Category: Broken Continent (Page 1 of 2)

This 20-part series, written by Team J’s Bjorn Munson, covers the lessons learned during the casting of The Broken Continent web series pilot in 2012. You can find the full Table of Contents in Part 1.

This series is meant to help other independent filmmakers, primarily those who are casting a large ensemble (10+ speaking parts, multiple background actors, etc.). Individual articles may be useful to production companies looking to cast other work such as commercials. There are also a number of articles specifically for actors on how to better submit for auditions, do the auditions, and deal with the statistically inevitable rejections.

The lessons learned have been applied to Team J’s Stonehenge Casting service, an online tool for producers to find actors and actors to find work.

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Making the Final Casting Decisions

Now comes the moment of truth.

By the way, “final casting decisions” may be a misnomer. As you’ll see in Part 17, your first choice may suddenly be unavailable, which leads to your second choice.

But this is still decision time. You can do it. And by ‘you,’ I mean the same creative team who was behind the callback decisions.

As before, the director or showrunner should get the deciding vote. However, the decision may not be obvious. The director may appreciate some perspective from the rest of the creative team.

Before meeting, all of you should try narrowing actors down with these questions:

Who’s the top choice for each role?
Yeah, this is the question some of you have been wanting to put off for the longest time — especially if the the casting director has given you a lot of choices.

What does ‘top choice’ mean? Ask yourself who’s going to be best at that particular role.

Remember any role has some essential attributes an actor needs to sell. That’s what you were testing in your auditions. Among all the contenders, you had the “green, yellow, and red” candidates, but like as not, there were one of two “green” candidates that you and your creative partners raved about. [1]

Sometimes you’re aided by the fact that one actor was good in Role A, but great in Role B, and you can’t see anyone else in Role B.

This realization is critical to building your cast — and one of the reasons you often don’t get the cast you were expecting, yet all your hard work results in a strong cast at the end of the process.

If you’re truly stuck on two different actors for one role, it’s probably because you found both actors were very strong at selling those essential attributes. [2] Now’s the time to step back and consider not just that character’s essential attributes, but how they relate and must relate to other characters. Understanding those key relationships and how the two actors sell that relationship can be crucial, which also leads to:

Will the top choices work with each other?
Don’t ignore this question! This is more than chemistry, though that’s a big part of “working with each other.” One of the biggest issues I find consistently arise in indie film productions and smaller theater productions is uneven casting. By this, I mean that it’s clear some actors are more experienced than others — or their acting styles are remarkably different and aren’t meshing.

A veteran actor can be generous and give younger actors a great deal to work with in a scene, but that sometimes depends on the temperament of the actor and skills of the director.

Who are the next choices?
You won’t want to do this and it hopefully won’t be important, but it’s all part of risk planning.  You want to think about other actors now versus when you suddenly need a replacement for your lead.

The reasons for this are multi-fold. Not only may your preferred actor be unavailable when you first contact them, they also may suddenly need to bow out because of an emergency.

Will those choices work with one another?
Don’t worry about figuring out every iteration of who will work with whom. There’s no reason to go through a neverending thought experiment on this. However, if you have a key relationship, especially between leads, it’s worth while to spend a moment considering if the new match will be uneven in any way (for the same reasons mentioned above).

Is everyone happy, or at least comfortable, with these choices?
If you’ve gone through all questions above diligently, this particular question should be answered. Nevertheless, it’s good to ask yourselves this question at the end. Nagging doubts and tingling spider senses should be voiced and addressed (though perhaps not always resolvable in that same meeting). Does one of your creative team really feel you need to call in more actors for one role? Do you all agree that you have the strongest cast you can have? [3]

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can move on to who will be contacting actors and what information to be conveyed, but that’s the focus of the next article.

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FOOTNOTE # 1: If you recall in part 11 about running the auditions themselves, I recommend always taking a minute after each audition to discuss the actor who just left the room. This is because, yes, you can remember the actor’s audition and, yes, you can review the tape — but you absolutely remember if you raved about a particular actor to your creative comrades. This happened for various actors for all of us while casting The Broken Continent. Enthusiasm counts.

FOOTNOTE # 2: It’s not uncommon for an actor to discover something about the character that you –even as the writer/director– may not have realized that still rings true to what you intended. You may find that actors sell a character’s essential attributes in much the same way OR you may find two actors find two ways to play a character that are different, but you find equally compelling. So long as the chosen actor’s approach meshes with the other actors and their approach, that’s fine.

FOOTNOTE # 3: Every project has a different timeline, so answering the question of if you have the strongest cast you can have is constrained by how soon you need to move into production. There have been many projects where I would have loved to have audition or outright cast certain actors and the schedules didn’t work out. You need to be prepared for that unhappy possibility.

This 20-part series, written by Team J’s Bjorn Munson, covers the lessons learned during the casting of The Broken Continent web series pilot in 2012. You can find the full Table of Contents in Part 1.

This series is meant to help other independent filmmakers, primarily those who are casting a large ensemble (10+ speaking parts, multiple background actors, etc.). Individual articles may be useful to production companies looking to cast other work such as commercials. There are also a number of articles specifically for actors on how to better submit for auditions, do the auditions, and deal with the statistically inevitable rejections.

The lessons learned have been applied to Team J’s Stonehenge Casting service, an online tool for producers to find actors and actors to find work.

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Don’t Mind Me – Casting Background Performers

Just as with the fight auditions, not every project –even an indie feature or web series– is going to have background performers (aka “Extras”)[1].  The good news is that most of what you’ve read so far about getting the casting notice out and processing the submissions holds true for casting background performers.

Good background performers know how to re-create their actions precisely, take after take, as well as take direction just like the speaking roles you’re casting. This is not to say that you shouldn’t pack an audience scene with friends and family. Indie projects by their nature have a small budget and may need bodies for crowd scenes. Just remember that you do get what you pay for and the allure of “working on a film” can make the bodies of those friends and family restless as you press on into hour four of the shoot.

Here are some things to consider when casting background performers.

Consider always having some background performers
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but background performers are a great way to expand the cinematic world you’re creating. Just as I always advocate having a variety of ages, body types, and so on in the cast (like you have in the real world), the real world is full of people in the background. [2]

Even when the world you’re portraying is far from real, you often want people in the background. For The Broken Continent, we had committed to some form of “epic” fantasy. Having a couple people with swords on camera wouldn’t do. Wherever it made sense, we wanted to have additional soldiers, advisers, or denizens in the background to fully realize the world.

Even in an indie project set in modern times, you may have characters in offices and stores or walking in hallways or sidewalks. Unless it’s apocalyptic setting, there might always be one or two people in the background (and even in apocalyptic settings, c’mon: zombies!). [3]

Getting the word out for background performers
The method for getting the word out for background performers is essentially the same as for your regular cast. In fact, you might find some potential background performers among the actors submitting for regular roles (more on that below). So when you’re crafting your casting notice for background performers, try and find a way to make them want to come and stand around for hours at a time. Ask yourself these questions:

• Can you describe the background role as exciting? (“We need background performers to portray a crack SWAT team.”)
• Can you describe the scene where the background activity is exciting? (“We need 20+ background performers to be mystified, befuddled, and ultimately entertained by a street performance by our two female leads.”)
• Can you evoke memorable, archetypal crowd scenes from other movies?  (“Be part of the frightened masses fleeing mutant snakehead fish as they emerge from the Potomac River!”) [4]

You will not have an enticing hook for every project and every type of background performer. In some cases, you might honestly just want to make sure this office or that street corner isn’t completely deserted. But you don’t lead with that. Remember, in part 4 of the Casting Notes series, we talked a lot about crafting your casting notice with a mind to woo the performer. Don’t stop wooing when it comes to seeking out background performers.

Create a separate casting notice for background performers
Now, using Stonehenge, I would both create a different casting notice for background performers and make sure to note whether or not the performers had checked the box on the site that they were open for background work.[5] To explain that reasoning, I should explain what we did for The Broken Continent.

For that series, we created one omnibus casting notice. At the bottom, after the 20-some roles, there were clearly plenty of opportunities for background performers listed.

Then, during the auditions, we checked in with people at the end of the audition to see if they would be at all interested in background work. Our director, Francis, cheerfully noted that we were asking this of everyone (which was true) and we would perfectly understand an answer of “Hell, no!” (which was also true). This question was asked with what I thought was about as light a touch as could be done. And we did have a good reason to ask people whom we were calling in for principle roles. As we explained, we fully hoped the pilot would lead to a regular web series — and so it would be wonderful to cast someone as one of the king’s advisers in the pilot who then could be revealed to be a key supporting role in a later episode as if we had planned it all along.

