It’s been a week since I’ve blogged, but I thought I’d do a little series on things I have learned over the past week. The biggest lessons were probably from last Thursday; Chapter 1: The Agency Audition, What I Learned and What to Avoid.
- Don’t put all your faith in Google Maps. I’ve already discussed my love/hate relationship with Siri, but it turns out Google Maps doesn’t like me much either. Or I’m incompetent (which I very well could be.) On Wednesday night, I received an Actors Access notification that a Franchised LA agency was opening up a branch in Atlanta and holding auditions for Union and Non-Union actors on Thursday. So I thought, “Why not?” and decided I’d go the next day. When I Googled directions the night before, I learned it was only a 6 minute drive from my house! (Hooray! Opportunity and Convenience all at once?? I’ll take a slice of that pie, please!) Nope. It turns out it was a 40 minute drive. Alas.
We can’t all have magical maps.
- Don’t make assumptions on timing. Ever. Yes, the next day when the time came to drive to the auditions, as I was preparing to leave, I googled the directions again. Indeed, it was a good 40 minute drive, without traffic. The auditions were said to be scheduled from 10am to 5pm, and I planned on leaving the house at 2pm, to arrive at 2:06, so that even if there was a line, I should still make it in, right? Wrong.
In addition to being about an hour drive away once traffic was figured in, I arrived to the audition at 3:00pm, smiling and headshot/resume in hand, and began writing my name on the sign-in. The nice woman at the desk explained to me what was going on. This was actually the third day of auditions (even though the AA release came out last night), and earlier this morning all of the people that didn’t show up yesterday came at 10am, in addition to many others), and they all signed up for time slots. The list I was signing was for all of the people that didn’t get time slots, and I could either sign up and wait for the next 3 hours (because the Agent was leaving at 6) without any certainty that I would be seen, or I could just leave my headshot and resume in the high stack of other people that had decided on the second option.
- Patience IS a virtue. I took the road less traveled by and chose the first option. To pass the time, I got in the car, drove to a nearby Walmart, and bought a book—The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. (How original, I know!) I drove back to the audition studio and sat and read for the remaining 2.5 hours. While sitting there, I watched many people come in. Many were those that had signed up for an appointment earlier in the day and were coming back for their allotted time. Others where those that, like me, had missed the memo. Most just decided to leave their resume. Two other women (the last two new people to sign up, arriving at around 4:30pm), decided they might as well wait.
The clock struck 5:00pm, and the auditions were still running well behind schedule, the final scheduled appointment finally finished at 5:30pm. The three of us waiting in the front room talked anxiously—the list of people before us was long, and we had no idea how many people were in the other back waiting room. But we waited and talked with each other, as well as with the woman at the front desk.
- Kindness is ALSO a virtue, and so is the ability to laugh. There were a couple individuals that were also waiting for spots that I have not mentioned yet. One had been waiting for longer than I had, and another had left and come back but was further up the list. Neither spoke to anyone else in the room the entire time, and both had this epic tension they carried. Every 5 minutes, they would almost alternately walk back up to the woman at the front desk, demanding to see the list and see how many people were left in front of them. To which the woman could really give no answer—she did not know who had come back after signing up, or who chose not to. Every now and then, I’d hear a huff from them, and though the woman at the front desk remained composed, it was obvious she was stressed.
The two other waiting women and I began to join in a conversation with her, talking about acting classes that she had taken at this same studio, laughing about Atlanta-traffic and how low our odds were of getting in, and in the process we also learned that she was fresh to her job. She’d just started a couple of weeks ago working at the studio that this agency was not even really affiliated with, and she was supposed to get off work at 5:00pm. The agent couldn’t stay any longer than she stayed here, and earlier she had mentioned she would be leaving by 6:00pm.
The minutes ticked by. Names were called, people that had not chosen to show were ticked off, and the list-of-unknown-length continued to be yet. The two im-patients got in, and the second who had brought her own sides (about 5 times as long as the ones we were provided) was therefore taking a lot of time. The clock was at 5:59pm, and the three of us had yet to be called, and we continued to laugh at ourselves—that’s what we get for showing up, 3 hours early but also 4 hours late!
The man calling the names came back into the room at 6:02 as if to call more names, but he was actually asking the location of the men’s room. He went in and came back out while we continued to wait. He walked up to the front desk and asked the woman working there how long she was staying until.
“Hmm,” she said, glancing briefly at the three of using, and then smiled saying, “6:30?” And my name was the next one called.
