Auditioning Ghosts

How do you audition for ghosts (aka people who don’t turn up)?

Thursday, 21 February 2019

After the location reccies last Thursday, we also had auditions planned later in the afternoon. From 14:00 to 15:30, three actors were to appear and deliver their lines and I was set to record the auditions in my role as a cinematographer on this project. However, this was again one of those audition days for student films in which no candidate would turn up.

During the course of the day, two of the three actors cancelled/rescheduled for personal reasons, while the third still remained booked in for us. Since the studio was booked out that day and only the Student Union Office available for it, our crew took out the equipment and we brought everything down to this office.

As soon as we arrived there, I set up the tripod and the Ursa Mini Pro camera, put on a variable lens, framed the shot, and checked the settings (2k in 16:9 with a shutter speed of 1/50, f4.0, grid and phantom power to the microphone activated). After that, I set both the tension for the tilt and pan on the tripod itself to a workable setting, as they were tightened up so much that one could not move them smoothly, even when fully unlocked.

Once I got the tension on both axes right and was able to move the tripod head smoothly, I reframed the image to a more intriguing one and then, I was ready to go and waiting for our candidate to turn up.

Except she didn’t.

Without any notification, our last (and now only) candidate for that day had dropped out. Frustrating. This was by no means the first time this happened and it was again one of those moments in which you simply don’t know why. Has it been due to some neglect on our part? Or is this just business as usual?

Prior to this day, I sat down and reread my own blog entry on auditions I researched last term, revisiting some of the sources to remind myself of key elements. And I remember one of my sources on auditions telling me that they had an average no-show rate of nearly 15%. With us, and within this academic year only, it has been 100% on at least two occasions now.

But any way I looked at it, I could not detect any issue on our part. From casting call, to giving notifications and information, to inviting people over, I could not detect any reason why we’ve had such an extreme dropout rate.

Maybe it’s because student films are not that attractive for actors in general.

Friday, 22 February 2019

On last Friday then, we moved out again to hold audition both in the morning and in the afternoon. For the morning, we had two actors scheduled, for the afternoon we had between 3 and 7 actors from the acting course coming over. We moved again into the Student Union Office that we had booked out, got the equipment up and running to the same settings as the day before. And then we waited again for the first applicant to turn up.

Gladly, during the morning session, all scheduled applicants appeared. The applicant for the shape-shifter arrived on time and delivered his lines. Sadly, despite been having sent the script, he wasn’t prepared and needed to read from the script. However, when he was asked to deliver a palette of negative emotions, especially anger, he smashed it on the recording, being very intimidating and almost even intrusive.

With the second applicant, we were on the edge of our seats. From the images she sent prior to the audition, she seemed to be the perfect fit both in style and in charisma. However, sadly, when she turned up today, she was so nervous that nothing of that charisma translated onto the screen and I kept having issues following her and keeping her in focus during her action.

After these two auditions, we packed everything together again and returned to our desks to prepare some work in the interim. In the afternoon then, we set out again, this time to the studio and set everything up.

Around 15.30, our three applicants for the day arrived, were being handed the script and each presented their interpretations of the role. Since our lecturer asked to sit in, we were furthermore able to glean from his experience, since he also asked them to perform the roles in different accents, which really loosened then up. Whilst their performances prior to that were good, it was only then that their real potential came through and became visible on film.

After that audition, we packed up, left the studio and returned the equipment before transferring the footage onto the TechDem 4 folder on our Editshare system for further reference. I’ve furthermore deliberately set the camera up against the green screen to get some practice footage for editing, as I might require this practice in the further course of this module with our Teacher Central Project.

Today, Wednesday, 27 February 2019

Today then, we once again set out to hold and record auditions to keep the ball rolling and fill the rest of the remaining roles for Poppie’s Café for Monsters. Today however, turned out to only fulfil half of the intended goals as the equipment was on strike.

How can our rather passive equipment be on strike, you say?

Well, the kit we’ve taken out roughly 45min before the audition turned out to be in parts incomplete and in parts faulty. While the camera and especially the sound equipment were completely alright, the tripod came apart completely once it was taken out its bag.

