Actor Growth

I got a call from my agent today who asked if I had access to a camcorder as he was thinking of submitting me for a project that requested that candidates be pre-screen by doing a self taped audition. Basically, as the name implies you are basically taping yourself as if you were in the audition.

This isn’t the time to try and play out the scene in a classroom way where you have a scene partner with some getups as the footage has to be focused on you primarily like an audition. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually tell me which project it was for and when he would get the sides.

Another interesting thing was that my acting coach phoned me too beforehand as I requested for a sit-down awhile back just to go over some of my career goals and hurdles. When I mentioned this, it sounded like a perfect opportunity to get some coaching to create a better taped audition.

I never actually done this before and so it will be an interesting experience.

You may remember a few weeks back I went for an audition that I thought went very well. Today, I got an e-mail from the producer asking me to phone him back. I assumed that was good news as in most cases people wouldn’t bother to contact you if they weren’t interested in any way.

While talking to him on the phone, he told me that they auditioned a lot of people and they decided that I could pull off a different character quite nicely other than the one I read for. Therefore, either way I got a role in this independent feature film.

I’m actually excited about this as resource and commitment wise these guys seem like they are dead serious in creating a film that has a high production value quality. At the same time, it is so true in this scenario where doing great and trying to stand out individually can result in the production saying something along the lines of “Okay, we like this guy…….what can we put him in” even though you may not be the ideal person for the particular role you read for.

Today was the audition an it went very well I thought overall. I did my thing and as usual they ask you to do the scene with completely different interpretations to see your range. My choice for the first run through was to do it in a compassionate and self realizing way where they commented that is actually how it was intended. Then for the heck of it they asked me to be very angry.

So I used some techniques that I have learned in class such as using the chair as an object other than something you just sit on. For the scene I used it as a tree pole of sort in mind and when I was angry I ended up kicking it down which definitely got reactions. I also did bring in my backpack as a prop since the script mentioned that the character was rummaging through it.

For the embracing part that I was wondering about, it indeed was just the reader, who happened to be the producer, and was sitting far away. Therefore, in the end that action was simply ignored. It went well though and in the end they asked if I had any questions.

I simply asked about their goals for the project and they were describing how this is definitely a serious attempt to create a stunning film that would compete with more high budget films. They are going to be using equipment such as those RED cameras as an example.

The amount of cast seems really high too where they mentioned that they were looking for about 50 people or so. So, it’s a wait and see game now as I know these are those time where when you think you did so well you don’t even get a callback or vice versa when you think you did so bad you do get a callback.

In other news, I got a call from my agent saying that Stargate Universe wanted me back for two days, so I guess taking this audition over that for today didn’t affect too much.

So I have an audition coming up on Wednesday and for this one the script apparently calls for a lot of embracing between the guy and the girl. As you may know, in an audition the reader is usually far away from you and there is not suppose to be any physical contact which makes this very strange as I am not yet sure how to tackle this.

I remember in the last workshop I was in there was an actor that was doing a scene where his character was suppose to be play fighting with another person such as messing the guy’s hair up. Sure enough, the acting coach told him to do it and he was literally just swinging his arms in the air.

It was kind of odd I must say and was surprised that he just didn’t scrap that out as many times on audition sides they cut out a lot of parts. Although, recently while auditing the other acting program one of the reader said he once had to have the actor sit on his lap and so maybe for this they will break the rules like that too.

Either way, this is going to bug me until the actual audition day.

So I submitted myself for a film that was advertised in the casting workbook and based on the breakdown it looked like there were potentially two characters that I was interested in reading for. Sure enough, they replied back that they would arrange an audition time and would provide the sides for at least two characters.

I always find auditioning for two different characters to be little strange as you tend to focus on one more than the other. Interestingly enough, because of this sometimes you tend to try and do too much with one character while being more relaxed with the other one. Ironically, the one that you spent less time with ended up being better.

Another thing that was interesting was that the people mentioned that the audition times would be for about 15 minutes which I thought was incredibly long compared to other auditions. Guess they want to be thorough with their choices.

Today I went to audition for what sounded like a fun project. It was a silent on camera type of role for a volunteer commercial done mainly for practice it seems. Upon arrival it was interesting as they had no script or direction at all.

All I did was go in-front of the camera and they told me to talk a bit about myself. Essentially, that was their way just to see how one looks on camera and it lasted about 2 minutes. It felt more like an interview than an audition.

Granted they were new, but usually in these situations you are set up in an environment that in some way mimics what you would actually being doing during filming. Example, in this case the scene was supposed to be a bunch of guys sitting in a boardroom and usually they would get you to at least sit down to see some reaction shots. But like in this scenario I just stood up talking to the production people. Very strange audition overall.