This commercial for Expedia captures the passion people have for travel by showcasing a diverse cast of believable average people intimately singing the classic song ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ in an amateur style.

An old taxi driver longing to revisit his homeland, a transgender person wanting to visit carnival in Rio, an inner city student searching for herself in Cambodia, a non-clichéd suburban mother wanting to take her family to Fiji, a tradesman covered in dust dreaming of surfing tropical waves and an over-worked female office worker trying to reconnect with a childhood friend in NYC.

The casting process for this commercial was extensive. We needed to source not only actors what could capture the natural essence of the ad, but also that could hold a tune in a completely underplayed way.

As a portion of the commercial was being shot in New York and the casting director was Australian but living in the USA, we combined forces and cast in both countries, ultimately finding a combination of nationalities of talent.

We also needed to find talent overseas which could viably be placed in the 1940s and hold a moment that our Taxi driver character would convincingly reminisce over. Again we cast overseas (in Spain) for this in order to get a genuine local who had the right look and feel.

As the ad features drag queens, we wanted this to be as genuine as possible; therefore we street cast for this role. All talent within the spot are genuine which is reflective within their performance.

Overall the casting on this commercial was extremely thorough and spanned multiple countries in order to get the right person for the job.