Producer Vicky Pope and I recently employed Evelina as extras casting director on the feature film “Pike” (working Title).

As a dramatic retelling of the Pike River tragedy from the families perspective, this production required over 600 extras who would help fill our scenes with the authenticity the story deserves.

Evelina was engaged our extras casting director in September 2023 and from the get-go her work was incredible. She enthusiastically took our exacting brief, managing the process seamlessly and with obvious care. The faces she found included 29 miners who closely matched the age and look of the miners who perished, as well as other workers, community members, politicians, lawyers, judges, media and more.

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Her matching of extra’s to the reference faces we supplied was uncanny. Evelina totally understood the director’s obsession around getting every face who appeared on screen right – in fact she took real pride in this. To assist in the process she created documents that included the real people we were matching to and her casting suggestions making the selection process highly efficient.

Because “Pike” is about a tragedy within a community, we needed our extras casting director to gain the confidence of the Greymouth community. Evelina managed the Greymouth casting in a way that built trust with outstanding communication – something many of our extras commented on. She brought hundreds of people to our Greymouth extras casting sessions using a mixture of media, direct contact, Facebook, and notices put up in pubs and cafes. Her handling of the Auckland part of the shoot using a mix of extras casting agents and community casting was equally strong.

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Evelina led a small extras team and was consistently great to deal with – she’s the kind of person who it is a pleasure to have around a production office. She is committed, organized, efficient, detail orientated, has fantastic communication - honestly we couldn’t recommend her highly enough.

Rob Sarkies
31 Films Ltd.