Many of the people we wound up casting were excellent actors, and we had every intention of doing exactly what we said because we knew they had the acting chops to rise to the challenge. That Woman of the Wood you saw in the opening? She could strategize with one of the leads at the eve of a later battle. That courtier looming behind King Eadwyn? He was in league with the scheming Barda to consolidate power. Even some of the refugees were capable of popping up in later episode to add to the epic story. The background actors were a combination of people whom auditioned for us along with some people who we did not initially call in, but had indicated they were up for background work.

Nevertheless, in retrospect, there were a few instances that, despite Francis’ light touch, the actor was surprised and probably a bit uncomfortable at the question. For that reason, in the future, I would do the separate casting notice as mentioned above — and also check the Stonehenge tool to see who was up for background work. However, I would make sure that the check-in staff informed all the actors that their Stonehenge profile was up-to-date in terms of their availability and interest in background work (“Make sure it’s not checked if you don’t want it and make sure it is checked if you do.”)

Consider budgeting for background performers
One thing I would not change with what we did with the Broken Continent was to pay all the actors, including the background performers.

Time and again, I hear from fellow filmmakers who’ve had no end of trouble getting even 10 people to come out and be background for free. That’s because the mystique of filmmaking quickly loses its allure to many a newcomer when they realize just how much hurry-up-and-wait is involved. [6] Background actors hurry up and wait even more than most.

Consider that you could ask for 4 hours’ time for a background performer, pay them $40 and they’d be making well above current minimum wage. [7]

For the Broken Continent, we didn’t pay that much, but we did follow state and federal minimum wage laws — and we paid overtime if actors were hurrying up and waiting for more than 8 hours (like you’re supposed to). We did this, in part, because we knew we needed to make costumes for these actors and, in part, because we knew our shoot days could be long and would be somewhat remote. We wanted the actors to commit to being there.

Now many filmmakers reading this might be running numbers in their head. They might reasonably calculate how they could add 10-20 extras at that $10-per-hour rate and quickly add $400 to $800 of cost. If you wanted a modest throng of people over a couple days, you’d quickly add thousands of dollars to your budget.

It’s fine if background performers are where you want to cut costs. Just don’t pretend that “being in a film” is that big a motivator, especially because you’re asking someone to hang out and not do much of anything — and often they need to be near set and quite quiet. For isolated needs, where you need people for less than a four-hour chunk –and ideally a less-than-one-hour chunk– many family and friends can probably be relied on again and again. If some of your friends are actors or creatives –and the background performers have something moderately interesting to do– you’ve just given creative people an opportunity to play. You can safely bet on an extra hour or so. But if you really want people to commit to being background not simply state that they “should be available,” money should be one of your tactics.

Remember, you’re spending the money on background performers to add production value. Not every shot is a crane shot or needs a Steadicam. Not every set or costume needs to pop. But sometimes, having one of those elements is that special ingredient you want to spice up a shot. Feel free to cut those ingredients from the budget if you don’t need that spice, but plan on adding that to the budget if not having the background performers will visibly lessen the production value or take an audience away from what they expect.[8]

Storyboard the shots with background in mind
Do you need to do this step before casting? Not absolutely. But you do want to do it before the day you’re shooting with background performers. Otherwise, you run the risk of looking at your set, looking at your limited amount of extras, and realizing things won’t look good.

Storyboarding with a realistic notion of the final number of background performers you’ll have therefore becomes critical to ensuring that you’re maximizing your production value — and also not looking too cheap in key shots. In general, you want enough extras so that they can fill out the edges of the frame indicating further people off camera. Sometimes they’re integral to establish motion and activity of a location by cutting in front of the camera or passing in back of the main action. You can do a lot with just a few background actors and careful framing.

I counsel many indie filmmakers to take a look at television shows, especially those from more modestly budgeted days of yore. Nowadays, TV shows may have show-stopping cinematic setpieces with a lot of background performers (though some of them might be CGI). Modern TV directors also know that they can get away with more cinematic compositions because of both expectation and the rise of huge home theater screens. But older TV shows wanted to give the impression of bustling Western towns, hospitals, space stations, and police precincts without having anything close to a blockbuster budget or epic-sized audience expectations. The camera framing and number of background performers in these shows reflect those constraints. [9]

Regardless of how average or ambitious your shot list may be, you want to take the time to know how you’ll use background actors to your best advantage. Depending on what location you wind up with and the number of extras you get, you may need to adjust your framing.

Have at least one crew member manage the background performers
This may come as an absolute shock to some industry folks, but not every production has a Second Assistant Director, let alone a Second Second Assistant Director or Third Assistant Director. Heck, many an indie production I’ve been on hasn’t had any assistant director. That’s okay. [10] However your crew is organized, make sure someone on the crew is responsible for (and knows beforehand they’re responsible for) checking in and checking out the background performers including all their paperwork especially their release.

Ideally, you not only have a crew member to do the organizing and get the all-important release, but all the crew who might interact with them, from the production assistants to craft services, can be pleasant, but firm as necessary. Remember, for many background performers on an indie production, this is their first exposure to a film set. You need everyone who interacts with background actors know they need to helps them remember such boring but vital things like:

• Where to stand and not stand
• Who to talk to and who is going to be busy [11]
• What activities are fine for hanging out and waiting… and waiting  (book-reading yes, beat-boxing no).
• Who will bring them to set and what to do at the end of the day

In other words: don’t assume your background performers know “the rules.” On an indie set, “the rules” may vary (and that’s okay). But even if everyone on your set knows what “the rules” are for this set and can communicate those rules to extras in a firm, but friendly manner, having a point-of-contact that the background performers report to is a good idea.

In Conclusion
Whether you’re paying background performers to populate your web series world or you’re trying to get people to volunteer their time for short, student film, you want it to be easy for potential extras to say, “Yes!”

Figure out ways to woo your background performers from the casting notice, onward. Knowing that the extras will be doing something interesting or dressing up in costume can often entice people to spend some time hurrying up and waiting.

If you determine that you really need background performers in certain shots to sell the story, consider paying people as one of your tactics to make them commit.

Know what your “rules” will be on set, make sure the crew knows them, and make sure you have a designated point-of-contact for the background performers on set. [12]

Just as with your casting speaking roles, the effort you put in here will pay dividends. I have yet to have a standard guideline for how many people you should expect to reach out to in order to get a minimum number of background performers. Assuming you are paying less than SAG-AFTRA scale, you need to rely on the wooing indicated above and perhaps some novelty for the novice background performers involved — and it doesn’t hurt if you’re shooting in their backyard (proverbially if not literally). Searching by ZIP code isn’t a bad idea (and something you can do via Stonehenge). If you want 10 background actors on the shoot, reach out to 50… unless you can reach out to 100. I have yet to meet a director or D.P. who doesn’t find a use for the right background people (remember Footnote # 2).

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FOOTNOTE #1: Because people can take umbrage about anything and everything, it probably comes as no surprise that some actors object to the term “extras.” However, before you dismiss using the term “background performers,” as actors being overly sensitive, bear in mind you’re asking people to do, in some cases, precise repeatable actions take after take — that is, if you like your editor and continuity. Moreover, these actors are being asked to be this precise for the sake of being unobtrusive “moving scenery.” Just like we mention to actors: when you have a choice that won’t hurt you and might help you, choose to not hurt yourself. (At the same time, any background performer who freaks out or goes into a tirade upon being referred to as an ‘extra’ on set may need to consult a medical professional.)

FOOTNOTE #2: The needs of the story prevail. If you’re shooting a project like “The Wire” and your setting is the proverbial “mean streets,” it’s best that your extras don’t look like they’re about to go yachting. That’s not the problem I see. The problem I see time and again in indie projects is what I call “20-something White Guy Syndrome” where a film has characters and background that is very, very narrow and takes you out of any reality the film is trying to establish.

FOOTNOTE #3: Or mutants. Or Triffids. Or mutant Triffid zombies.

FOOTNOTE #4: Okay, that’s a bit of a dated reference for denizens of the DMV only. As it happens, someone made a snakehead horror film. I have no idea if they had a great pitch to entice people to be an extra in the film, but rest assured, if Team J ever does a creature feature, we absolutely will.

