Actor Growth

So today I attended the paid audition. It was kind of odd as the building looked fairly empty from the outside and inside you entered. Interestingly enough, apparently one of the art schools here use this building as a facility of some sort.

I was greeted by a lady and before she brought me up she handed me a disclosure form to sign. This form was obviously just created by some regular people it seemed and was kind of awkward. Essentially, it wanted you to sign that since we are being recorded any of the sound and footage may be used for documentary purposes and that we waive any rights to damages that may occur as a result of these footages.

I guess an example would be if you did something super embarrassing and they say YouTube it you can’t then go after them for damages if it affects your career. As well, they would pay the actors $100 do all this. I must say, I was a little iffy about it. But, I decided to try it anyways.

Why? Because from my understanding of things like the law if they say try to purposely use this footage in an intentionally manipulative way to make people look like fools then I still have my rights to stop them. Basically, I guess you can say it is misleading. It’s different if it’s say someone went to an audition taping and accidentally slipped on the floor.

When I went up it was a huge room that was mostly empty like an unfinished constructed building. There were four people in total. One person doing the casting, one reader and two camera people. All in all there was only two takes and it lasted about 3 minutes. They asked if I did things like martial arts and I said yes.

The person asked me to show some moves and I only did conservative stuff. The reader actually did a martial art form that I practiced as well and we did some light “sticky hands”. My assumption is that the reader was actually playing a part in this short film.

It went okay in the end. Very awkward experience though.

Okay, this was very strange I thought. I got an audition request recently and the interesting thing was that in the note they were specifically going to pay the talent money to audition for them. Very unusual in deed.

What’s the catch? The only thing I could see is that they are apparently interested in using the audition tapings as part of their documentary in making the film. So maybe the money would be a way for people to agree to do this should they decide to use your audition footage.

The first thing I thought of was how this must be one expensive audition process for the producers. Secondly it made me wonder if this was a serious production or if they are trying to do like a blooper or documentary of sort. Guess I’ll have to wait and see as this would be a first.

The audition the other day went okay and it was kind of interesting. It was for a commercial and people in a group of three were brought in. This audition felt like it was 100% based on look. Essentially, when we were brought in we were asked to just improvise that we were like college students who were talking about school life as they taped it.

Then, the camera person just slowly zoomed into each of us as we did this improvisation. So I think that is a sign that the intent for this is to just show the client on the type of looks they have and from there they can choose which groups of people they like best.

Well this was an unexpected surprised. I got a call from the agent today that a casting director requested to see me for some kind of commercial shoot. The cool thing too is that the audition takes place tomorrow right in the studio where I took the audition workshops. So, hopefully that gives me an advantage.

This was technically the first day that I asked my coach for any possible pointers even though I am not active in the workshop at this point. Result? No response from the message I sent. Then again, as you all know the other coach that said he wanted to speak to me didn’t get back to me either. So, maybe this truly is one of those it is all about the money scenario.

Either way, hopefully this audition will go okay. Guess I am on my own.

Today I got an e-mail about a casting notice for a film that is specifically looking for ethnic people. One thing I noticed is that in the character breakdown it mentions that they are looking for a person within the 20-40 years age range.

These types of postings always confuse me as a twenty year age gap is pretty substantial in terms of the look. Usually I am told that people post it this way because they are still unsure on exactly what they want. I often hear casting directors complain of actors getting submitted for parts where they don’t fit the age range. Postings like this sure don’t help.

I have been getting quite a few project notifications recently from a particular film school here which happens to be the largest one in Vancouver. I volunteered to act in a film for them a few weeks back as it was one of the instructors who was requesting for the talent. So, I thought that if an instructor was requesting for the talent that the project would be professional to work on.

Interestingly enough, I guess as a result of this I have been getting audition notices that aren’t being advertised first. Obviously these are student films and not professional acting gigs, but it sure shows me how this is what is like with real casting directors too. Example, once the person works with you they try to use people that they know first.