This is a piece I've been meaning to write for a while, but today had an infuriating experience at an audition which prompted me to go ahead with it.
Namely, the sheer amount of auditions that are badly organised (if at all), not at all punctual, unfair or just seem to be worked out according to bizzaro-logic.
I'll mention no names and want to stress that this is in the spirit of information and improvement rather than a simple tirade, so here's the gist of today:
I was called down to Deptford (an hours travel) for a 4:45pm audition. I arrived early, and was given a number (I was well over 200th) and told to wait. I worked on the script, which had a spelling or grammatical error in every single line, the word 'farther' (meaning father) was used 3 times. At 5:45pm I was getting short on time before needing to head to work. I was told I'd have to wait at least half an hour/ forty five minutes yet, even though it was already an hour late. I left, without having auditioned. A whole afternoon wasted.
This isn't even that rare an occurrence. Other lowlights include:
- having a highly emotional audition in a corridor, and being shushed by the director midway through.
- Being told at the end of an audition that the shoot would be tomorrow and I'd need to be free all day (I wasn't).
- Being asked which role I'd like to play, then being told a "name" was being line up for that role and immediately thrown out (literally. physically.)
- Being invited along with EVERYONE who applied for the film (over 500 people showed up) queuing for three hours in order to be asked three questions and discover that no one actually auditioned, it was to see who they wanted to audition for real.
- Panels texting, smoking, answering phones and leaving me acting to nothing.
I'm sure everyone else here could add their own stories to the list.
But these have largely become accepted pitfalls of the auditioning process, and we, the actors who suffer from it all, just have to go along with it. This seems to tie into the implication that actors have no power and are simply at the mercy of the whims of the decision makers, a belief system the other side of the desk usually also run on, and I really don't think it has to be this way.
As actors, we have made a commitment to our chosen profession. We have spend thousands of pounds and given years of our lives to training, to say nothing of the photo's, showreels and other demands on our lives and wallets. Yet people holding auditions often seem to be making it up as they go along. A friend of mine with no formal experience recently wanted to hold auditions for a film, and decided to get all his potentials into a room for a whole day, and have them stand in a circle and watch each other read a three line scene until they were all done, with an hour set aside for telling them about the film and setup. He could have held ten minute slots and included the details in an email (what I would call the Professional way) and got the same results while inconveniencing people a lot less.
Actors spend hours learning and perfecting audition technique. It is not fair that they spend that on people who don't even know what auditions really are. The people put in the positions of power are the ones with no training or experience. Now fair enough, I've never come across a course on 'How to Hold an Audition', or advice for the other side of the desk. I've been on audition panels and been forced to go one what I know, which is quite a lot after all these years, but a lot of independent film makers or students have no such training to draw from. So I hope the tips posted here can go some way to rectifying that. So here are all the tips I can think of, after many auditions, both good and bad, and from both sides of the table.