FOOTNOTE #5: I have seen other projects where they do the same thing on the paper form they have actors fill out upon checking into the audition. As has been alluded to elsewhere in this series, we don’t advocate doing on paper what can be done easier and more effectively online. Part of the Stonehenge profile actors fill out is whether they’re interested in background work. Yeah, you can have that checkbox on a whole bunch of paper forms, but this way, you can tally up the actors with a couple mouse clicks. (The results of actors suddenly deciding, no no, they meant “interested in background on the latest Hollywood-budgeted feature” are the same as the paper method, though.)

FOOTNOTE #6: One of my favorite stories to illustrate how quickly the cinematic glamour fades was when one roommate wanted to come out and be on set for the day during one of our shoots. I had no objection, but said he should bring his own car. He looked at me confused and more than a bit annoyed. What sense did that make? We were heading to the same place and it wasn’t like I was hauling a lot of gear. Moreover, this was going to be in the city and parking would be a pain. I insisted and he begrudgingly went along with it.

After about four hours of incremental camera set-ups in a less-than sweet-smelling alleyway, he pulled me aside and mentioned he’d be heading out and, hey, best of luck with the rest of the shoot.

FOOTNOTE #7: At least, the Federal minimum wage as of April 2015.

FOOTNOTE #8: The idea here is that viewers expect some shots to have “spice.” Offices and shops usually have other people in them. Streets have cars and pedestrians. We are used to seeing this in both film and TV. A great example of this was when I was working on a web series which had a series of episodes set at a gym. Part of the script called for a comic scene in a gym class. Even though he knew he could rely on some gym rats to be game to hang out and participate in some of the shots, the director enlisted the help of one of the staff to corral a group of gym goers and they were all paid $20 to participate in a brief scene and ensure the gym class was full. He was thrifty on budgeting the whole series, but this was where he knew for the sequence to work, it couldn’t take the viewer out of the location (or the joke) by having a sparsely attended gym class.

FOOTNOTE #9: I suggest this because many indie filmmakers have great ambitions for the look and feel of their films. I have no problems with this. Personally, I try and mix some Kurosawan elements into anything I shoot. However, we generally don’t have the budget for Rashomon, let alone Ran, so I find it’s good to eat a slice of cinematic humble pie and see what people with constrained budgets did. At the same time, I don’t advocate necessarily looking at indie films or web series. Why? Because network shows of yore, even though they had producers and network execs trying to figure out endless ways to do things on the cheap, they still didn’t want to look cheap compared to all the other shows on at the same hour. Trying to keep your show on the air for several seasons is more peer pressure than trying to get your low-budget movie into some sort of distribution.

FOOTNOTE #10: Assuming you can maintain high amounts of on-set safety and low amounts of sleep deprivation with the reduced crew. Small crews are fine, but remember: background performers, especially on an indie production, can be some of the most inexperienced people on set. Having someone make sure they’re safe and they’re not endangering the safety of others by galumphing into a power cable or messing with rigging is important.

FOOTNOTE #11: I know this varies on indie sets and the prohibition of extras talking to the lead actors or director may not be as strict. But  know what your version of “the rules” may be. For example, your director might be happy to talk to the extras and not be as distant. Just make sure when she needs to focus and huddle with her assistant director and cinematographer, she can.

FOOTNOTE #12: And don’t forget: if you’re shooting under a SAG-AFTRA agreement, there are certain rules you absolutely must follow in order to not violate the terms of your agreement. Luckily, this mainly means being detail-oriented and actually doing your paperwork… which is an unsexy behavior real filmmakers have accepted for some time.

This 20-part series, written by Team J’s Bjorn Munson, covers the lessons learned during the casting of The Broken Continent web series pilot in 2012. You can find the full Table of Contents in Part 1.

This series is meant to help other independent filmmakers, primarily those who are casting a large ensemble (10+ speaking parts, multiple background actors, etc.). Individual articles may be useful to production companies looking to cast other work such as commercials. There are also a number of articles specifically for actors on how to better submit for auditions, do the auditions, and deal with the statistically inevitable rejections.

The lessons learned have been applied to Team J’s Stonehenge Casting service, an online tool for producers to find actors and actors to find work.

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Organizing the Audition Space

Okay, so you’ve gone through the pain and suffering of finding an audition space that not only meets your logistical needs, but won’t break your budget.

Now that you’re probably at the stage where you’ve been figuring out who to call in, you need to make sure your audition space is ready. This isn’t rocket science, and many decisions may only be made the first day of auditions, but here are the things you should be doing prior to actors walking through the door:

1. Confirm your staff and staffing needs
2. Do a “Walk toward/walk around/walk through” of the audition space
3. Check the waiting area
4. Check the audition space proper
5. Decide on food for you and your staff

As you may realize, some of these considerations you were at least subconsciously assessing as you were trying to find the right audition space. Whether you did already or not, it’s time to tackle these issues now: a well-organized audition space is key in setting the right tone with actors. [1]

1. Confirm your staff and staffing needs

Understanding the case study we’re working under, that of an indie film or web series looking to cast many roles, the production team is likely wearing multiple hats already.

For the auditions, you need people to wear the hats of auditors, a videographer, and check-in staff.

Your auditors should at least include the director and the casting director. For the Broken Continent, all three of us producers were there because all three of us were invested in the creative direction of the series — and the casting decisions made here could potentially impact our team. You don’t want to have too many people in that room, but you do want the people whom the actors will report to. By having the three of us there, we covered the writer, director, and casting director hats — and on a wider level anyone who should be making hiring decisions for the project.

Having stated that you should look to limit how many people are in the audition room proper, you may want to consider having a separate videographer. The reason for this is they can just focus on the technical aspects of the audition: is the audio and video good? For the Broken Continent, one of Francis long-time collaborators and accomplished camera wranglers was happy to volunteer his time. It’s very possible for your given project, you might already have a crew member who is willing to do this task whether for the promise of free food or part of their overall fee. [2]

If you don’t have a separate videographer, you don’t need to fret: just have your steps down for starting and stopping the camera. Otherwise, the one audition you really wanted to review will be the one you forgot to record.

Check-in staff, on the other hand, are both critical and can’t really be the auditors (though I, as the casting director, would come out and get the next actor during Broken Continent auditions). I’m sure you’ve heard many a tale of good, bad, and ugly customer service. Now you’re providing a form of customer service with the check-in process. Don’t you want to make a good first impression? With that in mind, pick your check-in staff carefully. I’ve seen family and friends often employed in this capacity and that’s fine, just don’t discount their importance in setting the tone you want. Here’s some things your check-in staff should do.

• Be the calm in storm. This is Above All: even if they’re not the most chipper, extroverted soul, they should be friendly and exclude a “don’t panic” vibe
• Have answers to common questions like where the bathroom is as well as the basic stats of the project (who the production company is, who’s the director and writer, when you’re shooting, etc.)
• Feel comfortable saying “I don’t know, but I can check.”
• Be the voice on the other end of the phone. In other words, if you’ve provided a phone number for the auditions, they should have that phone [3]

Besides their invaluable role in being able to empathize with actors without authorizing things, they take care of whatever process you’ve created to check people in. Sometimes they’re taking the headshots and resumes to take to the auditors before the actor comes in. Sometimes, they’re simply making sure the actor has the requisite number of headshots and resumes to provide to the auditors.

Often, the check-in staff have actors fill out an additional information sheet. Given the electronic tools at our disposal these days, I would strongly encourage using a web form — even one developed in Google Drive or a similar resource. For Broken Continent, we used a modified version of the sorting spreadsheet described and shown in Part 7. It worked wonderfully, though in the future, I might see how much Stonehenge can do — at the very least I’ll have the check-in staff ask them if their availability is up-to-date in Stonehenge. We’ll talk more about what the check-in staff do in the next article.

2. Do a “Walk toward/walk around/walk through” of the audition space

Ideally, your hard work has resulted in a space that is accessible by Metro, has decent parking, or both.

Whatever the case, one or two of you should walk toward and then around the building where your audition is, thinking of where the actors may be coming from (e.g., if the Metro stop or bus stop is one block north on Elm Street, look at the approach from Elm Street). Place your signs at intervals where nervous actors can see the next signs — and make sure to draw the all-important arrows in the right direction or have enough signs with printed arrows going in both directions. Do this all the way into the building and to your waiting area. You might even want a bathroom direction sign, though your check-in stuff should be able to handle that. Remember, wherever the Metro or parking is, someone will come from the opposite direction for reasons you will never understand. That’s where you post “[Name] Auditions – Entrance on other side of building” or whatnot and make some stressed actor that much more relieved.

