An Actor's Journal - Auditions
The Audition
Ah yes, the audition; the thing that will make or break your career. Getting your foot in the door in the most literal sense. Your chance to show the people on the other side what you’ve believed for years, you’re the person you want for this role, you’ve prepared, you’re friends tell you, you look like so and so….well. You believe all of that; you and like 20 other people. In fact there are literally different versions of you all doing your lines the same way having the same thoughts about standing out, a real multiverse of madness or sadness depending on how you think the audition went. There are many facets to the audition but they all start with the submission.
Submissions
When you first start acting unless you have family members or friends in the industry who are willing to manage you, there is a slim chance you will get representation right away. Without representation in the form of a manager or an agent then you will be doing “Self Submissions.” Self submissions are key to getting work in the beginning because it is indeed a numbers game. Open calls are probably the best bet but will take up a huge chunk of your day, because it’s literally hundreds of people. Once you get to the specific descriptions there is somewhat of a catch 22. You need a headshot and a reel. Headshots are pretty easy once you find the right photographer but a reel is a bit tricky. If you haven’t booked many things then you won’t have a lot of footage for a reel, casting wants to see reels to get a feel for your acting so for a while you’re kind of stuck in this weird spot. You can A., which I highly recommend is produce your own short films with friends, B., you can go to a reel production company to have a scene shot or C., you can grind it out self submitting to things with just a headshot and whatever footage you have until you get even better footage. I’ve done all of the above but the last option has been not only fun but rewarding. Moving along with the submissions, there are a few sites like Actors Access, LA Talent, Backstage, Now Casting and a few more which all do the same thing. These sites all of description matching algorithms which will sift through the breakdowns so you don’t have to. A breakdown is literally just what the name says, details about the production, a log line and character descriptions. I submitted to so many things when I first started acting that I kept a separate journal just to make sure I didn’t double submit to a repost(which I have).
Audition Alert
Once you’ve submitted and the casting team like your submission materials you get this magical notification. The notification which to this day will have me stop whatever I’m doing to take a look at my phone and that’s the audition alert. My primary site from the ones listed above is Actors Access and they have what’s called a Cmail. “Cmail in my Gmail.” Was a popular phrase in the mid 2010s, not sure if it still is but I use it. These notifications can make a not so good day a whole lot better. Inside the notification you are greeted with a message from the casting director giving you details on the audition, what to wear and sides. The sides are just snippets of the script where your character has lines and sometimes just actions. They will either give the sides via the alert, give you a code to download them or state that sides will be provided at the audition. This brings us to the next stage…preparation.
Preparing to be daring
There are many ways to prepare for an audition and there is no one right way, there are a few wrong ways though. The barebones would be reading through the sides, getting the context for what’s happening, finding out who the character is and then finally saying the lines as that character or your interpretation of the character. Without going to in depth into technique you do have to find some truth in the words which helps with memorizing and getting familiar with the material. In the beginning I did a lot of preparation at my day jobs or during breaks. You can tell your fellow actor by seeing people in the cars or off the side talking to themselves, glancing down at a piece of paper every now and then. The preparation doesn’t just stop with the sides however as you will need to plan your trip.
The trek
Sometimes you get lucky and the audition is just a train stop away but most times it will be halfway across town and scheduled either before or after lunch time. You never want to be the first one to go in but you definitely don’t want to be late. If you’re on time you’re late and if you’re early you’re on time were words to live by. I can’t count on both hands how many times I had been sitting in traffic on the 101 or the 405, ten minutes before I’m supposed to be in the room and 5 miles away. Now 5 miles might not seem that bad anywhere else but in LA traffic that could be anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes of stop and go. Not only having to worry about traffic but then you might run into a little something called street parking. You have 3 signs in LA, street cleaning which means you can’t park on that side of the road for 2 hours on certain days. Then you have 2 hour parking, which means if you see a parking attendant with a little piece of chalk in their hand you better not be in the same spot when they come back. Lastly there is permit parking which is weird that you have to pay to park in your own neighborhood but I digress. Sometimes if you’re really lucky you get the trifecta and there is one sign with all three. There is nothing that will take the wind from your sails more than coming out of a good or bad audition to see that red and white piece of paper on your windshield. For that reason the train has always been my favorite means of transportation to get to auditions. You don’t have to worry about traffic or parking and the walk helps get the blood pumping for when you actually get to the room.
