Remember what it was like doing a math test in grade five? The stress of cramming? The anxiety waiting to be told to begin? Remember the fear that in the next hour you were going to completely ruin your chances at ever having a meaningful or fulfilling life? Remember that?
Now, imagine doing that two or three times a week for the rest of your life. Only, every time you go for another test, they've changed the subject. Not only that, but the material you thought you were going to be tested on is frequently changed at the last minute, forcing you to improvise the answers questions. Add to that the very real possibility that the examiner will be reading a newspaper or talking to a buddy while you're trying to impress them.
This will give you some idea of what an audition is like.
"The most stressful thing about acting is auditioning," says Lynn Adams, who has been acting in film, television, theatre and radio for over a decade. "A lot of directors, from my experience, don't know how unnerving an audition is," Adams, who has had parts in Un Zoo la Nuit, Forbidden Love and Call of the Wild, stated. "When you go on an audition, you're basically opening yourself up to scrutiny and to judgment. It takes years of conditioning to actually distance yourself from it and not take it all personally... When you come in, you open up [emotionally], and the director has to realize how precious that is, and how fragile, and how easy it is to crush a person."
"I think all actors get very nervous when it comes down to auditions and callbacks," agreed Chip Chuipka, a theatre actor for close to 20 years who has been acting in television and movies for the past half dozen, "and, as a result, they're not really there, inside their hearts and their heads. They're trying to put up a brave front, to appear calm, or try to show their work."
Unless you plan on casting your film entirely with friends and family (a not unheard of practice in the indie world, although it does limit your options drastically), you are going to have to audition actors. Now, you could get 50 people in a room and let them emote amongst themselves until there is only one standing, but that would not guarantee that you would get the best actors for the parts. Following a few simple ideas will aid the process immeasurably.
If you are organizing your own casting session, start by posting
appropriate notices (including name of the production, date(s) of the
auditions, a contact name and phone number) in places you expect will be seen
by a lot of actors. If you are in a film school, the theatre department might
be a good place to start. Film collectives are often open to allowing the
distribution of this kind of information, as are actors collectives and
unions (assuming you can afford to use union actors). A small advertisement in an entertainment weekly can generate a lot of interest for a
small cost.
Give yourself a couple of weeks to collect names before holding the first auditions. When talking to the actors, choose a mutually acceptable time for the audition within the period you have set for the auditions. In this conversation, you should also let the actor know what you expect from him or her (for instance, if you want them to prepare their own material for the audition). As a general rule, it's a really bad idea to simply announce auditions and let people come when they want to; they'll all come at lunch time and be backed up for several hours.
Ouch.
Auditions should be held in a large enough space to give actors room in which to move around. In addition, a second room should be booked in which actors can wait before being called. For their convenience (not to mention yours), a bathroom should be easily available as well. Water should be available to clear parched throats. Each actor should sign in as they arrive, giving their name, scheduled audition time and (if you're auditioning more than one role) the part for which they are auditioning. It is also usual for directors to ask that the actors bring a headshot and resume of their work.
In addition to the director, there should be at least two other people in attendance to help keep the audition running smoothly. The director should have an assistant to get people from the waiting room as their time comes up and run any errands which may crop up. As well, there should be a reader, whose sole purpose is to play all the parts in scenes which the actors are expected to perform. Ideally, the reader should also be an actor who can deliver a consistent performance so that you are not distracted from the performance of the actor you are actually auditioning.
A different route to take is to hire a casting agency to do the preliminary work in finding actors. Casting agents do not "represent" actors in the same sense their own agents do -- by trying to convince a director that they are the best person for a part. Casting agents (aka: casting directors) search through the number of possible actors for a part and bring it down to a manageable number, which the director and/producer then auditions in order to find the person just right for each part. Casting agents are not paid on commission; they are employees of a production who get paid whether or not their search for an actor results in a casting decision.
How many actors are we talking, here? According to Mike Bucci,
Montreal's Elite Casting deals with about 25 actors' agents, who each
represent anywhere from 20 to 150 clients. "You're talking easily between two
and three thousand actors," Bucci, who does booking and camerawork and
occasional casting at Elite, states. "And that's a very conservative
estimate." Andrea Kenyon, who runs Andrea Kenyon and Associates Casting, claims to
have thousands of actors on file.
