Why Auditions are the “Bottleneck” of the Film Industry
The Casting Session (Audition) can be an intimidating experience for both actors and directors alike because it’s the place where “both sides of the table” have only a few minutes to make bold creative choices. Choices that could affect ALL of our careers!
For actors it takes a lot of guts to walk into a small, windowless room and have 10 minutes to “show their stuff” in front of complete strangers. But it’s just as tough for Directors as well! How can we correctly decide, in less than 10 minutes, who is right for a particular role?
Once you start casting you realize that a big part of the success (or failure) of your film rests on the final decision of which actor is chosen for a specific character in your story.
For directors, not only is it extremely difficult to quickly judge what personal qualities and professional skills an actor must have to be right for a role but to make this process even more challenging, the final decision to cast an actor is almost never left up to you alone.
Producers, network/studio executives, casting directors and even the dentist bankrolling your indie film all want a say on who is right for a particular role.
During your initial producer concept meetings, you may have all agreed on the specific type and look of a character, but when an actor enters the room and gives you an authentic and moving performance that deviates from your original concept, that’s when the casting “bottleneck” could begin.
Casting Actors Based on Subconscious Emotional Perceptions
A good audition means we believe the actor as the character. But what does the word “believe” actually mean? After an audition the director might choose one actor for a role but the Producer will pick someone else. Or vice versa. So who is right? Well, from each of their perspectives they both are!
In an audition, everyone looks for different traits or qualities in an actor based on their own professional experience, creative tastes and personal emotional triggers! Some of these triggers are conscious and some are unconscious because choosing actors (like any other creative choice) is an emotional and subjective response.
As I discussed earlier, our physiological needs tend to influence our perceptions of others and the way we make sense of the world around us has a direct influence on how we perceive and interact with others.
This means other people’s reactions matter greatly to us and these reactions have a huge influence on how we act towards others. So if you are in a casting session, part of your decision on who you like for a role will be partially based on your subconscious personal and emotional perceptions.
Top 3 Qualities Directors Look for in Casting
During the casting process, directors look for a variety of character traits and qualities in every actor but the most important qualities you look for are acting ability, physical characteristics and chemistry between other actors.
Because there is never enough time to work with actors in a casting session, along with the added pressure of producers and others also making casting decisions, here are the top 3 qualities you should concentrate on when casting actors:
1) Do they look the part?
Many actors could be cast in a role just by entering the room! He (or she) doesn’t have to say anything – they just LOOK like the character, they ARE the character, when they come in!
“Looking the part” is a big plus for short films or TV series when you don’t have a lot of time to build secondary characters, so if an actor really looks like the character you had envisioned, that is a good first step in making them believable to your audience.
But be careful! Having an actor who looks like the character is only part of the casting process. Finding out if they can “act believably” is the bigger, and more important part – and you find that out next.
2) Can they take direction?
Experienced actors will make a choice when they enter the casting room. They will have decided on who their character is (based on the written scene and the character description) and then give us their interpretation. But many times this is not the exactly the characterization we had in mind, so what you do now is give the actor some “direction” by asking for an adjustment.
An adjustment is when you have the actor play the same scene again, but this time you give them a different objective for the second take. This adjustment gives the director a good idea if the actor can take direction AND if they have range. (You really want to find these out before you are on set!)
Changing the actor’s scene objective means giving them a new “goal or want” for the scene, then have the actor play that objective. If you need to do another take, you can either have the actor up the stakes of that objective (go from “demand” to “threaten”) or give them a totally new objective change.
3) Do they have performance range?
This is basically saying “Can they act?” and you usually discover this after you give the actor a good scene objective adjustment. Did the actor play the objective change believably? Were they believable in a tense, dramatic scene? Were they believable in a fast-paced comedy? Do they understand the subtext of the scene? Where they “in the moment” during the scene?
Copyright (c) 2020 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved
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