Yesterday i held my auditions. They went well and i managed to cast my supporting character from this process. The standard at the auditions was mixed but i really enjoyed the whole process even though i was nervous.
We started off by asking the actors questions about themselves to help them to relax so that we could gage them a little better when we started to get into the nitty gritty. I asked what kind of experience they had, i had printed of each of their cvs and shown the panel before each audition but i wanted to hear what they had to say about their past work. It was intresting to see the differences in day jobs and what things they would like to work in. It gave us all a good in site into each person. Then we asked about their silent film knowledge and explained the sort of movements and expressions needed. I then got them to workshop a scene not in the script. It was simple but could easily be used for good facial expressions. The scene was 'order a cup of coffee and upon tasting you realise its tea and you hate tea'. While i was works hoping the scene with the each actor Hayley, Hannah and Chris were all making notes which was a really good thing because it was difficult for me to see what the scene looked like when i was in it but it gave me an opportunity to see the facial expressions and explain in physical form what i wanted. The second scene we did was the meeting dialogue between paul and craig. I wanted to see if the actors had learnt the lines and if they were able to take direction. we watched the scene once and then gave them a different take on the scene just to see if they did what was asked. This was a really useful exercise because some of the actors really stuck to their vision for the character despite the directions.
For the main character it was more difficult as one of the actors had auditioned for me on Skype and not in person so the others had to go with what i had to say about him. After a discussion we all agreed that the Skype audition should get the part.
Overall i feel the auditions were a really good idea and I'm really happy with who we have cast for the roles.
Stay safe,
Helen
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