If you use a casting agency, you need to give it enough time to
prepare a list of appropriate actors for the auditions. Says Kenyon:
"Oftentimes we're told that within a couple of days they need the best
choices. Oftentimes, that is possible, but, in all honesty, our work is done
in the preparation, in reaching the final point where we do make those
suggestions. It's not in the actual audition process. The auditions are the
carrying out of our decision and our choices. To come up with the choices --
that's where the preparation comes in. We have to read the script. We have to
do a detailed character description so that we know what we're looking
for....sometimes the most obvious are overlooked until the last minute: 'Oh,
yeah, they've gotta drive!' or, "Oh, yeah, he's gotta battle this person, so
he better be big enough...'" The proper amount of time varies depending upon how many roles are to be cast, and how difficult it will be to find people to fill the role, but ideally two to four days should be scheduled for a single major part.
To help this process, Kenyon suggests that directors give the casting
agents as much information as possible. "The clearer the picture is, the
easier it is for me to zoom in on who I think is super for the role." However,
Kenyon cautions that this should go beyond simple physical descriptions:
"...personality, character traits are easier [to work with]. I mean...if you
want blond hair, people can always make their hair blond. If you want blue
eyes, they can always use contact lenses... [I]f a director or producer has a
very, very, very precise visual, they [could be] looking for a person who may
or may not exist." Casting directors should be given the script and the director's conception of each character to be cast. In addition, directors might want to give the casting director a ballpark figure of how much they can afford to pay each actor so that they don't waste their time seeing people they don't have enough money to hire.
Casting agents can be hired to find a single part or a small number of parts within a short period of time, or they can be hired to cast all the speaking parts for an entire film. (Some, but not all, casting agents also cast extras.) According to Kenyon, a good but not top flight casting director will charge $400 to $500 a day for a short term contract. In the United States, a low end weekly rate would be around $2,000 American. The amount of time devoted to this search is usually negotiated between the producer and the casting agent. (All amounts quoted in this article are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)
The Montreal Association for Casting Directors has set the standard
rate to cast an entire film with fewer than 20 speaking parts at $5,500. "You
would think," Kenyon comments, "'$5,500, well, if your rate is $500 a day,
that means you're giving me that many days.' Well, no. It's all weird -- it
never works out properly. I've put in months of work that I've been paid less
than $5,000 for." Although ideally a film should be completely cast before the
start of principle photography, this rarely happens, so Kenyon often finds
herself casting parts well into a production. The money is usually paid in
four installments: upon signing the agreement, on the first day of principle
photography, on the casting of the last principle role (sometimes, the last
actor) and some time in the middle or at the end of shooting. Payment
schedules are negotiable and vary between agencies.
In addition to their work on features, casting agents are increasingly
becoming involved in casting films when they are in development. "There are a
lot of times when the producers are putting together a project and they don't
know that it's a go but they need talent attached," Kenyon explains. "Or they
need to make a presentation. Or they want to impress somebody that's coming in
that might be either a distributor or a producer. Or they wanna show the
director who they're bringing, perhaps from out of town, who they have to work
with." Her company is still working out a payment schedule for development
casting, but she says that $500 to $2,000 would be reasonable depending upon
how many parts she would be required to cast.
These figures are not carved in stone, though. Kenyon advises filmmakers, especially first-timers, to try to negotiate a better price. "If they think they
can't afford me," she said "I'd rather they come up to me first and tell me
what's going on and what they've got to offer. Then we can decide together."
Kenyon tells the story of a first-time director who thought her services would cost $500. She gave him a more realistic estimate of between $2,000 and $6,500. "I later found out that he didn't come to me at because he thought I was gonna be too expensive," Kenyon relates. And it's frustrating, because it was like, 'Well, why didn't you ask?'"
Some casting agents will stick to their rates, but it never hurts to ask...
If you do go through a casting agent, be aware that they have their own take on actors which may not agree with yours. "You can always have these casting agents giving preconceived notions about you to the director," actor Lenny Parker, who has had roles in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, the TV movie Million Dollar Babies and the upcoming series Emily of New Moon, cautions. "Then, you're only gonna be seen for certain roles."
The director should take some time to get to know the casting agent in order to make sure that they can work together and that they have a similar vision of the project. If you want to see a specific actor, be sure to tell the casting agent at the beginning of his or her search. Then, try to balance what you've seen of the actors in the audition with what you've been told beforehand by the casting agent. The balance can often be difficult: you shouldn't agree to hire one unless you are sure he or she is the best person for the part. On the other hand, the casting agent is supposed to show you the best people available, so it may be difficult (not to mention more expensive) to find better actors than the ones who the casting agent chooses for the audition. Ultimately, as the director you have to work with the actor, so you shouldn't be afraid to keep looking if nobody at a session is exactly what you want.
