Actor Growth

So I auditioned for a part on Thursday and interestingly enough I got an e-mail stating how they would like to see me for a callback next week on the same day that evening. In the e-mail, they also indicate that they have auditioned a lot of other great people as well.

Funny thing is that I see that they are continuously advertising for an actor to play that very same role too which kind of makes me question how genuine the callback really is. An interesting thing for myself too, all of the parts I have gotten thus far always came from the first audition.

My usual thought is that a callback means they think you can act but they are not quite sure which person to go with in terms of one’s look. In this case though, it just seems a bit too weird to go for a callback when they are still advertising to audition people for the very first time.

What a busy day this was for me. While I knew I was going to an audition in the late evening today, it turned out that the agency that I contacted the other day was able to meet me pretty close to where I lived and so I went to meet the agent.

There were actually two of them which was a little unexpected, but overall it was a pleasant meeting. He mentioned that usually he had this entire presentation ready to pitch the agency, but since I am pretty familiar with film in general he figured there was no need.

The one thing that I liked was that he seemed very honest about how it may not be the best agency for principle work since they are still kind of entering that field as they specialize in background. It was nice not being pitched on how say the agency is the best in the world.

Aside from that, I went to the audition as planned. I can honestly say that I did very well as I seemed to click with the production team and made them laugh as intended since this was a comedy. This was a cold read with some improvisation which is great as it reminds me of doing theatre. Just a matter of time to see if I got the part or not.

So tomorrow I have an audition booked for a short film project and because of my time schedule I was booked in the late evening. The thing is, right before this I have a martial arts class. I was even joking with the production people that I hope they are willing to audition an actor that is battered, bruised and sweaty.

People always say that you should prepare yourself for an audition and give yourself say 15 minutes ahead of time, but in this case I’m probably going to be a little tired and will simply have to just be myself and see how it goes.

So today I went to audition for a quick film for some film students that happened to be from a school that I have participated twice in as an actor. Right from when I walked in the person mentioned how I looked familiar and afterwards we talked a bit about the films I was in which rung a bell with him.

Now here was the interesting thing. As usual when you just get the script and go to an audition, you basically give your interpretation of the character and afterwards adjust it depending on the direction that you get. Since the two films I was in was a comedy, they first got me to read for the comedic character. The thing is I didn’t know he was a comedic guy and I interpreted the character as very serious.

Then right afterwards, they got me to read for a different character instead who apparently was supposed to be the serious one. So I guess a good thing about people recognizing you from other work is that you have just built yourself a reputation where they would less likely to not be worried about your professionalism in deciding to cast you. At the same time, the image of the character you played from the previous films could be stuck in their heads which in some ways can be a disadvantage as well.

I just got an e-mail today from a studio that was interested in seeing me for an ad campaign that apparently revolves around recruiting people to some college. I did provide them my headshots before and they mentioned that they would only contact those that they were interested in, so I guess that is a good sign so far.

No sides were provided either as I am to simply show up at the designated time and simply do things on the spot. The main thing according to this e-mail is that they want you to look as young as possible since you are supposed to be a college student. The audition is at a studio that I have never been to before either, so this should be interesting.

Alright, so I attended the Rogers audition today. They were definitely behind schedule as people were literally waiting for like 2 hours after their call time before they had a chance to be seen. One thing that was kind of surprising was that there was only about four East Asian People and the rest seemed like they were South Asian.

Originally I thought it was a specific call for East Asians, but then again there was an audition for this call yesterday too so maybe they went through others that day. It was a two person audition and I was randomly paired up with another person.

This was the first time in an audition where the director specifically asked the actors what age we were which was kind of strange I thought. In general, most people look like they had a teenage to very young adult look which was the criteria.

The audition went okay I thought. We just did two takes and I only got to read for one of the characters. The person got me to read for the serious character only which was too bad as during the actors group I thought the goofy character was interesting and I had this skit that worked very well we thought anyways.

Overall, I’m not sure if I will get a callback for this one, but my guess is that I probably won’t as I wasn’t really asked to try the role differently with any real direction and so usually that can be a “Ho-Hum” sign. Just another day.