Finding the best talent

Meet casting director Vamshi Naarani, whose work raised the standards in choosing the right actor for the roles

Vamshi Naarani is a well-known name in the film field for his keen eye for selecting the right person for a particular character. In just a short span of time, Vamshi has carved his place in Telugu cinema. He got a break in 2016 as an assistant director for the film Terror and now he is a sought-after casting director in the field.

Born in Nalgonda, Vamshi pursued his engineering in textile technology at Osmania University, MS in the US and spent a decade there working in quality testing and research. It was then that Vamshi “understood that I had to do something different than what I was doing”.

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He explored filmmaking but was unaware where he fit. “I enrolled myself in screenwriting (two-semester course) from New York Film Academy (NYFA) and I understood that I was good at screen writing,” says Vamshi, who started off his career as a docudrama filmmaker in 2010 and has more than 45 screenwriting assignments to his credit.

After moving to India, it took two years for Vamshi to meet the right people. “I met Satish Kasetty, who was making Terror at that time, in Lamakaan. I joined him as an assistant director and later worked as a co-director for Ghazi. I had the responsibility of choosing the right actors for the characters and I started enjoying the whole process. As Ghazi was a bilingual film, I had to choose actors who were accepted pan-India. As I met a lot of people, I now have a database of nearly 2,100 actors from all age groups,” says Vamshi with pride.

Explaining about his role and the advantages of having a casting director for a project, Vamshi says, “A casting director’s work starts well before meeting any actors. When hired by a production company, they start to understand more about the project and the roles involved. They also read the script thoroughly, making notes on various characters. Once they know the scope of the project and the roles, they get to work according to the requirement. They are also budget-friendly.”

Vamshi also sets up auditions with actors, besides cautioning aspirants that “casting agents are different from casting directors”. So far, Vamshi, whose latest projects include Wild Dog and the web series 11th hour, has introduced more than 200 faces to the film industry and is currently working for Arka Media as a casting director for an interesting web series. He is also working for a film by Megastar’s daughter Sushmitha’s production house, Gold Box Entertainment.

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