Whether you go through a casting agent or do it yourself, you should keep certain aspects of auditioning in mind. Any actor will tell you, for instance, to give him or her as much time as possible to prepare. "You're going to do the best audition if you have a week beforehand to prepare," Parker advises. "Even longer -- the longest time possible to prepare. Sometimes we do get scripts and we can't get off book -- you know, we get the
script the night before. And you do have a life...you're not concentrating on those few lines or those few pages. So, you can prepare as much as you can, and you try to, but definitely the longer time you have, the stronger the audition's going to be."
Adams believes that getting material 24 hours in advance, which is routine in the film world, doesn't give a working actor enough time to prepare. "Take, for example, this weekend: I have a script to learn for Monday night where I'm doing a corporate video-type film for the government in Ottawa. I have 30 pages to learn by heart, and I have a script I just got in from Toronto where I'm auditioning for the lead role. I have to call the
director tomorrow night to discuss it with him, put something on video Monday or Tuesday to send it to him to audition. Now, that's a bit of pressure, because you have a life. In my case, I have three kids, so it's sort of hard to work that way."
If possible, actors prefer to work from the entire script, rather than sides (a small number of pages taken from the script, sometimes from the middle of a scene), even though getting sides is the standard practice. "You should know the story, the whole story, so that you can figure out what your function is in telling the story," Chuipka explains. "Do you provide a foil for the lead character? Or, are you plot machinery? Then, once you have that information, you know where to begin creating in terms of building a character." Adams agrees: "Very often you go to an audition and you'll only get a couple of pages to build a character on, and, you know, that's not really enough." If the director does not want to give out the whole screenplay (if, for instance, it isn't finished), he or she should supply the actors with as detailed a synopsis as possible, as well as detailed character notes which include a description of their role within the story.
In addition to asking them to work from the script, some directors will ask the actors to prepare a short monologue or other performance piece. This gives the actor an opportunity to choose something with which he or she is comfortable. However, this may not give the director a clear idea of how well the actor can work with the script, or how adaptable the actor can be.
Once the parameters of the audition have been set with the actor, it's not a good idea to stray too far from them. To illustrate this, Chuipka tells the story of his early days in film acting, when he was invariably cast in violent or mentally deranged parts, such as drug addicts or wife beaters. He was really excited the first time he got a script with a role with more substance, so he took two and a half days to prepare the three big scenes he had been given and confidently went off to the audition.
"The director said, 'Okay, just sit in the chair, put your head back and pretend you're coming out of a bathtub full of water. And say, "Oh, wow."' This caught me by surprise. I held up the pages and said, 'Aren't we going to be using these at all?' And the guy said, 'Oh, no, no we won't be using those.' So, that was two and a half days of hard work that was going to be thrown out."
Chuipka threw his pages on the floor and half-heartedly did as the director asked. The director suggested he could do better, at which point he started to walk out of the room. "And as I got to the door," Chuipka relates, "he said, 'Wait a minute. You could...you could play Frank.' And I said, 'Oh. Who's Frank?' And he said, 'Frank is this guy who beats people up and hurts them. He's a drug dealer who goes around with this other guy, and they're really nasty.'"
Casting sessions chronically run late; it's important to be realistic about how many people you can see in a given casting session. "The director will say, 'Okay, I wanna see 30 people for this role,' or, 'I have five roles and I wanna see five people per role," Kenyon says. "It becomes a little bit of a mathematical equation, because you can only see so many people in a day. If the text is quite extensive, then I like to budget 15 minutes with each person, 15 to 20 minutes. If it's small to reasonable, then I can budget 10 minutes per person." Adams suggests that you should allow at least 20 minutes for auditions for leads which require two or three scenes: "That will give the actor the time to sort of 'thaw...' That will give you time to see, a little bit, how they work. It will give you time to answer questions, and to ask questions." If you don't allow enough time, she suggests, you will not do the actors justice, which may lead to not getting the best person for the role. First-time directors should allow more time (a full 20 minutes per actor no matter how big the role) to make sure they do the actors justice; as a director gains experience at auditioning, he or she will develop a more firm idea of what he or she wants, and will be able to see if an actor has it or not more quickly.
