Spotlight: Tide Casting

Spotlights are a 12 part series documenting emerging creatives in London. This week we met Tide Casting, a casting and management agency in London. They specialise in street casting, enabling them to better connect brands with a diverse range of dynamic new faces. Tide was set up in 2018 by Rory Griffin and Zoard Heuze who met studying photography at the London College of Fashion and have since provided models for some impressive clients, such as A\$AP Rocky, Adidas and Dazed Magazine. We caught up with them to discuss their impact on the fashion industry:

Why did you set up Tide?

Zoard: Between us we knew a lot of people within London because Rory’s from North London and I'm from the South. Because we're both photographers, we were shooting a lot of people anyway so it just made sense to have a big database of people that we can shoot.

Rory: A lot of our friends had been interested in modelling and those were the people we were shooting most the time anyway, so it was good to try and get them jobs and it helps us as well.

What do you look for in a model?

Zoard: All of our models really are their own character, they know who they are and they’re confident, that’s mainly what we look for.

What role does story telling play in casting?

Rory: The easiest way to tell a story is through having the right characters. So, when casting, I think it’s really important to get to know the person a little bit first. We’re looking for people that are not just interesting looking but also interesting people, because that really shows when they are photographed because they get to put a bit of their personality into their look.

Zoard: We like using people who dress the same as the character that they are playing; they look more comfortable and it's a better experience for everyone. It’s more authentic if you find people who are the people you are trying to portray.

Do you tend to collaborate with other creatives?

Zoard: Going to LCF meant we met a lot of other photographers. Through them we met stylists and everyone that we need to work well together in the industry.

Rory: I think what’s important as well is to remember that you will be working with those people in the future, so it’s nice to build teams early with people that you work well with.

What challenges do you face working in the fashion industry?

Rory: We are quite young so when we show up to shoots people are a bit shocked that we’re actually the people doing it. Hopefully, it means that our work is good enough that our age shouldn’t matter.

Zoard: One of the other things is that we had no idea what we were doing when we started and we’re still learning.

Rory: You think that when you’re creative you don’t need to understand the business side of it so much, but when your starting out you have to do it for yourself.

Zoard: No one talks about it, everyone puts up their work and no one says "you gotta do your taxes and your VAT".

What advice do you have for people wanting to get into fashion?

Rory: You have to have character and you have to able to show people that through your work. Through photography, I’ve realised that the only way to get better at stuff is to keep trying. You could do anything if you keep doing it, because with creativity it’s not about reaching a goal, you’re just always building on top of it.

Zoard: Just do it. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were planning to start Tide after we finished uni and then we were like "why don’t we just do it right now?" and we just did it and it’s gone pretty well.

What do you want for Tide in the future?

Rory: For the future, we want to be working with bigger clients and making more work with our friends. That’s what’s going to be fun - when we’re all finished doing what we have to do now, it will hopefully be a time for us all to work together on open briefs and that will probably be some of the most interesting work we’ll make.

Zoard: Right now we want to build good relationships with a lot of different people doing different things and hopefully work on projects with those people in the long run.

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