Did you catch that the signs should be printed, not just be some piece of copy paper with some message scrawled on by marker? As you probably guessed, we advocate spending that time, even if you find you need to use the aforementioned marker to get the arrow direction correct for a couple signs. We did this for Broken Continent and several actors were thankful for it. Even if it’s subconscious, you’re telling actors you are prepared and this project will have a level of attention to detail they’ve found sorely acting on other projects they’ve had the misfortune to work on.

You certainly can do this the walk-around as late as the first day of the auditions. After all, we recommend only posting the signs the day of and taking them down after the auditions that day. Especially if you haven’t cased the building first, print at least two more signs than you think you need — and make sure you have duct tape as well as masking tape (duct tape will be overkill and potentially obnoxious on glass doors, but will be very necessary on stone or masonry).

Incidentally, you may be concerned that all these signs might lead some curious passersby wandering into your audition check-in area, perhaps hoping it’s an open call they can audition for — or perhaps even worse, “they’ve always been interested in movies” or “have this great idea for a movie.” Well, that is a risk. Bear in mind, this recommendation is based on the Broken Continent case study. If you have a known audition location (e.g. you’re doing casting for a series over the course of a season or seasons and actors know or should learn where you are) OR if you have a very small group of people you’re seeing (possibly for a smaller project or for callbacks), then perhaps you have few if any signs. However, remember that the trade-off with fewer signs will be that your check-in staff will get more calls.[4]

 3. Check the Waiting Area 

This is more of a checklist. Before the day of the auditions –or at least on ‘the day of’ before the facilities manager disappears to deal with other matters– make sure you have these questions answered:

• How do you control the lights?
• Can you control the temperature? If so, how do you do it? (And if not, what if it’s too hot or cold?)
• Where are the outlets for your laptop or tablet or recharging your phone? [5]
• Speaking of the phone, do you have cell phone reception here?
• While it’s not expected, if there’s WiFi, how do you log onto that?
• Do you have a table/desk for check-in or do you need to bring one in? [6]
• Are there enough chairs?
• Bonus: Is there a place to get water? Either a water fountain or sink? [7]
• Bonus: How do you get to the bathroom from the waiting area? Do you need signs or is it simple?

As stated above, it isn’t rocket science, but it’s all good to know.

 4. Check the Audition Space proper 

This is markedly similar to number 3 above. Many of the questions are similar, but make sure to answer them too:

• How do you control the lights?
• Can you control the temperature? If so, how do you do it? (And if not, what if it’s too hot or cold?)
• Where are the outlets for your laptops/tablets and camera and lighting?
• Do you have enough outlets for your camera and lighting without tripping the circuit breaker?
• Do you have tables and desks for the auditors?
• How are you going to mark the floor so actors can hit their mark for the camera?

For The Broken Continent, our audition room was one of those classrooms that had two entrances and a partition — so we found we needed to explicitly mark the exit door lest nervous actors got confused at the end of their audition.

 5. Decide on food for you and your staff 

Even with the format of regular half-hour breaks, most likely you’ll find the day is packed, so you’ll want some snack food and drink on hand for all your staff.

Team J’s default is usually some variant of Cliff bars, fruit such as apples, bananas or grapes, and the wonderful combination of protein and sugar that is Peanut M&Ms. It’s easy to overdo it on the carbs though, so be mindful. We just go with water on the hydration side.

Also, in maximizing your audition time, you might not want to go out for lunch. That means you have to decide whether it’s best to figure out delivery or if one of the staff will go (the auditors probably can’t). One advantage of the classroom with the partition was we were able to have a meal on the other half of the classroom. Even if you can’t exit the venue, switching up the scenery from the audition room is surprisingly energizing (well, at least until the mid-afternoon slump).

So there you have it. Compared to the travails required to find an audition space, organizing the audition space itself is not earth-shattering. However, you’ll be glad you did — and it will leave you that more focused on our next topic: conducting the auditions themselves.

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FOOTNOTE #1: Yet again, I will happily point out that an audition is a job interview and a job interview works both ways. The actors you most want to woo will notice the effort you put into a well-organized audition.

FOOTNOTE #2: We have no problem with people being paid, though I understand if producers are being thrifty in this pre-production phase. Still, there’s a reason that them thar money stuff is commonly used in exchange for people’s time, so consider that when you’re considering your pre-production budget. And if audition staff are volunteering their time, do make sure their food and parking/travel expenses are met so all they’re donating is their time.

FOOTNOTE #3: Invariably, some actor is going to be late because of traffic, the hunt for a parking space, or some stranger circumstance. The phone number in this case is an escape valve and here your check-in staff serves their role as the empathetic “don’t panic” person admirably. It doesn’t disrupt the auditions you’re running, and they can update you during a break before the next audition.

FOOTNOTE #4: This is probably an opportune time to mention your check-in staff should be comfortable being friendly, but firm with any passersby. It’s a private event and it’s closed to “walk-ins.” That language alone usually shuts down discussion (needing a headshot and resume usually blunts things too). They may be disappointed, but I’ve never seen anyone become hostile — and if they seem to want to linger, the facilities manager –who’s probably on hand wherever your renting the space from– may also be useful as backup. By the way, if you are planning ahead, you can make the signs a bit more vague and let actors know exactly what the phrasing is. However, then you’ll still deal with that actor that didn’t pay close enough attention. And you can never eliminate the curious.

FOOTNOTE #5: And hey, an actor might have a laptop or need to recharge their phone. Think of good customer service, people!

FOOTNOTE #6: Team J invested in several roll-up camp tables that are roughly 3 foot square when unfolded. They travel easily and have proven to be invaluable investments for our auditions and for film shoots.

FOOTNOTE #7: As mentioned elsewhere, our audition space had a sink/kitchenette space within the waiting area which was really quite nice. As an added bonus to the actors, I made sure to provide little paper cups for water. I had the option of the more expensive Dixie cups or the cheaper, but just as good store brand. Plus, the store brand had dinosaurs on them. As a casting rule I just made up, you don’t want to hire any actor who doesn’t appreciate a dinosaur cup. We went with the dinosaurs (and received complements).

This 20-part series, written by Team J’s Bjorn Munson, covers the lessons learned during the casting of The Broken Continent web series pilot in 2012. You can find the full Table of Contents in Part 1.

This series is meant to help other independent filmmakers, primarily those who are casting a large ensemble (10+ speaking parts, multiple background actors, etc.). Individual articles may be useful to production companies looking to cast other work such as commercials. There are also a number of articles specifically for actors on how to better submit for auditions, do the auditions, and deal with the statistically inevitable rejections.

The lessons learned have been applied to Team J’s Stonehenge Casting service, an online tool for producers to find actors and actors to find work.

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Finding the Right Audition Space

Filmmakers should note that, while this is Part 9, it is by no means step 9 in your process. In fact, you should know where your audition venue is before you even write your casting notice; however, the next article on organizing the audition space naturally flows from this article.

Finding an audition space for the Broken Continent proved way harder than we expected. However, finding the right audition space is critical to one of the top two things to remember for casting: the right audition space sets the right tone with actors (and not coincidentally makes the audition process easier for you).

Finding the right audition space can be broken down into four general steps:

1. Estimating the audition time needed (allowing a ballpark budget)
2. Getting audition space options
3. Evaluating audition space criteria
4. Sealing the deal (and setting the budget)

 

1. Estimating the audition time needed (and getting a ballpark budget)

Before you book a space, you need to know how long you need it, right?

Before you even get to Part #8 and deciding who to call in, you should know how long you need the audition space. There’s an easy guideline to use. Going back to the example of 10 roles getting 10 initial submissions, you’ve  got at least 100 actors of whom you’re calling in no more than 50 of them (and might well call in less). Therefore, if you book a space to accommodate 50 audition slots, you’ll be fine.

If you estimate 4 actors per half hour as discussed in the last article, you need 6.25 hours. That easily means a day. For each day you hold the auditions, you should add a 1/2 hour for set-up and a 1/2 hour for take-down. Every full day should also include about an hour for lunch. Therefore, for the example above, you can rent a venue for a single 8-9 hour day and be confident you have the time you need for the first round of casting.