From what it seems, all the screws on the entire tripod were completely unscrewed and all the latches opened fully. This made not only for the head to come off, but also for the legs to open fully and the spread in between to come off. It took me near enough 20min to put the entire tripod back together. At this point, we still had about 20min to fully set up ourselves, which would have been plenty of time…

If it wasn’t for the applicants who came early. Since we were not yet fully set up, I offered them to go and grab a coffee in the cafeteria and come back more relaxed in 20min. As one of them seemed especially nervous, I thought that this situation was actually a godsend to him.

After they left for a coffee, I then focussed my attention to the Mini Ursa Pro and its setup. So far, all went good. Apart from when it came to the attachment of the V-Lock. For it was missing and not packed into the kit. ’No problem,’ I thought: ‘I’ll just go next door and grab one from the stores; it’s supposed to be manned at this time and day anyways. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Except I wasn’t.

Both technicians – who would normally man the stores – had happened to be called away in the short amount of time since we had taken out the equipment. One was actually called off-site, and the other seemed to be called in either a meeting or an applicant interview. Either way, there was no one in the stores to help us out and the door was locked.

I then asked Katie to see whether she could hunt down the technician who was still in the building, while I stayed behind with the equipment, filling in both the director and the producer on the situation as they arrived.

Time flew, and even after waiting for another 20 minutes, no one with a key to the stores could be found. At this point, it was 11.00 sharp and the actors were still waiting. In order to not let them wait unnecessarily, we then decided that we would proceed with the auditions even without recording them due to lack of functional equipment. Chloe asked whether we would be able to record the auditions with our smart phones and while this was a good idea to start with, my phone did not have enough storage space, with only a capacity of 20sec of footage left.

Which was a shame, regarding the fact that all three of them gave outstanding performances, allowing us to fill both main roles for the production. However, all three of them attended the audition marvellously. We packed up 45min later and returned the equipment to the – then manned – stores.

So What Did I Learn From This?

In regard to the auditions themselves, I did not really learn anything new compared to my experiences last term and the research I conducted back then (to be read in my blog entry Of Casting Calls and Auditions: How to Hold an Audition). However, I was astonished at the – again – high dropout rates. It really seems that student productions are much more prone to that than professional productions, where an actually paying job could stand at the end of the process.

And to return to the introductory question of how to audition for ghosts, the usual recommendation is to keep these people of the books and lists and don’t consider them for further projects and/or applications. Unless it turns out that there had been a valid reason not to turn up and/or cancel last minute (say, they had a car accident on their way to the audition and were rendered unconscious), their non-appearance and their lack of manners indicate an irresponsible character that you don’t want to rely on the day of principal photography.

It might be a bit extreme of a measure, but it let me to create my own personal blacklist of actors, who won’t be considered by me for future projects, unless they’ve proven to me in the meantime that they’ve grown in that aspect. Organising a production is a difficult endeavour as it is, with all the various factors counting in. There’s no need to add another millstone around my neck.

However, in regard to my level of preparedness, I realised that there was still room for improvement. Whilst my previous experiences of setting up for auditions were smooth, today demonstrated that this could very well go the other way. Thus I learned to:

Check my equipment down to the tiniest screws, bolts and notches when taking it out. This might not help avoid liability cases later on in my career when taking out equipment with equipment stores and signing receipt of fully functional items, it also helps avoid delays and reschedules on bigger productions, saving a lot of budget (and my job in the camera department, I might add).

However, I am happy to report that we have a full cast now (if no one decides to drop out, that is)! Hooray! On to the next step! Which will be: Taking care of child actors!

Wait, what?

References:

Hartle, S. (2018) Of Casting Calls and Auditions: How to Hold an Audition. 7 November 2018. Svea Hartle. SveaExMachina’s Blog [online] https://sveahartle.wixsite.com/sveaexmachina/single-post/2018/11/07/Of-Casting-Calls-and-Auditions-How-to-Hold-an-Audition [Accessed on 27 February 2019] RocketJump Film School (2015) How to Hold an Audition [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoCjSF-QBU&index=149&list=WL&t=0s [Accessed on 27 February 2019]