alovestorysomewherearound2046: cameo casting
alovestorysomewherearound2046: cameo casting stages a public conversation between casting director Dan Hubbard, artist Edgar Schmitz and curator Pieternel Vermoortel on how to populate feature movies, on protagonists of fame and the interplay between actors and plots. How do casting experts intervene in the imaginary of the movie and how do they shape its faces? Can the cast come before the film? And what happens when each casting ends up creating a cameo as well as a character?
The session is the second of three events at LUX that shadow the production of alovestorysomewherearound2046, a collaborative film treatment by Edgar Schmitz and Pieternel Vermoortel that turns their past exhibitions into raw material for a lovestory set in the near future. One exhibition normally provides material for one scene in the treatment, which becomes its distorted and slightly delayed mirror in the suspended state of a sci-fi film always yet to be made. As part of this ongoing production, Schmitz and Vermoortel stage meetings with cinema production experts (from special effects to lighting and stuntmanship, from character and plot development through to versioning and advertising interfaces) to expand the exhibition- scenes of the film treatment and subject them to the pre-production patterns of feature films. A further session on filmic settings and production design is planned for early 2014.
Dan Hubbard (CDG CSA) has worked in Hubbard Casting for 15 years. His film credits include: United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremacy, The Damned United, Harry Brown, Ill Manors, King Kong, Chalet Girl, Green Zone, Inkheart, I Could Never Be Your Woman, Battle For Haditha, The Fall, Flyboys, Lara Croft Tomb Raider 1 & 2, Lord Of The Rings. Television includes: Sinbad, The Jury 1 & 2, Ahead Of The Class, Keen Eddie, Born & Bred Series 1 & 2, Rebus, Omagh, The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence, Northanger Abbey, Ben Hur, Bloody Sunday. Upcoming movies for release are Captain Philips starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass, All Is By My Side starring Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix, One Chance starring James Corden & Julie Walters, The Last Passenger starring Dougray Scott and Kara Tointon. Dan has just completed series 4 of Downton Abbey.
Edgar Schmitz is an artist who has often borrowed cinematic motifs, atmospheres and modes of attention to orchestrate his practice. Recent exhibitions include British Art Show 7/ In the Days of the Comet (Hayward Touring 2010/11) and Surplus Cameo Decor (Cooper Gallery, Dundee and Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012-14). Pieternel Vermoortel’s curatorial practice operates as a reflexive manner of production within given institutional frameworks. Her most recent programme as FormContent has functioned as a performative script, a production and dissemination mode that uses scripting conventions as form through which to produce (and reflect upon the production of) the exhibition as specific cultural object. Schmitz and Vermoortel have worked together since 2006 in various distributions as artist and curator, often swapping and/or overlapping their roles in the process. The film treatment accompanies both practices as work in development under the externalised mirror perspective of production and dissemination.
