The last day of the warehouse week and what better way to finish it off other than an auditions marathon. We had 39 people scheduled to see today, starting at 10AM until 9PM at night with about a combined hours break in between.
If I were to do this again I would leave a longer break for dinner and lunch but for me it's like going on holiday. You always want to maximise the time that you have and that is what I wanted to do here.
My friend Matt helped out today as well. He had studied film directing at the University of Surrey and is a great person to talk to about films. I went to a screenwriting course with him about five or six years ago and we have kept in touch since. I think he really understands what type of film I want to make. I was glad he came along as he brought a bit more energy and purpose to the auditions as the rest of us were pretty fatigued by this point. It was also good to validate that I wasn't doing anything particularly mad during the audition process.
The most interesting thing he said was to make sure and review all of the tapes as people might seem great in person but not great on tape and the opposite can also apply.
Another thing that we tried was Matt running the actors through what they needed to do and me sitting down with a table between myself and the actor. Before then I had introduced them and stood up beside them. I think having me sitting down distanced myself more but then allowed me to just give direction. Also I felt like I had more power for some reason. As in when I was telling the actor that the audition was over then they seemed to accept it more when I was sitting down whereas when I was standing up they looked a bit disappointed. Weird but true.
I think when I have selected an actor then feel that standing up and being involved in their space is my style but for auditions although it probably makes me feel un-natural I will stick with the behind a desk approach.
We somehow managed to keep going throughout the day and although drained gave each actor as much attention as we had left.
I plan to summarise my thoughts on the audition process separately and try and give some tips to actors and film-makers based on my experiences but for now I have had a great week but looking forward to some rest!