If you can’t find a space for the full day or if you have enough roles that you need to do the initial casting over a single day, be sure to budget the set-up and take-down times as well as meal times you need. [1]

Note that you can easily estimate your callback audition time at this point: You’ll be calling in 2-3 actors per role (and that’s a maximum: you might find the right person for a role in the initial round). [2] From the previous sample, that means you’ll be calling in no more than 30 people, which means budgeting another 3.75 hours, or about 5 hours with the aforementioned set-up/take-down time.

You also might want to calculate what additional audition time you need as we needed for fight auditons (See Part #nn on the details there). However, as we’ll discuss in that article, the requirements of the fight audition space may not match what you’re able to get for the regular auditions.

In both these cases, if you don’t have to book the audition spaces yet, you may not want to — though if you’re able to get them all at the same place, you might get some volume discount.

So having said all this, what’s a good ballpark budget? In 2012 dollars, we found that estimating $50/hour for the audition budget was a good ballpark guideline. As you’ll see in Step 2, audition venues will vary wildly in price. The $50/hour guideline comes from aiming for $35/hour for the venue itself with the other $15/hour meant to cover the additional expenses including, but not limited to :

• Parking fees
• Staff costs
• Snack costs
• Meal costs
• Signs and Supply costs

Remember, you don’t need to spend extravagantly on any of these additional items to make the auditions more comfortable for both yourself and for the actors auditioning. Of course, you’re probably still concerned with how thrifty you can be about your audition venue which leads us to…

2. Getting audition space options

Now that you have a budget estimate, it’s time to go and get sticker shock. Starting with some internet searching and following up with phone calls, you’re going to check and see what spaces meet your requirements.

For the DMV area, you have an invaluable resource in the DC Space Finder. This online, searchable database includes audition, rehearsal, and performance spaces around the area. You can search by several different criteria including price. We used it for The Broken Continent and I highly recommend it.

You’re also going to want to ask your peers: possibly both before you begin your research and during to expedite which places are worth site visits.

Bear in mind as you search that every production has different needs and there’s tradeoffs with every audition venue, but in general you’ll want to consider:

A. Location
B. The Audition Space itself
C. Availability
D. Price

A. Location
For the Broken Continent, we knew a downtown DC location would be ideal. We found a space near Mount Vernon Square and the new Washington Convention Center which therefore offered several options in terms of parking, bus routes, and Metro stops.

While you may not feel the need for quite so central a location, giving consideration to how people will get there is important, especially if, like the Broken Continent, you have many roles to fill and not top dollar to pay them. You’ll also want to consider a location that all of your team has no problem getting there early enough for set-up.

Bear in mind that you should have many options in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Public and commercial buildings are re-assuring to actors just as private residences and hotel rooms will send red flags. [3]

B. Space
Having held auditions in many a ramshackle production office before, I must say it was much nicer to hold the Broken Continent auditions in a church classroom. As one might expect, they keep their space clean.

Just like having access to mass transit is nice for the location, “clean” and “clean bathroom” is absolutely preferable for your audition space. The audition room itself doesn’t need to be large. A classroom or conference room will often do. You want space for you and your fellow auditors to be comfortable. You also want space and power for your camera and any computers you’re using. [4]

Don’t overlook the waiting area. A clean, well-lit waiting area with space for your check-in staff to set-up helps set a good tone for actors right from the beginning. We were lucky enough to have a sink in the area too, so we provided cups for water (even though we know most people carry water bottles with them these days). [5]

C. Availability
Good venues are in demand, so it is not uncommon for you to find the right space that has some limitations in terms of availability. The rental coordinators I talk to are generally quite up front about what times cost more than others — and know when their busy times are. They want your business, but they don’t want headaches.

Bear in mind, for most theaters and performance venues, their “bread-and-butter renters” are going to be companies that are renting for the run of a show, which often includes rehearsal time in the same or a related space. [6] That can often mean renting various spaces for eight weeks. For the Broken Continent and similar projects, you’re only looking for 2-5 days of rental. Savvy venue coordinators prefer longer rentals and take care of their regular customers. [7]

D. Price
One of the things you’ll find as you search online and call around is that many venues are theater spaces and many can easily climb upwards of $100/hour. Sure, there’s business space rental places, but they often don’t have a dedicated waiting space you want.

In our experience, rental coordinators were pretty up front about when their busy times were — and their peak times also can come with peak prices. Those times, often weekend afternoons, are often ideal for indie producers to hold auditions.

This is one of the reasons you don’t want to try and call everyone in. This is also why many productions go for the more run-down audition location.

At the same time, there’s a reason we arrived at the $50/hour ballpark: we wanted a nice venue for the auditions. If you find a deal through connections, by all means take it. But don’t start your project already in the poverty mindset. [8]

3. Evaluating audition space criteria

Eventually, you will hopefully have a two or more options. I’ll be honest, even with the DC Space Finder and recommendations from peers, you’re going to not only going to need to do some legwork to find options that fit availability and price, you’ll find it’s not particularly easy to hear back from venues. Really. I can speculate, but it’s clear to me some venues find taking your money is an inconvenient use of their time. [9] Budget your time accordingly and you should find some okay options.

Odds are any space you have will have some of those tradeoffs mentioned above. It’s a balancing act, but just as you’re figuring out who the best candidate is to call in for a role, you want to start with the venue that seems to filling your needed role as Great Audition Space best.

4. Sealing the deal (and setting the budget)

Contact them and find out the particulars they need for finalizing the rental. For the type of venues you want to rent (i.e., the nice ones we allude to above), will almost certainly ask for the following:

• A signed rental agreement or the equivalent
• A security deposit
• Proof of insurance

For the rental agreement, definitely review it to make sure there isn’t anything crazy and feel free to ask their rental coordinator questions. In our experience, the agreements have been all about limited their liability and there aren’t wacky conditions, but occasionally, there are some assumptions or language built into the contract that might not make sense (e.g., that assume you’re a rehearsing show or the like).

The security deposit should be expected, and this is where having a corporate bank account is nice to keep the venue feeling that much more comfortable renting with you (it’s a weird thing, but true).

If the thought of having a company bank account made you break out in a sweat, then proof of insurance probably made you cry out in terror, “How can I get that?!?” You have many options. Assuming you do have insurance, ask the rental coordinator for all the info that needs to be put on the certificate and how they want to receive it (yes, some still like via fax). Then call up your insurance copy and make sure they send a copy to your email. If you don’t have insurance, than there are various places that are happy to give you some private event insurance with the liability limits that will please the venue (and it is a private event, unless you ignored all our advice to this point about avoiding open auditions, right).

If you’re not comfortable handling all these obnoxiously un-artistic dealings, please make sure someone on your production team is. As mentioned above, the right venue sets the right tone with actors — many of whom will be getting to know you for the first time at this location.

This also assumes that you’ve found a user-friendly rental coordinator, but if you’ve made it this far, hopefully you have. Remember what I said about the rental coordinators wanting your business, but not wanting headaches? You want to come across as, and then be, the low-key, stress-free rental. Hopefully, this isn’t your only project. Now that you’ve found the right place, you want to use it again, don’t you?

Now that you have a good audition space, we’ll focus on how to organize it in the next article.

 

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FOOTNOTE #1: One consideration for indie production is what days of the week to consider holding the auditions. Strictly commercial enterprises will almost always do weekdays and many indie productions will do nights and weekends for auditions.

For the Broken Continent, we looked to have auditions Saturday, Sunday, and Monday — Monday being the traditional day off for many theater actors (and as you probably know, DC has many theater actors). At the same time, DC also has plenty of actors who have a dayjob, so there was still value in having weekend auditions. In addition, we made sure audition times were during the day and night to accommodate the maximum number of actor schedules, another subtle way to try and be nice to actors.

FOOTNOTE #2: We’ll get more into this into the article about conducting callbacks, but it’s okay not to be certain about roles until callbacks. With almost all projects, you’re not simply casting roles in vacuums. You’re casting an ensemble that needs to play off one another and have a similar skill level and sensibility.

FOOTNOTE #3: While hotel rooms send a classic skeezy red flag, hotel conference rooms may be an option. Depending on the layout of the hotel, a hotel location might feature a reasonably public waiting area, with good access to transportation.