The waiting room
This is a very strange place because I might be tripping, but all of these rooms smell the same. It’s like some strange potted plant that you can’t find but it’s got to be in every last casting office in LA or maybe it’s the type of carpet. Maybe it’s the smell of crushed hopes, dreams, and desperation. I kid, but depending on where the audition is you might see the same types of people and as time moves on you will start seeing the same people over and over. Probably not now since casting offices have all gone to self tapes but before you could definitely figure out your type by the room. Everyone is roughly the same height, build, and even have the same jeans v-neck combination on. You go to check in and depending on how many names they’ve gone through you have a bit of time to prepare. I do not recommend doing any preparation in the waiting room it will psyche you out. Especially once you hear someone in the audition room doing something exactly as you were planning to, then you think about how you can change it and before you know it, your turn is up and you start to freak out. You will also see some weird stuff in the waiting room. People working out was probably the weirdest, next to a guy bringing in a whole pizza for some reason. He didn’t even finish it he ate half went in to audition and then offered the rest to us on his way out. I’ve seen audition crashers, people being in the wrong waiting room and even had someone just get up and run out of the room never to return. After you’ve finally gotten into some kind of headspace, which headphones are highly recommended they call out your name and it’s time to go in.
The Belly of the beast
Inside the audition room is like a void. Once you cross into the threshold it’s quiet, so quiet that you can hear the blood rushing up into your ears and your pulse beating in your neck. They ask for your name, have you do a slate and then ask if you have any questions. Sometimes I would look down at the sides knowing good and well I didn’t have any but it was more so just to buy some time. “Alright, whenever you’re ready.” The casting director says. The camera is rolling and you either have the first line or you’re waiting for the reader. You get ready to give the best performance of your life and you start going, probably either slow at first or really fast. Either way as soon as you start to get warmed up you hear. “Thank you.” For a moment you stand there, looking around thinking that there was something else, but that’s it. The audition is over and it’s time for you to pass a guy holding a pizza box outside the door.
“Want a slice?” He asks but you just hope you didn’t get a ticket.
Casting
I’ve had some really good experiences in the audition room and some not so great ones. Sometimes a casting director will give you directions and have you do the scene again which at first glance makes you think that you sucked but it’s the casting director actually giving you the best chance to shine. I’ve even had casting directors have me stick around to read for another role they also might think I might be good for. Actor’s and casting directors have a strange relationship. Some actors think they are cold and uncaring but I think that they are doing their job and that’s to find the best choices for the director. You have to have some thick skin when you’re auditioning, even at the self submission process. I’ve had a casting director once straight up tell me that she didn’t believe me. She said that no matter how much I tried she couldn’t see me as the bad guy role, she told me to stick to boy next door stuff. I had just turned 30. Also, if I had a nickel for every time someone gave me the direction with “You what makes Denzel so great?” I know for sure I’m not getting the role then because now I’m just going to try and not imitate him. With that said though, casting directors are your friends. They want you to succeed because if you succeed they do as well and are passionate about their work. Even if they’ve seen 30 different you’s that day they will remember you unless you all decided to do the exact same thing.
The new normal
In the beginning self tapes are pretty sparse among my auditions. Once I got an agent they became more frequent as casting offices started requesting to put something on tape by a certain time. Strangely enough every last Netflix show or movie audition I’ve had, has been a self tape. The self tape is a different animal all together because you as the actor and most likely a perfectionist will end up with 20 identical takes, a hoarse throat, and an annoyed reader. It’s just the name of the game, but from experience the takes you think you did the best on are probably not your best. Sometimes it’s good to have another pair of eyes on them before you submit. You can do these at home with a reader or pay to have a professional setup with a reader provided. Many casting directors will tell you that cell phone footage these days is fine as long as you have good lighting and sound, sound being the most important.
After the audition
If you’ve made it out of the audition in once piece you’re probably going to say your lines perfectly over and over until you get home. The high from audition will slowly die down and you just check your phone for the next 24 hours to a week. The longer you do this the less time you check. In the beginning I would literally stare at my phone and swipe the screen down for hours on end. Every time I got a notification I was sure that I willed it into being. Once I did get a hang for the audition process however I picked up a pretty good habit. Immediately after the audition I threw my sides away and forgot about it. This has been a lot better for my mental state which I highly recommend.
The Callback and Booking
When you think you did good, your probably didn’t and vice versa but sometimes you can just feel when you nailed it. Then there comes the callback which is basically you doing the same thing you did in the audition for the director. The director gets a chance to give you direction to further narrow down their options. Sometimes you can book a role just from the first audition, which happened a couple times on student films. They have a limited time to shoot those so you have to wow them quick fast and in a hurry. If you make it past the callback though you get the “We would like to offer you the part of,” notification and you booked it. Sometimes you can get all the way down to the last 2 people and not book it but that’s nothing to feel bad about. There are factors which are sometimes just out of your control. You’re just a little too tall, just a little too short, the character has been condensed into another, the chemistry is a little off or even last minute changes to production status. The probability of booking roles is crazy when you consider out of 100 submissions 20 people get called in, 2 - 3 get call backs and 1 person books it. So just getting your foot into the door is an amazing feat on it’s own.