Audition sessions can last as long as the director requires; six to eight hours a day is not unusual. When planning an audition, you should build in time for certain activities which you know will have to occur: getting and having coffee or meals, going to the bathroom, making notes or talking with other people at the audition about what you have just seen. This may seem obvious, but the obvious is usually the first thing overlooked. "I've had instances where they're running late," Adams claims, "and they see me, and they go out for lunch. They say, "Oh, excuse us, we're just going out for lunch. We haven't eaten yet,' and make me wait another 45 minutes. Stuff like that is inexcusable."
It can also be expensive. According to Claire Martell, Steward of the Montreal Branch of ACTRA, if you keep a [union] actor at an audition for more than an hour, you must pay him or her $29.50 for every extra hour or part of an hour. Fifty-nine minutes -- free. Sixty-one minutes, $29.50. When they first arrive for auditions, you must have actors sign in, taking their names, the time of their arrival and the time of their actual audition. A copy of this sheet must then be forwarded to the union, which ensures that the rule is enforced.
There are simple ways of keeping to a schedule. If you build a 10 to 20 minute break per hour for personal time into your schedule, you can use it towards the end of the day to see actors if you find you are behind. Adams suggests that the cameraperson (or the director's assistant) clear his or her throat or otherwise get the director's attention towards the end of the allotted time for each actor if it looks like the audition will go over.
To keep the auditions going smoothly, it helps for a director to know what he or she wants, and to be able to communicate it to the actors. "Don't tell actors, 'Oh, make it bigger [or] make it smaller. You know, more loud,'" Adams recommends. "No. Be really specific. Like: 'I want you to be loud like you've been standing in the supermarket for 20 minutes while the cashier is trying to figure out her cash and this big, fat woman with her three kids comes in front of you and steps on your big toe and takes your place in line.
That kind of loud.' A very clear image."
"Some of the best auditions I've ever had were with these two directors who basically didn't have their script..." Adams continues. "But they had a clear idea of what kind of character they wanted. So, the audition was very unorthodox. They had people come in and wing it, do stuff that was totally off the wall: do impersonations of Greta Garbo in a 1930s movie and then pretend to be a fascist Fuhrer. It was just all over the place, and you went, 'What was that?' Some women were really upset at that because there was no structure at all, but I really liked it because it was immediate, it was
real and they were very clear with what they wanted..."
If more than one decision-maker is going to be in the room, it's
important for them to figure out what they want between them beforehand.
Parker's strategy for dealing with them when they give her conflicting
guidelines for what they want is "to concentrate on giving the producer a
little tiny bit of what they want and really try to work with the director
who, ultimately, you will be there working with. Those are the people who have
the most contact with the actors, or they should, so I'm gonna put my faith in
a director before I'm gonna put my faith in a producer." Still, it's a
difficult position in which to put an actor, and is easily avoided.
Disagreements between producer and director should be avoided because they can undermine the actor's faith in the director's control of the production. The director should, from the moment the actor walks into the audition room, be in control of the situation; he or she should direct it just as he or she would direct a scene.
Although they like to audition for directors who can communicate a clear idea of what they want, actors also appreciate it if the director is flexible enough to accept their input. "What happens a lot," Adams states, "especially if you've written the script yourself, is that you have a way of seeing things, a way of hearing the dialogue...and actors start coming in and giving you totally different takes on it, which can be a very scary thing for [a director]. All of a sudden, [you find] there's all these other ways of doing it [and have to ask yourself], 'Which is the right one?' [or] 'What do I really want?' But it's a gift, because that's what an actor does, they bring it that one level higher by investing it with life... You can't be married to that thing you've always been hearing in your head because if something presents itself in front of you that's 10 times better," you've got to be able to recognize it. In fact, Adams suggests, you can get a lot of ideas from actors at auditions because they are approaching the material with a fresh outlook.
To do so, however, you must work with actors at the audition. At its
most basic level, it simply means paying attention to what the actor is doing. "If you [the director] went in to present your reel to somebody," Adams comments, "and they were reading a newspaper [or] stuffing their face with donuts, how would you feel? If they weren't looking at the reel and going, 'Yeah, yeah, right, Miss Smith can you please bring in...?' or 'Have you seen the stock market today?' while your reel is going and you're standing there, sweating in your booties -- how would you feel?"