FOOTNOTE #4: For The Broken Continent and most audition situations, I always plan on bringing one to two surge protectors and a number of extension cords. All three of us producers had computers or tablets. Team J also provided a mobile hotspot so we could coordinate the electronic check-in list with the “Front Desk” in the waiting area (which, given the time we were there, we kept plugged in).

FOOTNOTE #5: Purely for needless detail, I should note that we did not get the classic Dixie cups because the Giant brand was not only cheaper, but had fun drawings and facts about dinosaurs on them. Why would anyone not opt for dinosaur cups? Several actors noticed this as well and correctly deduced that we wanted them to get into a spirit of play.

FOOTNOTE #6: Many theater spaces will have a rehearsal space with the same approximate dimensions as their stage space. As mentioned earlier in this article, just a classroom or a conference room can do for the audition space, but a rehearsal space could be another option.

FOOTNOTE #7: If a shared space has “resident companies” they often will have priority. This can translate into blackout periods when venues will not want to book the space

FOOTNOTE #8: I have encountered way too many productions that “don’t have any money for casting.” This strikes me as would-be chefs having “no money for ingredients” who nevertheless want to cook up a world-class meal. There’s thrifty and there’s cheap.

FOOTNOTE #9: In several cases I called and emailed the contact listed on the DC Space Finder, in addition to cc’ing the general info address, and never got a reply. It’s clear many of these venues know they ought to be renting out their spaces and they’ve made efforts to do so on paper. However, it’s clearly fallen apart in terms of the execution whether the core reason is uninspired staff, disinterested organizations, or a dispiriting combination of the two.

This 20-part series, written by Team J’s Bjorn Munson, covers the lessons learned during the casting of The Broken Continent web series pilot in 2012. You can find the full Table of Contents in Part 1.

This series is meant to help other independent filmmakers, primarily those who are casting a large ensemble (10+ speaking parts, multiple background actors, etc.). Individual articles may be useful to production companies looking to cast other work such as commercials. There are also a number of articles specifically for actors on how to better submit for auditions, do the auditions, and deal with the statistically inevitable rejections.

The lessons learned have been applied to Team J’s Stonehenge Casting service, an online tool for producers to find actors and actors to find work.

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Deciding Who to Call In

And now the hard part.

Actually, if you’re doing it right, some of the previous steps might be hard — or at least should take some noticeable effort. [1] However, I find many filmmakers get especially antsy at this stage.

While deciding who to call in is a critical step in the process, if you’ve done the previous work, rest assured that you have laid the groundwork that allows you to focus more on casting versus logistics (though we’ll touch on logistics regarding scheduling below).

Nevertheless, do not discount the importance of choosing which actors to call in. In essence, this is the your first round of casting choices. Far too many indie productions — and a few commercial production companies — depend on that first round of casting to narrow down the field. I’ll hear people say they want to “be open” and “see what’s out there,” but it wastes valuable time, energy, and money. [2]

(For those of you who are anxious about cutting out worthy candidate or not getting enough of “the right” candidates, this is why a good casting director is so valuable.)

When it comes to deciding who to call in for your web series or indie feature, here’s how we planned the steps for Broken Continent:

1. Review the Casting Rankings
2. Review the Casting Spreadsheet with the Director
3. Make sure you have enough actors for each role
4. Initial Scheduling
5. Contacting Actors (Finalizing Schedules)

Bear in mind that these steps will not go perfectly; you will not be able to call in everyone you were convinced at the outset were going to be perfect for this or that role. And yet, you’ll find a great cast.

1. Review the Casting Rankings
Whatever ranking or “triage” system you are using — whether it’s letters, numbers or colors as shown in our sample spreadsheet [3]— I find it’s useful to go through the list of actor submissions after the initial processing to double-check all the rankings (this is assuming you’re ranking them as you’re processing them).

During the Broken Continent, we eventually had three people (including myself) going through and transferring information from the over 500 submissions to the worksheet. At the same time, I was going through submissions and giving them a ranking per the color-coded system I mentioned in the last article.

Normally, actor submissions will taper off dramatically after the first three days of a casting notice and drop to almost nil after a week [4]. That should give you the perfect opportunity to review all the submissions thus far and see:

• If some of the people you invited to submit have, in fact, submitted. [5]
• If you’ve ranked all the submissions.
• If you see a ranking that you want to tweak
• If you see anything missing from a submission (e.g. contact information incomplete, etc.)

There’s always going to be something. The goal here is to be confident that your casting spreadsheet includes everyone you might want to call in — as well as rankings for everyone.

Before going to the next step, it’s great to already have at least a partial call-in list of actors covering most of the roles (see the second tab on the sample spreadsheet). Of course, you might be able to generate this partial list (or finalize a list) in talking with the director. [6]

2. Review the Casting Spreadsheet with the Director
We posted the Broken Continent casting notice on Tuesday, May 1, confident that we’d get the usual flurry of submissions and by the week of May 7, we could set up a time for me and Francis, the director/showrunner to go over who I was planning to call in for the auditions, which would start on May 20.

By May 10, we were still processing submissions, racing to be ready to start inviting actors to audition by May 14 (just shy of a week’s notice).

The lesson learned here is to back out the casting notice a bit further and have a deadline for receiving submissions (though being unofficially open to receiving submissions after that).

I know many professional projects where the director or producers simply show up as the casting director has handled it all. Who is being called in? It’s a surprise, but there’s sure to be good actors called in. Depending on how you’ve organized your indie operation, you might want to do it that way. [7] However some form of dialogue here can potentially be very valuable — even if you wait to talk to the director until you have a call-in list — as the review addresses questions like:

Have we missed someone?
The director was sure they told you to call in Joe Actor or Jane Actress, but doesn’t see them on the list. This might be because someone genuinely forgot to contact the actor and they’re not even on the spreadsheet.

A frequent possibility is that the actor is not listed, probably because even though you reached out to them to submit, you haven’t heard from them. As I’ve mentioned previously, directors, producers, and other people who are not casting directors often seem perplexed that actors don’t respond to email or phone calls — and so they often need to make peace with this fact. [8]

Reviewing the casting spreadsheet at this point allows you to contact that in-demand actor again.

Do you not want to call in someone on the list?
This happens. The most likely reason not to call in a particular actor is because you know they are both high maintenance and insane. [9] However, there are other reasons the director might not want Joe Actor. Perhaps the role requires special skills the director knows Joe doesn’t have. Perhaps the director wants to save Joe for a future role (if it’s a web series). Perhaps the director’s vision for the role doesn’t really fit Joe’s tone.

The bottom line is that your audition slots are limited, and if you can save both your time and the actor-you-won’t-cast-anyway’s time, you’re doing everyone a favor.

Have we misunderstood a role?
If you are able to sort the spreadsheet and show the director all the actors you’re thinking of calling in for a role, that might jog the director’s memory about another actor to call in.

However, it’s also possible that, in seeing the actors you have lined up, the director realizes you’re not getting actors who match his or her vision. Does the role need to be more unconventional? More conventional? Should the possible types be broader? Narrower? Is there some aspect of the role that isn’t being addressed? [10]

As mentioned previously, you may not have the time to have a thorough meeting with the director to talk about casting choices. In some cases, some teams may want to delegate more to the casting director (or producer wearing the casting hat). However, taking time for these review points is always beneficial.

3. Make sure you have enough actors for each role
Theoretically, you can always add additional audition dates, but as we’ll get to in the next few articles, finding the right audition space for the time you need will be moderately daunting at the very least. Therefore, you want to make sure you have multiple good candidates for each of the roles you’re casting. [11]

Let’s go back to the casting example of a project with 10 roles. You’ve theoretically received at least 100 submissions, or at least 10 actors, interested in each role. In reality, you probably have more actors interested in what appear to be leading roles or “cool characters.” For The Broken Continent, we had far more people interested in being King Eadwyn or Queen Malkyn than, say, the hulking knight Vymont or Loe, the wounded footsoldier.

Some of this is because there are less actors who can play imposing hulks convincingly, but many an actor — not unlike regular people — would rather play the superhero than the sidekick, the lead rather than the supporting player, and the beautiful person rather than the homely foil. [12] One of your jobs as the casting director is to ensure you invite or otherwise find enough actors to be called in for the various roles, whether or not the actors were originally looking to fill them.

In short, you should do your best to have 10 candidates for each role, but in reality, you might not. You’re going to cut down that group of 10 (or 20) actors to the five you’re going to call in (or attempt to call in, see “Initial Scheduling” below). The casting police will not come because you have four candidates for this role and seven candidates for that role. The real pressure is that you have called enough actors in to cast the project.

