How To Make A Feature Film With No Money - Part 6: The Auditions
Part 6 of the epic, but mostly absurd, insight into two crazy people and their no-budget feature film. Actors. Auditions. Agh!
Thanks to our key cast and their broad networks of friends we had lots of enthusiastic and hopeful actors asking to join our slightly-left-of-field project. Names, numbers and emails were collected. It was time to start lining up the actors names with character's names. But that meant that we had to... can barely say it... hold auditions. I can hear your question loud and clear, "Aren't auditions standard practice when making a movie?". Sure they are if you're a Producer or a Director. As a DOP I had managed to avoid this awkward must of pre-production, leaving the difficult decisions to the powers that be. Actors are a wonderful part of being a Cinematographer. They are friends on a fun-filled journey who you never have to worry about - that's the Director's problem. No matter how rocky the film-boat may get actors rarely have a bad word to say to the person who is making them look pretty on screen. Except for Christian Bale; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt3lzOUhX1Q But no longer. I was going to have to face my fears. I was going to have to work with actors. To get things started the best thing you can do is be organised. And this is where we had a secret weapon named Kate. She made a list that contained all of the support characters that were needed. Then we began allocating faces to possible roles using the headshots of the actors. Our aim was to have at least two possible actors for each character so that we had a choice. In reality we ended up with a lot of people for a couple of roles and most others singled out for a specific one. So much for planning. Having an audition space is actually an important element that we had not considered previously. We held our auditions in a blank-walled classroom that we could access for free for a few days but I have to admit that it made us look a little on the 'student' side of film making which isn't the case. We're experienced professionals, just not at the roles we took on for Bound By Blue. We should have spent some time sourcing a more spacious, perhaps windowed, venue that didn't feel like we were interviewing prisoners before shipping them off to some sort of Hunger Games-style death camp. 
One of the most difficult parts of auditioning is not the auditions but rather their scheduling. We learned the hard way that if you ask someone when they are free they will go out of their way to choose the exact same time as everybody else; it's a serious phenomena. We worked out quickly that this approach was not a smart one so Kate changed the rules. She picked 5 hours per day for 3 days and broke them into half hour slots; we chose afternoon to evening to allow actors who work day jobs to be able to attend. These slots were then emailed out to the actors and it became a first-in best-dressed scenario. Before we knew it the slots were filled and the auditions days were upon us. And that brought us to the bit I had been dreading; actual face-to-face confrontation with the species know as thespian (pronounced: the-eh-spee-anne. Of the genus 'Overus Actus'). We've all seen the Hollywood movies that make it look so simple. A desk, a chair, a scared actor, a power-mad director and it's always the second person who auditions who is perfect for the part. Is it really that easy? You already know the answer so my advice will be the simple part of this: Prepare. There are many great books about directing movies (not least is David Mamet's brilliantly straight forward and thin 'On Film Directing') but very few go into detail about what to do in an audition. Somehow this honoured rite has been often overlooked in the how-to world due to either forgetfulness or fear. However I stumbled across Judith Weston's 'Directing Actors' and found a wonderful mentor. Here are the tips that most helped us to find the right actor for each role. Know the character's backstory. Everyone can see what's on the page but the real questions that actors are going to ask you will be about what can't be read. Who are they? Where did they begin? What has happened to them to get to this point in the story? We were auditioning for so many roles across each day that we wrote down a one paragraph backstory for each character to have on hand for reference during the auditions. Allow the actor to read at least one scene before the audition. No one benefits from trying to keep your 'secrets' hidden away and it lets them think about how they are going to approach the performance. Ask them about how they view the character and what elements they identify with. This is important (if you don't know this now you will by the end of shooting) as someone who connects with the story personally won't have to do as much 'Acting'. Plan some objectives to challenge the auditionees. Let them run the scene dry once, then start directing. Give them a purpose to work toward (eg. to embarrass John, or to outwit John). It will be harder to come up with these on the fly unless you are already quite skilled, so prepare! Use improvisation to see what an actor can bring to the story themselves. They don't have to be great improvisers but you want to get an understanding of how they think and this is a great way to remove the shield of the script. Try improvising a scene from their backstory - this just might come in handy for your own work! We had a minor problem in that all we had was our un-script. So our entire auditions were based on improvisations, just the way the whole film would be. This made things a little more difficult from the get-go as our auditionees performances were at the mercy of the actor who was reading (in our case it was improv-ing) with them. If they weren't giving a lot out the hopeful actors had very little to play off. And we definitely ran into this problem more than once. Biggest tip of all? If you need to find a connection between your key cast and supporting cast it really helps to actually have the key cast member at the audition. Our no-budget approach meant that we couldn't find a time that Richard was available, but we needed to cast three female support roles that were all about the chemistry. And try as hard as she did poor Debbie (playing his stand-in) just couldn't replicate the vibe that is Richard. It's a magical vibe. One that gets the ladies all a-quiver. Not a lot of quivering happening in those auditions. Is it horrible to say that Kate and I were exhausted by the time we got to the last day of auditions? I don't know how the big-leaguers do it but 3 days were enough for us. So many faces, so many scenes, so many varied approaches. Some actors shone out instantly and we knew we had locked in a character. But for others the competition was fierce and it all became a Method/ Meisner/ Brechtian milkshake. One final word on auditions for those of you who are as green as us; relax. Just like a rabid gnu they are more scared of you than you are of them... unless an entire herd of panicked actors is bearing down on you across the savannah. Then run.