The dream sequence in ‘Rain for Morgan’ involved a lot of milo, crushed oats, and one hell of a cleanup afterwards.

Thanks again to Dave Williams for wrapping himself in plastic to shoot this scene (and also doing this little edit!).

We made our first trip up to Yabba North to check out the farmhouse that Fleur had secured for the shoot. It’s an amazing property, vacated several years ago after the death of its owners, but not yet cleaned out. We found ourselves in a kind of time warp, treading carefully through rooms with neatly made beds, fossicking through drawers containing letters and notebooks, feeling like at any step we might turn a corner and find a puzzled old couple wondering what we were doing in their house. A walking stick was poised carefully by the bed, within easy reach for the morning. In the kitchen, a dried out tea bag sat next to the teacups, clearly waiting to be ‘recycled’ into a second cup. There was a hairbrush on the dresser and ironed shirts in the cupboard. This house still felt like it was occupied.

The landscape here is amazing – we couldn’t have constructed a better set. Here are some photos we took as we wandered around the property.

When I cast my first film short film, both the director and I knew instantly when we’d found our leads. From the moment they walked in, we knew we wanted them. It was the type of clichéd moment where the actors left the room, and we realised that we didn’t actually want to see anyone else. We’d found our leads.

Yet with Morgan, casting the role of Johnny was much more difficult. Casting never ceases to both excite and terrify me – it’s such a bizarre and inexact science. You pore through Showcast, resumes and headshots, relying on the slightest thing to tip you towards (or away) from someone. Suddenly you’re reduced to a superficial casting agent, basing your choices on height or eye colour or hairstyle – when of course these things have no bearing at all on ability. Yet how else can you measure someone?

In the corporate world, there have been so many times when I have given someone an audition ‘for the sake of it’, convinced that they don’t actually look ‘right’, but have discovered that they look nothing like their headshot and they’re actually just what we’re looking for. Or that whilst ‘on paper’ they look inexperienced and amateur, they blow their ‘classically trained’ competitors out of the water. I breathe a secret sigh of relief and think ‘Thank goodness we took a chance on getting that person in’.

And, of course, the opposite is true. People turn up and they’re unrecognizable when compared to their photo. Someone has worked some kind of photoshop magic, and I’m disappointed (and often a little annoyed) that they’ve been so deceitful. I wonder how they can get away with billing themeselves as someone they’re clearly not.

Luckily, when casting Johnny, we had a fantastic range of actors. And it soon became clear that, unlike other projects, there wasn’t going to be ‘the one’ that stood out and won the role without questions. We had some amazing talent to choose from – but they were all different. Each would bring a slightly different nuance to the character, and we were going to need to make some big decisions about how we saw Johnny.

Physical build, or facial features? Does Johnny dominate with his outer, or inner strength? He has to play Lucy’s brother – so how much like Erin does he really need to look? A commanding voice or a commanding stature? An actor who fits in, or an actor who ‘owns’ the role at the expense of being less ‘fun’?

Having to make these decisions was much harder and more stressful than I thought it would be. Especially when the choice is narrowed down to only two candidates. It’s hard getting your head around the fact that there’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – but you’re going to make a very, very different film, depending on which actor you choose. So you just have to hope that you choose right – which completely contradicts what I just said.

Yep. It’s tricky.