A teenage boy is getting himself ready for a formal event. He’s not used to doing this and we see each of his family members helping him. Mum helps him with his suit and his big sister helps him with his hair. But when we see his older brother plant something in his pocket we suspect he’s playing a cruel joke on him. Only when he’s waiting on the doorstep for his date does he find what his brother put in his jacket – a red rose. Just as he takes it out, the girl answers the door and, assuming the rose is a gift from the boy, she gives him a kiss on the cheek. His older brother did have his best interests at heart after all.

This idea was taken from script to screen in three weeks. It was clearly a film that would live or die on the quality of casting and performance. So we decided to shoot in LA where we’d have access to the biggest pool of talent in the short time available.

The complexity of the narrative and the short time length (30 seconds) meant that all these characters had to come through vividly at a glance. The brief we gave to the casting agents was that the boy had to be right on the tipping point between boyhood and manhood and had to have a likable vulnerability about him. The older brother had to make us feel in one look he could be plotting something mean or just smirking knowingly at seeing his little brother go through the same things he’s gone through himself. The lead girl had to be beautiful enough for us to appreciate what all the fuss was about, but had to look unaware of just how beautiful she was so the audience could warm to her.

Casting agents carried out an exhaustive search with a network of talent scouts across the US coordinated centrally in LA. Our ambition was to unearth undiscovered talent who could bring a sense of freshness and authenticity to the film. The search brought us approximately 20 to 40 people for each of the six roles: the mother, the father, the older brother, the younger sister, the lead boy and the lead girl (the boy’s date). The casting took place over two days.

The mother, father, older brother and younger sister we chose all had some acting experience, but for the boy we opted for someone with no screen acting experience. His genuine nervousness gave his performance an authentic quality that would have been almost impossible to recreate.

After seeing about 50 people for the lead girl, we still hadn’t found what we were looking for in LA so we did further auditions over Skype with candidates across the US – extending our search to cover models as well as actors. In the end we found the perfect option on the East Coast, a fashion model in New York State who had never acted before. We flew her over to LA the next day.