I also had no idea what I was doing. Fake it till you make it, Ariel.
- How (probably not) to audition. Agency auditions? Definitely something I have never done before. And considering I had about 20 hours advanced notice, I was not really sure what to prepare. A series of somewhat awkward events happened in my 2-3 minute audition.
- First, I didn’t know where the audition room was, as I had spent the whole three hours sitting in the front lobby. When my name was called, the man that called it mysteriously disappeared while I was digging through the pile of headshots to find my manila folder with all the audition materials I prepared. I wandered down the hallway right past the glass door through which the man and the agent were seen sitting at an audition table. I did a double take and peeked inside, asking “Is this the right room?” They nodded. Because…duh. Of course it was.
- Second, I awkwardly tried to remove my safety-clipped together pile of things. I brought two resumes (one theatrical, one film) with a headshot stapled to each, and paper clipped to each headshot was a brief 3×5 introductory cover letter, and then on top of all this was a DVD of my film reel. Everyone else that day, I noticed, had just brought the head shot and resume.
- Now, that is not to say “Do not bring all of these things!” Because who knows? Maybe they will be helpful. The Agent said she didn’t have her DVD player with her now, but she would probably watch it once home (who knows if she did.), BUT I would try to avoid the awkward fumbled handover of all the materials that I did I as I was removing them from the manila envelope (which she ended up giving back to me.)
- It was just awkward. And definitely did not boost any kind of fake confidence level I was trying to pull off.
- Third, Well. This part isn’t that awkward–I just had no idea what to expect. So HERE YOU GO, THIS IS WHAT TO EXPECT (if you are auditioning for this particular agent from this particular agency, etc. etc. It’s probably different anywhere, of course.)
- She asked if I was a member of the Union?: No.
- She asked how long I’d been pursuing this profession: Well, I just graduated with a B.A. in Theatre from Wake Forest University and came back to Atlanta about three weeks ago but so far I’ve auditioned at three theatres in the South and have been cast in a number of short films, but really I’ve been doing this since seventh grade, so anywhere from 3 weeks to 10 years depending on your definition of “pursuing?”*
- *I’m sure she was very impressed by my extremely long and quickly spoken run-on sentence. **
- **She probably wasn’t.***
- ***But she smiled, and I really appreciate that. She did seem like a very nice person.
3. Have you ever been professional represented? No. So you’ve gotten all this from self submission? Yes.
4.. She asked her reader (The person that reads the other side) to give me a side, which he handed to me. She asked me to skim it and then to read it aloud whenever I was ready. The pressure. Was. On
- Fourth, Cold reads? Never done them (really) ever in my life. The side I was given was a page long. Something from the TV show “Beauty and the Beast” on ABC (?) which I’ve never read before. I sped-read it and did my best to figure out this character. She was talking to some police officer, she was trying to learn information, she started to give her real name, but she then gave a fake name. She doesn’t trust him. He’s flirting with her. She asks him a question. He avoids the answer. She decides to get him alone. She wants to know about “the shootings.”*
i. Makes perfect sense, right? (AHA. No.
ii. But I went for it.
iii. I wasn’t really sure where to look. It’s kind of like the classic theatre phrase for actors on stage, “I don’t know what to do with my hands.” Only I guess on screen its, “I don’t know what to do with my eyes.” In retrospect, I kind of wish I’d just asked, but I didn’t want to seem that green.
iv. I ended up just looking at the reader, who was sitting. Which threw of the reality of the scene (and my posture) a little. I tried look at the page as little as possible, and I tried to appear as confident as the character did.
v. And then that was it. The agent said thank you, and that if we were to be signed we’d be hearing in 4 to 6 weeks. I think she apologized that it had to be so short, because I remember profusely throwing out thanks as I was leaving the room “oh it’snoproblem, I’mjustsogladiwasabletobeseen. Ididn’tthinkiwould. But thankyousomuchforstaying!” It was, again, very impressive, I’m sure.*
- *I read somewhere that you should try to avoid seeming desperate. It’s funny, because even though I really wasn’t, I probably came off that way
And that was that, I walked back into the lobby, said goodbye to the woman at the front desk and the two waiting women, who I was sure (thanks to their kindness) would now be seen, and got into my car, still a bundle of jitters. I drove an hour home, pretty sure that I wouldn’t be hearing anything, but glad that I learned some things. I make a note to myself pretty quickly, “Take a class on auditioning for film and on cold readings.” And that is exactly what I intend to do.
We'll Take the Lot! 