Who is a Casting Director? - Career Guide

A casting director is to a film what an HR is to a corporate company. They recruit and manage talent, and decide on their compatibility and talent required for the project.

Finding the right talent for films can be tough, especially when the notions of right and wrong are subjective. To sift through the population and pick the one that fits the role as expected is a job only a handful can do. There is a lot of research, communication, analysis and introspection involved in this task, and sometimes the whole process can take years before a selection is made.

This process we are talking about is called casting. The one who does it is called a casting director.

Not a long time ago, casting directors in India weren’t considered as an important part of the filmmaking process as they are in Hollywood. It is with the advent of certain pioneer casting directors like Mukesh Chhabra, Abhishek Banerjee, Shanoo Sharma, and companies like MCCC, Casting Bay, Anti-casting among many others, that casting as well as casting directors started getting recognized for what they stand for.

Thanks to these industry leaders, a career as a casting director is now a very popular one. Many people simply wish to be associated with the glamorous film industry however they can, and they see a career in casting as a great option to do that.

As lucrative and fascinating as it sounds, the process of casting can be highly rigorous. Thus, the job of a casting director highly challenging.

Let’s find out more about life as a casting director – their job, skills, earnings, and everything else that helps you decide if a career in casting is a fit for you.

Who is a Casting Director?

Simply put, casting directors find actors (also known as talent) for various entertainment projects – films, television shows, music videos, web shows, etc.

They play a major role during and before the auditioning process, and their main task is to help film directors find cast for their project.

In most big-budget films, the primary cast often comes attached to the project. In such cases, a casting director’s job is to find the secondary cast and extras.

Since each role (big or small) in a film is significant, a casting director spends a lot of time finding actors for even the smallest roles.

A casting director’s job is time-consuming, requires a lot of patience as well as good judgment skills. Actors being the essence of a film project, there is no scope for casting directors to take the casting process lightly since that can mess up the whole production, and can cause huge losses to the producer.

Let’s have a look at a casting director’s job in detail.

Job of a Casting Director

On the surface, a casting director’s job is to put together the cast for an entertainment project. Wha