Audition: AM/PM, Ross Lacy

This week is/has been insane. Business has picked up at my part-time job, so I've booked more hours the last two weeks than I ever had in any other two week period. I got called in for an audition at Ross Lacy casting. It was an AM/PM store spot. These stores are convenience store/gas stations. Out here their gas is called ARCO, but it's a division of BP. The call time was 4:30pm, but I had lessons scheduled for 5:30pm in Northridge. Basically, there was no way I would've made it from LaBrea and 3rd to Northridge in under 45 minutes. So, I got there at 3:30pm with hopes of getting in ASAP.

In Atlanta, there are only a few commercial casting directors, and a few jobs now and then. The CD's tend to have a small office somewhere that they use for the auditions. Out here, some CD's don't use their office at all for casting. There are these large "casting facilities" that consist of a wide open central room with a bunch of numbered doors around the perimeter that open into smaller rooms. Usually at the entrance or on a wall somewhere, there's a huge dry erase board with numbers and their corresponding projects. It's almost like a public storage place for auditions. Basically, I enter to a sea of commercial humanity - everything from babies to older guys dressed like truckers/farmers. I find the board, see that AM/PM is #3, and head for that corner of the room to sign in. The CD for this spot was simultaneously holding auditions for two other spots. He had three rooms going all at once. Luckily, I was able to get in by 4pm, and was on my way 5 minutes later.

The rest of my week is slammed with lessons and rehearsals for class. Class has been going well. I feel like I'm learning to ride a bike. Sometimes, it works and I roll for a while. Other times, I'm wobbly. It's difficult to find that mix of letting go and trying to control too much.

Shoot: The Dinner

I was on the set at 11am today. The crew seemed to be organized and efficient. After a quick round of cold make-up, we rehearsed the scene a little and then shot it. In the scene, I play a business man interviewing an older gentleman about a position for which he has "too much experience". Basically, I sense the guy thinks he's going to come in and take over (i.e. be my boss). Yeah, that's not going to happen. They were only working on 2 angles (his and mine), so there wasn't a lot of set up time required. We knocked it out fairly quickly and then I did a little ADR for a voiceover at the end of the movie...an answering machine message telling the guy we decided to go a different direction. It was a good day. I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Reader

Today, while working in one of the casting offices where I help out from time to time, I got the chance to be a reader for a casting session. The reader "reads" (obviously) the other character(s) in the scene with the character for which the actor is auditioning. I was completely cold on the material, having not even had a chance to read the script, but I took a few minutes to read through the three sets of sides and felt ok. My primary focus was just to deliver the proper lines with good pacing (it's comedy). As an actor and decent cold-reader anyway, I figured I would be giving the actors more than they get in some sessions anyway. After the first person, the CD commented on my good read. That was cool. The session covered three characters and took about three hours. We saw probably 20 actors or so, and I think maybe 4 got or will get a callback. It's such an amazing learning experience to be in those sessions, and it was a blast to be able to read with all of them.

Shoot: VGA

Call time was bright and early this morning 8am. I arrived at the Jim Henson Studios right on time. The lot is small but very cool and intimate. It's a mixture of English village style architecture and more modern facilities. There are a couple of small office buildings and one sound stage centered around a cobblestone courtyard. Of course, Kermit presides over the front gate and sticks out from one of the more modern looking buildings. They call the sound stage, The Chaplin Stage, after the man who built the original studio there, Charlie Chaplin. There was an old makeup chair in our makeup room that was said to be the very one used by Mr. Chaplin himself. Very cool.

We met the director, Kirk, who did a couple of the Muppet TV movies. He was laid back and conversational with a good sense of humor, which always makes things easier. There were three of us live actors in the scene and four puppeteers who worked the CG characters. Coincidentally, one of the other actors on the job was the first referee on Extreme Dodgeball. Small world. The two CG characters were from the world of videogames, and a very unlikely pair they were. In the boardroom setup, the three live actors were meeting with the two CG guys. Their images were laid into the dv directly, so they were being controlled real-time by the four puppeteers. I didn't get to see the puppet master suite, but from what I understand, two puppeteers ran the face/head and voice of their respective characters and the other two puppeteers maneuvered the arms and body. I only got to talk with the voice guys and they were both very experienced and very funny. We could only see the CG between takes when we watched the monitor, but we could hear their voices. Of course, the time between takes was some of the funniest, and most off-color, stuff.

During the actual scene, we were given marks on the wall to serve as sightlines for where the CG characters should be. It was interesting playing to space, but I honestly didn't think much about it after the first few moments. The director encouraged us to improvise some throughout the scene which led to some great moments. I got a lot of the physical bits, fetching beer for the squirrel, etc. In the end of the scene, one of my cohorts and I get beaten senseless under the table by one of the videogame characters. So, one of the final things we did was each of us getting about 2 minutes of improvised audio that they might use for the beating. That was fun. Crying, whining, screaming, laughing, pleading, hallucinating...reminds me of a really messed up relationship now that I think about it. I had a blast with that too. Made me want to get on that voiceover demo I've been thinking about forever.

I didn't have to sign confidentiality papers, but I'm hesitant to get too detailed about the project since it's just now making the rounds. Everyone on the set was very nice and professional. That kind of environment usually leads to the best work from everyone. After a fun 12-hour day, I retreated through the rain back home, where I now intend to sleep soundly. I love this stuff.

Booked: VGA / Rehearsal: The Dinner

Today, I had a rehearsal for the student film I'm doing called "The Dinner". There was a two-hour block of time set aside for this, and the scene is only a couple of pages long. I figured we'd be able to knock it out fairly quickly and we did. It's going to be a fun little part. I play a young exec who tells an older gentleman that he's overqualified for a job opening. In life, it's a terrible situation. In the scene, it's ok because the older guy is kind of arrogant.

As soon as I left, I got the call that I had booked the job from yesterday's audition. Sweet! I finally get to make some money for my agency, even if it's not that much, and a nice little piece of change for me too. The shoot is Monday.

Audition: VGA; Headquarters Casting

My friend Natasha works as an assistant in this casting office, and she pitched me to the CD for a project their office was working on. So, I got an appointment. It's kind of an industrial-type gig, and I wasn't sure what the coverage was agency-wise. I decided to just go, put my agent info down and call KSA afterwards to alert them to it and to see if they even wanted to cover me on it if anything happened. The audition was fun. I kind of guessed I was a little old for the role I was initially reading for and I was asked to read one of the other roles in the room. I got some laughs, which has always been a good sign for me in an audition of this sort.

I did call my agents when I was done, because I felt pretty confident about getting a callback. They had to search a little to find the info, but then called me back to say they'd take care of it if anything came up.