Auditions

On prompting by a fellow film student who I respect, I'm going to be posting more often...or at least trying.

I wanted to speak about auditioning for a bit, just because I get the feeling that for most of us this is the first time we've gone through this process, and is one of the nicer things USC/living in LA brings to the table.

It's not that you don't know there are a lot of people here in LA trying to make it, because I'm sure most people have an understanding that a lot of people want to be movie stars. It's that there's no way to understand just HOW many there are until you go online to post for a tiny project, a single scene, of a film that's already been made, that you're doing on the cheap cheap with no lights, no crew, no nothing, and YET you can still get over a hundred submissions from actors wanting to be in your film OVERNIGHT.

We're not offering to pay them anything. They can't even use the footage on their reel because it's not our work. Yet still they flock to USC for even a chance to be in our movie. Why?

I can only surmise two real answers. One, they love the hell out of acting. It's their passion. You can see it on certain people when they audition; they love this. They're going to act no matter what, so why not come out for a day and do your project, get a decent meal, and have some fun?

Two, as crazy as this sounds, there might be a future in it. Not only will we all be making many more films that they could potentially be in, but we are at USC. That's not to say any of us are guaranteed anything, but you really never know, especially from their point of view. I know, it's ludicrous, but not any more so than spending thousands of dollars to go to film school.

Auditioning itself was less traumatic than I thought it would be, mainly for one simple reason. I get to choose. It's easy to forget when you're preparing and scheduling people that they want to be in your project, and will be incredibly nice and pleasant to you in order to get that. Once you realize this, and see that the Actors are in a way worse position than you are as far as nerves go everything relaxes. Or, at least it did for me.

After that it gets hard. Choosing is so difficult sometimes. These people only have a few days with the scene at most, and they have lives, they can't be devoting themselves to this hours at a time. Auditioning is such a weird process. I still have a lot to learn, but this first experience was eye opening. My next auditions will have to be pretty soon for my first project in Production. I'm going to try and get ahead of those so we'll see how that goes.

For those of you who wonder how we get so many actors, it's amazingly easy. Go to the following websites and post your project:

NowCasting.com
LACasting.com
BreakdownExpress.com

Some of them are just for LA area, but others have additional areas to post for. I can only speak from my experience here, but I received immediate interest from people who had trained seriously, and are passionate about acting.

We will see how it goes on Friday when I direct a scene from The Aviator. I'm hopeful, but it's not the perfect conditions. My actress is on a tight schedule so we're starting fairly early in the morning. As I've said before, it's not as nearly as critical or difficult as my first project will be, but still I can't help but worry over the things that could potentially go bad. I suppose it'll be good to work under conditions that are not ideal. I'm sure I'll have a post about it when that day is done.

Till next time.