5:30am-The alarm goes off and the morning dance begins. I had stayed up late reading, and quickly calculate the four hours of sleep. Pull myself into my "Kutting-Weight" suit (sort of a neoprene surfing-style getup), pull on the sweat-stained shorts & shirt . . . find the keys & out the door.
Is it overcast today? . . . No, that's just haze from the fire . . .
How is it 6 am, and traffic on the Highway is averaging 80 mph? That'll wake you up in a hurry!
15 minute drive to Sherman Oaks, followed by an hour of sweating. Half-way through bootcamp, the sun has popped over the horizon and the cooking begins.
7:30-Drive home from Bootcamp. This trip can take between 20 and 40 minutes, but today, it takes almost an hour. Stop-and-go on HWY 134. Finally get to the intersection of the 5 and see the reason . . . a pretty nasty 2-car pile-up. In comparison, my morning is looking all right.
Get home, drink my 3rd and 4th bottles of water of the day (we keep them refilled and in the fridge), get the coffee going, and jump in the shower. Rinse the super-suit, rinse the man-suit, and back to the kitchen. Grab a big bowl of Granola, a redundantly hot cup of coffee, and hit the office.
Two new emails about auditions . . . nothing major-student films-put them in the audition book.
Check the on-line audition submissions, LAcasting.com, and Actorsaccess.com . . . no new postings . . . there are rarely auditions posted this time of the morning.
Catch-up on the news, check-in with facebook, print up some resume's, staple some headsots. Print up my Thank-you card for Monday's audition at Kathy Knowle's Casting.
Bundle up the couple of changes of clothes I'll need for the day.
9:20am-The drive to Groundlings. I like to ride my bike to class when I can, but on days like today, when there's multiple things to do, I'll drive. It's about eight miles away, and takes at least 30 minutes either driving or biking.
Class is great. It's a morning class, and that energy is pervasive, but we're doing fun things. During our 15 min. break, I consult my friend Iphone for new news. None.
1:30-Out of class and into the car. Back to Kathy Knowles casting. It's a sauna outside . . . the walk from class to my car (one block) just about kills me. I had just made the trip to Kathy Knowles on Monday, and it's a small relief to know just where I'm going, and where I'm going to park. It's about 15 miles away, which translates into 30-60 minutes, because I have to take the 10. Today, it takes 45, and the closer I get to Santa Monica and the coast, the cooler the air gets. Ahh. I'm happy with my choice to drive shirtless.
On the drive, I try to prep for the audition. All I know is that it's for AT&T. I've learned quickly how important it is to get to these calls with plenty of time, because I often don't get a chance to look at the sides until I'm there. The only prep I've done is to peruse AT&T's advertising to try and milk any little details that will help me out. I've got a couple that I feel good about.
2:15-Head into the office and sign-in. This includes logging in to "Casting Frontier" with my super-special barcode (no headshots needed!), and snapping a picture with their computer camera. Often times, there will be a "session runner" who takes care of all this, but I've been noticing that more and more offices are just leaving that up to the actor.
After signing in and grabbing a copy of the sides, I repair to the washroom to give myself a once-over. Damn I look good.
The sides look good too. Lots of copy (lines) for a commercial, and we get to read it a few different ways-different characters. That's not always the case, so it's fun when it happens. My name is called, and I head into the studio.
Commercial audition studios are generally the same. There's a Mark where you, the actor, stand, a small camera on a tripod connected to a monitor and a laptop. The lines are generally written out for you on a large piece of paper so that you don't have to hold you sides the whole time. When the Casting Director is ready, you give your Slate (your name, and sometimes your agency), sometimes your profiles (like a mug shot), and then you often times get a chance to run it once or twice with the CD while the camera is paused.
I audition. I'm awesome.
When I'm done, I take a moment to thank the CD, and to drop off a Thank-You card for my audition on Monday. The more I stick my mug in front of these folks, the more I'll get to know them. And Them me.
3:00 Back in the car. Back to Hollywood. I decide to take the diagonal route of Santa Monica Street to get back to where I need to be. I think that it'll be less annoying than the 10 at this time of day. I'm totally wriong. It's a nightmare. I've got about 90 minutes before my next audition. It takes me about 70 minutes to get there: 15 miles. On the way, I pass Beverly Hills.
4:30-First time at this casting office, and it took me a little while to figure out where to park. I ended up scoring a metered spot directly across the street. Awesome. I even remembered to fill the meter! 25 cents for 15 Minutes. I give it half an hour.
I enter the building and head downstairs. It's a madhouse. Turns out this is a father-and-son spot, so there are kids everywhere. Perhaps more terrifying that the kids . . . the mothers. Now, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that for every 5-7 year old boy there to audition, there were 2-3 younger siblings. I sign in. I prep my barcode. No Headshots needed.
They're running late. I go upstairs to put more money in the meter. I call my next appointment to let them know I'm running late. I descend into the pit once more.
When it's my turn, there's some confusion as to who my son is. I meet this 5-year old charmer just moments before I'm tossing him around like some sort of teddy bear. I don't generally make it a habit of meeting kids and then manhandling them, but after this experience, I just might.
Saw a few dudes from the last audition. They had just had the same awesome driving experience that I had. I had a vision of the four of us sitting in shoddy clothes in a shoddy OTB bar with a race ticket in one hand-eyes glued to the horse race on the old TV, "Come On! If I keep putting money down, I'm bound to win One of these Days!!"
I walk out of this audition thinking I could have done it differently . . . and better. Oh well.
5:20-Back in the car. The next call, for a graduate Thesis Film is only a mile away. I could have walked, but I was running late already, and didn't know how long it would be, and I had to change anyway. . . so I drove. Took me twenty minutes. Ug.
I had downloaded the sides for this audition a few days before, and had been "working them". The character was a redneck "peckerwood". On this one, I actually had a chance to read the script, and understand how my character fit in to the story . . . a rare luxury at this stage of the game! Above and beyond that, I liked the script, and I'd been to this casting office a few times now, and I felt comfortable with my audition clothes. It was a good feeling.
And so I read for the camera. I had to adjust a few of the moment's that I had prepared, because the pace of the Reader (off-camera, delivering the other lines in the scenes) was different from what I had prepared, but I felt pretty good about what I did. There were a few other guys there reading for the same part, and everybody looked . . . well, like "peckerwoods". I feel good about what I left on tape in that room.
6pm-back in the car. Back home. Traffic in Hollywood is not as bad as it could be. Takes me about 25 minutes to get home. Since the granola, I forgot to eat all day. Damn.
6:30-plate full of sandwiches, and I'm back in the office. Over the past 12 hours, the on-line submission boards have filled up. I'm going through one-by-one choosing which to audition for. I submit to anywhere between 5-20 projects per day . . . and get called by a fair percentage of them.
I print up my Thank-You cards for my commercial auditions today. I map out my day tomorrow-nothing scheduled . . . a blessing or a curse? We make a delicious dinner, and tune into the news. . .
Yeah, it's long, and being in the car for a significant part of the day is a drag, but I love days like this. The mixture of the art and the business. . . after a couple of years of days like this, who knows . . . I might book a job!
Love You All.
1 comment:
Hey Code, whew!! Quit being such a slacker. Love You xoxox
Post a Comment