Filmmaking How To: Auditioning Actors

One of the most difficult tasks in filmmaking is finding the correct actor or actress to play the various roles in your film. A lot of confusion occurs because of the general misunderstandings of what an actor's job is and what is expected of them. And, because most filmmaker's don't have an acting background, it only serves to make the task of casting more difficult. Often times and, especially with smaller or independent filmmakers, the talent they are auditioning are amateur level players that don't have a firm grasp of the job requirements either.

The Trouble With Auditions

The trouble lies in knowing what to look for when you are auditioning your talent. Most people will initially tend to set their priorities in the wrong order as they set out to cast their film and rarely do I see a solid rationale for the casting decisions that get made on the smaller independent films. Part of the dilemma lies in the tastes of the people doing the casting. As most producers and directors seem to have an unwavering notion of what is or is not a good performance, a lot of purely taste based decisions get made with only the loosest grasp of what acting for the screen really entails.

I will endeavor here to give you a solid premise from which to cast your talent. Firstly, and I think most importantly, you need to determine what type of audition you will be conducting. Generally speaking you can either:

• Do a cold read.
• Do a prepared reading.

The Cold Read

The cold read is where the talent comes in and doesn't know the material in advance. As they arrive for the audition, they are given "sides" (usually a small scene from the film) and a few minutes to go over the material. From there, the actor or actress has to quickly familiarize themselves with the material and make some quick choices about how to approach the scene. 

This is the exact OPPOSITE of the kind of work you want your actors doing.

You will not gain any useful insight into their capabilities as an actor based solely on what sort of snap judgements they can make under an arbitrary time pressure. The best you can possibly hope to gleen from this practice is if the actor or actress in question has spent significant time perfecting the very specialized  skill of cold reading. This is a wholly unreliable method of determing how well talent can interpret and perform the material you give them, neverminding the major shortfall of seeing firsthand what kind of work ethic they are in possession of. I find that most producers and directors will gain far more mileage out of that latter criteria than they will ever see from some subjective ranking of a cold read.

Prepared Reading

Obviously, I am much more of a fan of the prepared reading. My reasons are many, but first and foremost, you will know almost immediately the nature of the work ethic of the talent as soon as they walk in the room. The idea behind the prepared reading is that the talent is given the sides two or three days before the audition. The expectation is that the actor will fully memorize and make choices regarding the material they've received.

The reason this is a far better guage of an actor's potential is that it requires of them the same skills they will need to bring to the actual shoot itself. If an actor or actress shows up unprepared (they haven't memorized the material or they haven't prepared several different emotional choices) you will know immediately that they don't understand what is expected of them. 

By The Numbers

Here's a loose statistical example:

• 80% of SAG actors earn less than $10,000 per year.
• Of the top 20%, only 5% make more than $100,000 per year.
• Of those, the top 2% make more than the rest combined.

If you watch your casting numbers during an audition, I will almost guarantee of the people that show up that:

• 80% of the actors will not have memorized the material fully, or prepared in any meaningful sense.
• Of the top 20%, only 5% will have done sufficient work to really understand and interpret the material.
• Of those, only the top 2% will really transform and elevate the material AND look right for the part.

I hope you can see that the benefits of a prepared reading are numerable. You can save an incredible amount of time filtering the chaff just by whether or not they've bothered to memorize, which obviously frees you up to focus more on the actors and actresses that at least have a rudimentary grasp of the job. The likelihood of the prepared actor being discernably better at the subjective interpretation of the material tends to go up a great deal as well. And this is not even mentioning that you will gain a keen insight into how important they might view your project in the first place. Or, to put it more simply, if they can't bother to prepare for the audition, how do you really think they'll be on set?

How To Approach Auditions

The best practice is to run the ad or casting notice and then take a bit of time and look through the photos that you receive. I can tell you that the resume on the back is about a reliable an indicator of ability as a used car dealer's "word", which is to say, nearly worthless. So, this makes it more fun anyway, you get to sit there and play "hot or not" with the pictures and pull the one's that grab your attention. Be prepared though, there is a strong tendency for actors (it's especially bad with actresses) to really "doll up" their photos. The idea here is to pull WAY more than you think you'll need and definitely pull photos on the edge of what you might think is the right look.

Next up, send them the sides and tell them explicity that it is a prepared reading and that they are expected to memorize and prepare the material to the best of their ability. On the casting day, you can either be kinda mean and bounce the ones that haven't memorized the material straight up or be a little nicer and let them read through anyway. The ones that have prepared, ask them to make changes, give notes or ask them to play from a different perspective and see how well they adapt and deal with the change. If they lock in straight away, then you'll be on to something.

After that, go over the ones that were most adaptive and narrow them further by looks and your own subjective criteria. If you're really stuck, call the top 5 to 10 back in for another round with different material. This is a nice step for indies as well, because it will really weed out the people that aren't willing to go the extra mile for your production. 

Give Back Too

A super nice thing to do for the top 10 to 15 actors is to let them know that they were in the top 10 to 15. They never get any feedback and it's a constant battle against self doubt and wondering, so give em' a break, they're following their dreams too.

Hope this helps and good luck on your shoot!

-Danny