Wait! How do I know which are the five? Isn’t that the most critical part of this whole article?

Good questions. In short and in order: you’ll know, and no, the most critical takeaway from this article is to know you’ll find the right cast (more on that below).

In regards to the first question, all the steps above will naturally narrow down the field. Some of the actors will simply not be as experienced. Some of the actors will be ones you or the director (or both of you) absolutely want to call in. You’re also about to do scheduling where you’ll find some of the actors — including people you absolutely knew would rock the part — are unavailable. Your list of actors to call in will naturally diminish from the 10 or more you were looking for into five or so you want to (and can) call in. Know this will happen and trust the process.

Trust the process? Perhaps that sounds overly “new age-y” to some, but if you’re looking for something with grueling mechanistic precision and absolute answers, casting really isn’t for you (film and theater are pretty much out as “scientifically precise pursuits” as well). Maybe I’ll change my mind after a few dozen more casting gigs, but there are a few things I find with each casting I do:

1. You don’t get to audition everyone you want
2. Some actors are a delightful surprise
3. Some actors aren’t quite as delightful
4. Your final cast in no ways resembles what you thought your final cast would be at the beginning of the process
5. You are excited by your cast

Number five is not automatic. It’s the result of all the hard work you did up until this point (and through the auditions and the final offers to actors). I can’t explain number five with scientific veracity, but every time I find it to be true. If you work hard on casting, you will get a great cast. It’s not the perfect cast, but in its own weird way, it seems like they’re the cast that had to be there right there, right then, for that project. If the auditions had been on another day or if the project was shooting a month later, it probably would have been a different cast. But then, that would be the right cast for then and there.

The best analogy I can think of relates to long-distance running [13], but if you don’t believe me about trusting the process, you’re probably won’t believe the analogy.

Work hard. Give casting the time it’s due. Be diligent and you’ll be both comfortable and confident that you will find the right actor for every role you need to cast [14]

4. Initial Scheduling
Now comes the relatively zen task of taking all the people you want to call in and plugging them into your available audition times. The key trick here is to fill up your timeslots (i.e., X actors per hour) so that:

a) You’re not keeping actors waiting for a long time to audition [15], and
b) You all have time to discuss your impressions of the actor after with each other without
c) Feeling like you’re running out of time (“Oh my god we have 20 minutes left in the space and there’s five actors in the waiting room!”)

Don’t worry about grouping actors reading for the same character unless it seems to magically happen. If you really feel you need to see people that close together, save that scheduling feat for the callbacks (i.e., when you have far fewer people to call in).

What we did for The Broken Continent

You can see some of this on the sample spreadsheet. Yes, another part of the spreadsheet, check out the Tab marked “Schedule.”

After the top contenders were determined, we simply cut and pasted them into a timeslot. This method easily allowed us to transfer information about which characters both the actors and we wanted them to read for — a planned technique that proved very handy in the audition process (to be further discussed in Part 11).

Those actors that noted restricted availability based on the posted audition times, were, in almost all cases, accommodated. [16]

We estimated about five minutes per actor, with a five minute buffer each half hour to allow for some auditions going longer as well as bio breaks (aka “using the restroom”). That broke down to 5 actors per half-hour or 10 actors an hour.

Filling in the slots wasn’t strictly first-come, first-served. Because of our rankings, I made sure to first call in the actors we had identified as absolutely wanting to read for parts. In fact, if you recall the article about getting the word out [link to article,] there were some actors I emailed or called right off the bat. If they were interested and available (and submitted their materials — a pretty good sign of being interested and available), I booked an audition slot for them early.

What we’ll do next time

Well, for one thing, I’ll be using Stonehenge Casting’s folder management function to expedite some of the sorting, but that’s for another article.

In terms of the tactics described in this article, they worked pretty well.

I will limit the actors to four per half hour versus five for future casting calls. That little adjustment should make the actual casting sessions next time that much more relaxed. [17]

One way to accommodate less actors per hour may be to shift the first round of auditions to video auditions, allowing us to have one to two smaller callback sessions.

5. Contacting Actors (Finalizing Schedules)

So now you should have a nice draft audition schedule.

The next step is to create a boilerplate email send out to the actors. [18] You can leave space to personalize each email for actors you know — and you can also go the other direction and essentially do a mail merge depending on your technical skill. However, this original email must contain:

1. The location the auditions will be held (i.e., at least the address they can plug into the computer to calculate how far away it is); and
2. The time you want them to audition (you’ll let them know they can ask for a different time if that doesn’t work). [19]
3. The instruction that they, the actors, must confirm with you that the audition time works OR to contact you if it doesn’t.

You may also want to include:

• Payscale, such as any agreements your production is operating under (e.g. SAG-AFTRA Modified Low Budget Agreement, etc.).
• What character(s) you want the actor to read for.

Since what you most want from the actors at this point is to confirm they are still available for the audition (and at that time), this initial email contact should be as short as possible while still providing enough information to make the decision.

Once the actors have confirmed, you can send them a second boilerplate email. This should:

• Confirm the time and date they’ve agreed to.
• Confirm the location with painfully detailed directions (perhaps as an attachment) [20]
• The roles they should prepare for (with sides almost always as an attachment)
• The rehearsal dates and shooting dates (which should have been at least generally indicated in the original casting notice, but might be more definite by the time you’re sending these emails).
• Contact information they can use if they’re delayed.
• The cutoff time and what to do if they’re really, really delayed. [21]
• Re-iterating any other information already provided. For example, a link to the original casting notice, the link to your company or production website, and the payscale — always the payscale.

The goal here is to give them all the information they need to prepare for auditioning for the role, which of course is a specialized job interview. Good information on your part makes actors more at ease and more confident. It also answers many logistical questions that would otherwise take up precious audition time.

At this point, if at all feasible, I recommend providing the audition phone number. It could be just for the audition day itself or it could be for any questions beforehand. In either case, providing the number gives actors a crucial channel of communication — and the ones that really need it will appreciate it. [22]

Bear in mind that the schedule won’t be completely finalized in the week leading up to the auditions. Someone will invariably get sick or have car trouble or book a paying gig the same day as the audition. They may frantically contact you to re-schedule — and since you’ve planned all of this out, you should have space in the schedule and can usually oblige.

But to get into how to organize and conduct the auditions, we first need to make sure you’re squared away with a great audition space, which is the focus of the next article.

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Previous Casting Notes Article  | Next Casting Notes Article

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FOOTNOTE # 1: And if it wasn’t hard at all, perhaps you might consider writing a series of articles on casting the rest of us could read? Whenever possible, I like to work smarter, not harder.

FOOTNOTE # 2: As will be repeated many times, your actual audition time will be finite. Even if you have your own space to audition people (and as we’ll go over in Part 9, don’t choose just any old space), auditions take valuable time — usually when people are in the midst of other pre-production activities.

Eliminating candidates from consideration before even calling them in is something every other industry does when they do their hiring. They do this because they want to save time, energy, and money — and it works.

FOOTNOTE # 3: The Broken Continent Sample Casting Spreadsheet was mention in the last article. This is essentially how we handled processing all the actor submissions for the Broken Continent. In the last article, I explain how I went about color-coding the entries. Here you can see why I might change the “triage” rankings to letters or numbers in the future as it would make sorting that much quicker.

FOOTNOTE # 4: This is assuming you don’t post the casting notice on a weekend and are not casting for The Broken Continent, which got over 100 submissions in the second week — along with people interested in choreographing stunts, doing camera work, and, of course, composing music.

FOOTNOTE # 5: Time to shoot off another email, Facebook message, text, or phone call. And, depending on how many submissions you have and how much time you have, you might decide to let the actor do whatever it is that’s taking up their time as you already have plenty of people to call in. Remember, as stated elsewhere, I’m assuming any actor part of your production team or integral to your investment and fundraising strategy is pre-cast. That great actor you know might get the part? They get to audition with everyone else (otherwise, why solicit blind submissions?).

FOOTNOTE # 6: There are no rigid rules in an indie production for who is doing the casting. There were three initial producers for The Broken Continent. Oftentimes, a writer/director will share the “casting director hat” with one or more producers. In this case, I served as the casting director, but even there, the level of sharing casting minutiae will depend on the working relationships of everyone involved. In the end, the director (or showrunner, in the case of a web series) should have the final decision on who to cast. However, the casting director can and should work to give the director the best range of choices and so may have a large influence on who is initially called in (theoretically, the director/showrunner could always ask for additional casting calls if everyone is a disappointment).