Actors would also appreciate a little feedback. "There should be more
communication in the room so I don't waste my time," Parker states. After an
actor has done his or her piece, Chuipka recommends that, "whether it's been
magnificent or horrendous...suggest an alternate approach to it. Nothing
really difficult -- no bad theatre school games like, 'Pretend your character
is a piece of bacon' or something like that. Just place it in a different
location, place it in a church where you can't speak out loud, so you have to
speak quietly. Or, place it in a different situation. Then, it takes on a new
resonance for them. And watch them. See if they make any new discoveries, or
if they're just squeezing what they did before into a new bag." This will give
the director an idea of how well the actors take direction.
Positive feedback should be used sparingly. When he was holding auditions for theatre, Chuipka would "sit the actor down and talk to them and make some sort of positive remark about something they were wearing or their appearance in some way" in order to put actors at their ease before the audition started. On the other hand, there
was the director who applauded after every audition until somebody took her aside and said, "You know, everybody is leaving here thinking they got the part." Be open to discussions with actors and be positive about the audition process, by all means, but be careful not to leave the wrong impression.
More and more, auditions are being videotaped. "Sometimes a lot of people involved in the final decisions are not here," Bucci points out. In some cases, a tape of the audition is sent to a producer or director, who will indicate which actors he or she wants to see in person. In others, a director who is at the auditions in person will tape them for a producer who is not (or vice versa). Sometimes, directors will want to look over a tape just to confirm their first impressions.
Everybody has their reasons.
Adams believes that auditions done solely on video, which she estimates happens eight out of 10 times in the first round, are "horrid for the actor" The script may not be clear, or may lend itself to different interpretations, but there is no way to ask questions or get feedback if a creative person (producer or director) is not present at the audition. Adams explains: "When you put something on tape, you have to make a choice, and then you go in and you present that choice. If it's totally out of the field of what the director sees, then you're out of the running, which is really a drag," because the actor could have given a different interpretation if he or she had some input.
If you are planning to videotape an audition, you are restricted when it comes to asking for nudity. (Ah, you knew we would have to get to that eventually.) "No photos, filming, taping or preservation of the Audition by any means whatsoever will be permitted without the prior written consent of the Performer which written consent must be provided on a form approved by the Guild," the ACTRA general agreement states.
Nudity at auditions is strictly regulated. To start, actors must be told if nudity, love scenes or simulated sexual acts are required of the script before they audition. You must audition them as performers first; if you require nudity at an audition, you must call them back a second time, and then only to see their body; you cannot ask them to perform nude (although some directors do). The actor must be notified in advance if nudity is required at an audition, as must the union. Actors can only be seen nude or semi-nude once. Finally, such auditions must be closed, with no more than five people in attendance who, according to union rules, "it must be demonstrated, have a direct professional or artistic relationship to the Production and the particular Audition." So, "You can't get the guy sweeping the floor outside to come in," Martell warns. The union may also send a representative to an audition involving nudity.
(Agreements with actors' unions varies from country to country, so if you're going the union route, you should contact the nearest branch to your production to get an explanation of the rules. You will probably find things you hadn't even thought of: for instance, ACTRA requires transportation or an escort to the nearest public transit when an audition is held between 10pm and 6am, as sometimes happens when casting has to be scheduled around principle photography. If you do not comply with the union, it has a number of ways it can respond, from issuing a warning, levying a financial penalty or, as
Martell puts it, "we can halt a production.")
In any case, there are arguments for why nudity can sometimes be necessary at auditions. "Sometimes," Adams claims, "like on Un Zoo la Nuit, you had to do nudity at the audition because he [director Jean Claude Lauzon] wanted to make sure that the actors wouldn't freeze on set, because very often that happens. Young girls come in and say, 'Oh, yeah, I can do it,' then you put them on set with 40 technicians and all this stuff running around...and suddenly they can't do it." However, Adams goes on to say that nudity at auditions is rarely worth the trouble: "I've been a reader for scenes like that and it doesn't work. An audition is such a stressful situation that you don't need that added thing. I've never seen a good performance" at an audition involving nudity.
At this point, auditioning probably sounds like a lot of hard work. It is. However, it is a vitally important part of the pre-production process. Unless you're doing a stop animation film whose main characters are desk lamps, you're going to have to work with actors. Choosing them is not a decision directors or producers can afford to take lightly.
"Casting a movie...is the most important thing after writing," Adams claims. "It's what's going to end up onscreen. You can do a shot and light it superbly, but if the performance stinks, no one's going to remember the lovely shadows, they're going to go, 'Wow, that just really didn't do it.' But if the performance was really good, people are going to go, 'Wow, that was so good!' and they won't notice that there was a boom shadow or this or that or the other thing."
