Casting is one of the best and worst part about making a film or project. It is both very fun and very stressful as well.
Bringing in all sorts of new talent and some familiar faces can be great to see, especially when people seem to generally have a fair amount of interest in the project, and that’s the fun part. Seeing everyone want to be apart of your project. When they come in with monologues that they have prepared acting them out flawlessly and then being handed a cold read of your script to act out, and then see them doing it well is amazing.
It’s even good to see actors push themselves to try and be someone that they know that they aren’t. I’m one of those people who when I audition people I’ll call you out for something you put on your audition card, if it says you can do an accent. I might want to hear your monologue in that accent. On the same note if it’s something weird or out of the ordinary I’m definitely going to want to see that too. Like there was one time where a girl said she could recite pie to the 87th digit and so I called her out on it. I don’t know if she did it well or not or if at a certain point she just started to make up numbers, but dang did she do it with confidence, and I was impressed.
To be honest auditioning for me is less about the words you say, but your body language, your confidence, how you interact with people. Could you act like the person I’m trying to cast or are there people who I think you could act well as. That’s what I look for
So, the not so fun part is when you have people come out who either don’t have what you are looking for or are just genuinely bad. It can be one of the worst parts about film, because in your mind you know that you aren’t going to cast them and they probably know that they aren’t going to get cast maybe ever, but you still want to be nice to them to an extent so you let them go through their thing and you give your shpeel knowing they will never see the light of your set. Now the real issue is that if you get to many of the bad actors in your auditioning you just feel down. Even the good actors seem worse than they are and especially the medium grade actors.
And you don’t even want to be there at all.
That’s why I believe you should always record your auditions. So you can look back on them and see what actually happened. See who the good actors were and who the bad actors really were. It helps confirm both and that you just didn’t make a terrible decision.