FOOTNOTE # 7: The logic here being that the director and producers are busy with other aspects of pre-production.

FOOTNOTE # 8: To be honest, I know one of the reasons is that directors and producers often assume I contact the actors promising them an audition slot. I always say we’d like to consider the said actor for one of more parts. There were actors I was 99% certain we would call in unless they were out of the country and 95% certain we would offer a part. However, there’s that pesky 1% at the very least, isn’t there? Also, in talking with the director, we might decide to call the actor in for another part rather than the one I was originally thinking of. That’s why I don’t offer guarantees of auditions to actors.

There’s also the fact that I know quite well that it wouldn’t matter if I did guarantee an audition slot — or a part — to some actors. They might be too polite with me on the phone to say, but they might want to read the script first, might want a gig getting them more money, or might (gasp) not really think as highly of the director as much as the director thinks of them.

FOOTNOTE # 9: The truth is that there are some very talented actors out there that nevertheless are not worth the trouble of working with. If they are not bringing in investors, related financial advantages, or “guaranteed distribution,” why bother? (And if they are, they’re probably part of your production team and you don’t think they’re too high maintenance or insane).

The presence of high maintenance actors is felt by everyone on set — and often proves a drain on energy and time — making production that much harder. Therefore, save yourself the trouble. I always say that, wherever possible, drama should be on screen, not on set.

FOOTNOTE # 10: For example, let’s say you as the casting director knew the role needed to be filled by someone who is conventionally attractive, possibly even drop-dead gorgeous. However, you didn’t realize the role also requires the actor have a slimy tone and you picked some innocent ingenues. Or the role requires someone who’s good with accents. Or card tricks. Or partial nudity. Or card tricks while partially nude.

FOOTNOTE # 11: Bear in mind that this still may not work out. A veteran casting director I know has mentioned it’s not uncommon for the client to turn to him after an exhaustive casting sessions and essentially ask, “So, can we see some better actors for the role?” I’ll mention this again with finding the right audition space, but have a Plan B in case you need additional audition time. You might need it.

FOOTNOTE # 12: This principle is also at play when it comes to the intelligence and overall wit of characters, because actors by and large would rather play clever characters. It takes a special kind of humility to jump into playing the doofus and to do it well (a prime example would be Bill Fagerbakke, better known as the voice of Patrick Star of Spongebob Squarepants, whose delivery is often sublime). I’ve found the more access you have to veteran actors, the easier it is to find actors willing to be troubled, clueless, goofballs… and do a good job of it (another reason to try and budget as much as possible to pay actors). However, if you have these type of “uncool” characters, do make a point to invite some trusted actors to read for them. The “cool” characters will have many takers.

FOOTNOTE # 13: If you dear readers will bear with an analogy far afield from the realms of theater and film, this whole casting process, and knowing you’ve done a good job — and in fact all you can do — reminds me of long-distance running.

I’m thinking here of the cross-country runs you might have done in school or perhaps training runs you might have done for anything from a 5k to a marathon. Invariably, unless you conscientiously refuse to run solo, ample opportunities exist to slack off during your solo practice runs. You can slow to an almost walk-like trot up that steep hill. You can decide not to pick up the pace when you know you should push.

Absent a coach or other scrutiny, no one can say, come race day, whether your performance was the best you could manage or not, but you’ll know. For me, I find it’s the same for all sorts of aspects of filmmaking. I won’t beat myself up for not getting 4-minute miles. I’ve never gotten that. But I know when I could be shaving 10 seconds per mile off my time and am not pushing myself to do it.

Just as you won’t get a better race time than your body can manage, you won’t get a cast better than you deserve — because even if you luck out in getting actors far more talented than your material or your director, well, there’s the roadblocks that are your underwhelming script and director.

(And yes, having a great script and production team to execute said script is important too)

FOOTNOTE # 14: Indirectly, this is yet another argument for having the closed audition. I’m sure someone can provide anecdotal evidence, but I have yet to find statistics of other industries that consistently leave hiring to the vagaries of chance to who might walk in the door that day.

FOOTNOTE # 15: Bear in mind that, for SAG-AFTRA and other union productions, you may need to follow rules on how long actors can wait to audition. I can’t tell you how many casting calls I’ve been to where actors are hanging out for hours to audition. It’s completely avoidable — and it’s a good thing when actors notice the audition process was quick and easy.

FOOTNOTE # 16: This is another argument for stating the audition dates in the casting notice and for actors to read and respond appropriately to said casting notice.

FOOTNOTE # 17: What does “more relaxed” mean? Well, on more than one occasion, we felt like we couldn’t ask certain actors to read for all the roles we wanted or do all the reads we could. This was addressed with callbacks — the people we wanted to see again we were going to call back anyway. However, having that extra time would have made us feel more confident going into the callbacks — and perhaps put us a bit further ahead in our decisions.

FOOTNOTE # 18: Why an email versus a phone call?

Once again, this is for time management.

Let’s look at our case study example: you’re casting a large ensemble and you have those 10 people per 10 roles. In other words, 100 people. Now you’re going to be doing initial auditions with 40-50 of those people. It might take you 15 minutes to create the email template and then easily 2 minutes or less to personalize each email and shoot them off. That’s a bit less than 2 hours. Maybe even closer to 1 hour if you’re hitting your groove.

If you call each person, my experience is that each conversation is at least 3 minutes and usually 5-10 minutes. If they’re a new actor to you, you’re taking a moment to get to know them. If they’re an old actor to you, you’re catching up. This isn’t bad, but you’ll have a chance to catch up or get to know them later. Right now, this method will take 2.5 to 8 hours.

The point of this contact is scheduling the audition. You can be polite and efficient at the same time.

If you have actors near and dear to you, you’ve probably already called or talked to them to make sure they submitted for the project.

You can also list a telephone number if you want to make it easier for actors to contact you if they have questions — but you have to realize you’re accepting that potential extra time spent on logistics.

For the Broken Continent, the majority of actors had no problem handling the scheduling via email. Remember: most actors are busy too. Keeping something as boring as scheduling an audition time short and sweet is a plus.

FOOTNOTE # 19: The reason to give them a time is the same rationale as discussed in Footnote # 18 above: efficiency. Since you’ve already mentioned the date(s) that you’re going to have auditions in your casting notice, actors who are serious about their submission have “penciled the time in.” If the particular date and time you’ve proposed won’t work, they’ll let you know!

Even if you only get half of the people to accept the initial audition slot, you’ve saved a bundle of time — and in my experience, it’s easily 80% of people who accept the initial audition slot.

Remember, you do want to leave enough openings in the audition times to move people around AND you want to make sure actors know to ask for a different time if they can’t make it.

FOOTNOTE # 20: “Painful” only to the extent that you have gone to the pain of walking around the audition venue and an explain any vagaries of the location (e.g., “from the lobby, look for the red door on the right” OR “walk past the ancient suit of armor after defeating the pygmy sphinx” and so on). We’ll go over the walk around in Part 10: Organizing the Audition Space.

FOOTNOTE # 21: You don’t need to dwell on this in any communications to the actors, but if you’re like many productions, you’re renting the audition space and so there’s a particular hour you need to be out of there. No, the actors don’t need to know the details of your rental agreement, but you do need to communicate a time when auditions are over for the day. This helps conscientious actors know when “incredibly late” becomes “too late” and it makes it easy for your check-in staff to provide answers.

If you don’t do this, you’ll have some actor hoping to audition at 6pm when you’re closing up shop at 5pm. All the drama of that conversation could have been avoided (assuming the actor reads their email).

FOOTNOTE # 22: Perhaps we’ll move almost entirely to a world of texts and twitter updates for this, but the day of the audition itself seems to be when actors call the casting people when they’re stuck in traffic, have a flat tire, or suddenly need to take a family member to the emergency room (all of which I’ve been called about, by the way).

Bear in mind that the casting director and director don’t need to be at the other end of this particular phone. In fact, it’s best that the casting staff member responsible for check-in has this phone. The can adjust the schedule for that day and inform you during a break.

For the Broken Continent, Team J purchased a pay-as-you-go phone that is only used during audition days. Very cheap, absolutely helpful on the days that it’s needed and completely ignorable on days it’s not.