What CHristine said, and adding to what she said... there were about 55 people auditioning in 4 hours, so we have to group them and it's nicer to look at thigns in 'general perspective'. For the 2nd read, we even asked our known actress to stand in with the 4 potential main roles and work with them on scenes and listen to her opinion on which 2 would be the best...
As the director, ultimately the decision is mine, however, I must also ask my fellow cast/crew and producers (we have about 10 people going through the audition process) that are 'key' to the success of MY movie, because they represent the opinion of the masses, hence, I make a movie with actors I like and all, but if they can't convey my vision and my message to the audience, they would be wasting my time (since most are doing it almost free and I have to compromise as this is being an indie film shoot), and overall, I will have lousy movie.
As the director, my goal and purpose of making a film is NOT about myself, but it's more about the collaborative work that we can create and make it shine, basically, what be the MOST we can get out of our film, in the case of Rapture, our goal is to MAKE money, so majority's perspective count.
Having Christine doing the casting for me, I have the extra additional perspective of cast that I might consider, and if she can rely the exact vision/information that i perceived of MY movie to the REST of the people, then I know I did a good job in delivering the message accross...
Not to mention, as indie filmmakers, our job is NOT only to make films but to learn from it and to grow.. Most of us dreamed of being that successful Peter Jackson, Bryan Singer or Robert Rodriguez, where we can spend other people's money to make film so we should slowly learn to 'collaborate'
I still find it hard to collaborate with certain aspect of filmmaking, particulary in editing, because I know what I want and sometimes I'm afraid that my message is not 'received' exactly as I wanted, plus I'm picky on certain minor details that I want, so I guessed I have to slowly learn to let that part go, while I do trust my collaborative team to carry my vision with me, now, if they screw up for the first time, I definetely know not to have them involved more. (the earlier you work with them, the earlier you know what is a miss and what is a hit and you can adjust from there).
Case in point, in addition on Christine as being the casting director, she will have to deal with SAG paperworks (why sag? So we get to learn a bit on how to work with union actors, this way when we get 'big' we know how to do it and find loopholes around it). At the same time, she's in charge of makeup/wardrobe, which is going to be a lot, plus the 'harness' corsettee disign for the cast...
While, I have one person in charge of the script analising/flushing it out, one on all special effects and props (cg or visual), one on only wire-work, one in catering (to feed about 200 people or so daily for probably 15 days), two in just go out and get funding and sales to distributors, etc.
All these 'main' team members get together as much as we can to talk about the movie, offering each, our perspective so we have a real movie that has a great points because we care on what we put out. Obviously, it would easily attract potential buyers as well.
Filmmaking is not about the director, but reality is more about the team efforts.