the cast of my movie opener. The main cast in my movie opener features Raina, Ngoc, Emijola, and Jahzara. As for our supporting cast, which was mainly just background actors for our school scene, this featured my friends Marcus, Ella, Grace, Sneha, Dayna, and Ms. Beruty. 

Main Cast

Raina:

As discussed before, Raina plays the role of the "nonchalant" and unfazed friend after Jahzara's death. She pretends nothing happened and tries to act happy, but in reality, she is crushed mentally by the death. She puts up a facade throughout the movie opener, but the audience can see the small signs of her facade breaking. I was chosen to portray this character because my friends say I have a similar persona in real life. I tend to not really show emotions, and my resting face always looks like I am mad. As a result, it would be easy for me to portray a character that "shows" no emotions. Moreover, when I was younger, I used to have the belief that I needed to be perfect, but as I grew older, I realized that perfection is not ideal and unrealistic. This is similar to the way Raina is in the movie opener whcih is why I believe I was a good fit for the role.

Emijola:

Once again, Emijola is the character in the movie opener who is visibly affected and depressed by the death of her bestfriend Jahzara. Her character had completely transformed from a bubbly character to an emotionally devastated character. Emijola, in real life, was a good fit for this character because she has a genuinely happy persona in person. Her naturally joyful persona would be a good fit to represent the character in the beginning. Moreover, Emijola was in debate and had always placed in interp. This means she is extremely good at acting and would be perfect for being emotional during the flashback scene. I feel that she was a good fit because her acting was always on point and seemed real.

Ngoc:

Ngoc, in the movie opener, is the mediator or neutral character. She aimed to hold the friend group together. She is also in extreme grief about her best friend's death, but for the sake of the friend group, she tries to hold her sadness off. In other words, she places and cares for others before herself. We thought that Ngoc in real life would fit this role because, in person, she is just like that. Ngoc never takes sides in an argument, but rather tries to see problems from both perspectives and understand people that way. Thus, it was perfect for her to play the role of the mediator in the film, as it was simply natural to her. Her acting and dialogue were flawless, and the tone and emotions were exactly what we wanted.

Jahzara:

Jahzara in the movie opener was the bestfriend who died due to cancer. We chose Jahzara to play this character because she did not consider herself a good actor and wanted to help record instead. Since the character Jahzara does not actually have much screentime in the actual movie opener, and Jahzara in real life wanted to film, this role was perfect for her. Even though Jahzara did not have much screentime, her acting and role were still good. She effectively played the role of the dead friend by applying makeup and wearing specific clothes that made it seem as if she were dead.

Supporting cast/background characters:

As mentioned, our supporting cast was mainly just the background characters in our school classroom scene. In this scene, we needed characters that would act as Raina's "new friends," and we needed characters that would simply act as the other students in the class. Therefore, we called in a few of my friends to come after school to play that role. They all did their role very well as they simply had to act natural, as if they were talking to me just like they would on any other day in real life. To make our scene a little bit more authentic, we had also asked if Ms. Beruty could be the teacher in the scene so that it seemed like a real class that was about to begin.