Today was a slog of a day. Spotlight submissions started flying in as well as some casting call and Mandy ones in the background. Thankfully Spotlight don’t send you an email per submission but instead provide you an area of their website where you can view all the submissions and in a similar way to casting call decide whether they are a yes, no or maybe. I didn’t really use the maybe option to be honest. I didn’t have any time during the day to look through all of the entries as they came in.
After work I made my way over to the warehouse with the rest of the band. We got the equipment set up. Well our drummer and guitarist got the equipment set up while the rest of us sat around eating chips watching them try to work out how to make the sound come out well.
Setting Up
With the equipment connected and pointing in what seemed like vaguely sensible directions we went through setting all of our levels. It is pretty cool being able to be plugged into a big amplifier and to hear yourself blasting out! We got the sound set up and it was sounding pretty good. We were just about to have a full on run through of our set when the warehouse owner showed up informing us that you could hear us halfway up the street. He was pretty concerned and we basically had to stop. Tomorrow we have four bands but the other three are acoustic so won’t really make as much noise as we have a drum kit and a drummer who loves to smack those skins pretty hard. So we packed up for the night. Moving some of the easy to steal equipment out of site for the night.
We went to the pub to organise the last minute things that we had to bring for the gig the next night to make sure everything was going to run smoothly.
I got home about midnight again and in my mind I still had seven or eight actors lined up for the weekend even though I had went through the whole selection process on casting call and had about 800 submissions waiting for me to rate on Spotlight. Tomorrow I would be playing the gig so if I wanted to get actors there on Friday night and at the weekend then this was the only time that I could do it.
I stayed up till 4AM and managed to do the following
- rate all of the Spotlight submissions as yes or no
- email all the casting call people giving them particular slots that they can come in based on the notes they gave when applying as they would let you know when available.
- email all of the casting agencies asking to see actors x, y and z and not giving them particular slots as the majority of agencies didn’t supply this information.
The arranging process took forever. Just in case there are any other film-makers out there and interested in exactly what I did then...
For casting call I copied over their name, email and telephone number and what days they could do from their submission notes. I then went through them one at a time. For each person I put their name into my master casting times list based on when they said they were available. Then I sent the following email text:
Thanks for sending over your CV for my film Booked Out. Would you be able to come for an audition on Sunday?
Details are given below.
Date: Sunday 7th June
Time: 11:15AM
Location: Ada Street Gallery, 2A Ada Street, London, E8 4QU
Map: <Map Location>
If this is ok can you bring your CV and headshot with you and to also have prepared a monologue?
I did this one at a time. I am guessing you could write a macro or some code to do this for you but it was the early hours in the morning and I went for the repetitive but tried and tested approach.
For spotlight I copied their details into a spreadsheet with the actors name and the agencies email address. I then sorted the details based on the agencies email address. I then went through each unique agency one at a time. For each agency I sent them an email with the following text:
Thanks for sending over your CVs for my film Booked Out in relation to my Spotlight. Would the following people be able to audition on Friday night (7-10PM), Saturday Morning (10AM - 2PM) or Sunday (10AM-9PM)?
<Actors name> (Jacqueline)
Details of the location are given below.
Location: Ada Street Gallery, 2A Ada Street, London, E8 4QU
Map: <Map Location>
I will also require them to bring a CV and headshot to also have prepared a monologue?
If you can provide me with a suitable time range then hopefully I can slot them in.
To be honest it was 4AM and I had about fifteen agencies to go and I was basically copying and pasting email addresses and names from a spreadsheet into hotmail at the same time as my eyes were going together. I suddenly realised this when I nearly feel asleep while sending off an email and couldn’t remember if I had changed the names or email addresses from the previous one that I sent. Needless to say I went to sleep.