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.

Just the other day I self submitted myself for a commercial as the description seemed to be something that was within my range. Unfortunately, by the time I submitted the session was already full and the casting director informed me of this.

The interesting thing though was that she asked if it was okay to keep my headshot and of course I was fine with that. It was kind of strange though as I would think this kind of thing is a normal practice. After thinking about it, I think I saw more positives out of that remark.

I never seen this casting director before personally and I’m betting she has never even heard of me either. However, I think her asking if it was okay to keep my headshot was another way of saying that she thought I had a good look that may be suitable for future projects that she was casting for. In that sense, I guess it’s really good.

I noticed that there was a another casting director workshop happening in about two weeks and I decided that I will attend this one. There have been a lot of advertisements lately as well for these types of workshops and what attracted me to this one was that it seemed like it was going to be conducted in a semi audition styled setting.

I read that first you would get trained by an acting coach to prepare a scene and then afterwards you will perform this scene on camera for a real local casting director. This fitted in perfectly with my current direction which was to learn less about the actual acting process on set and to focus more on the auditions as you need to land those roles first and foremost.

As well, I wanted to again avoid those “Paid to get seen” type of workshops as I don’t think those are beneficial at all. Unlike the last casting director workshop I went to, this one insisted that all actors must have previous professional training to enroll. Hopefully that is a good sign that this will be some good stuff too at a higher level.

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 my agent called me today and told me that Stargate Universe was interested in booking me again tomorrow for some background work. Unfortunately, as you all know I have the audition tomorrow. At first my agent asked if it was changeable and I did phone the producers. Apparently, it wasn’t possible due to the short notice and that there are over 50 people auditioning for the role.

As a result, I decided to go for the audition instead of the paid background work as to me auditioning for this feature can potentially do more for my career as opposed to working as a background guy. The only drawback to not taking the Stargate Universe work is apparently whoever does the casting has me in a “just call” type of mentality as I suppose I have a good reliable track record.

But, I think this is the best decision for me.

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.