We Need To Talk About The Current State of Auditioning…
Auditioning has gone through a revolution. It began well before Covid, but during the pandemic, the necessity of functioning via a primarily virtual existence has only solidified and sped up these changes. In a post-Covid world, it’s likely this new way of operating will permanently define our “new normal” when it comes to the casting process. These changes have benefits and drawbacks, but instead of continuing to blindly charge ahead, I think we need to pause and talk about where we stand with the current process of auditioning, taking into account the perspectives of both sides of the table.
Because, the truth is, performers are really struggling.
Once upon a time, as glorified in “42nd Street,” “A Chorus Line,” and “All That Jazz,” auditioning took place in person, often on the stage of the Broadway theater where the show you were auditioning for would ultimately be held, and most likely you would learn your “fate” by the end of the day. Crowds of hopefuls would slowly be cut down as the afternoon wore on. Those who made it through would have instantaneous “callbacks,” and the lucky final few left standing would be offered a job on the spot. This was true for dancers, singers, and actors. Though agents existed, these were the days of artists crowding around popular Times Square areas where they could share audition info, producers could go to announce roles they were casting, and everyone could be kept up to date on who was hiring and where and when auditions were being held.
As time went on auditioning in Broadway theaters stopped being the norm, giving way to scheduled auditions in rehearsal studios. Casting directors became more prominent, often screening performers days, or weeks before bringing in their top choices to be seen by the creative team. Verbal sharing of audition information morphed into trade papers, such as Backstage, which would list open calls and, occasionally, submission information – meaning that a casting director was accepting headshots and resumes from artists, on the basis of which some would be called in to audition in person.
Open calls and agent calls became two, very distinct things, often with an agent call equating with the callback from an open call. Artists might be called back multiple times (so much so that AEA had to put a limit on how many times an artist could be called back for a role without being financially compensated.) Long gone (for the most part) were the days of finding out if you booked a part the same day you auditioned for it. Callbacks might be the same day as your original audition or months apart. For your initial audition (for a singing or acting role) you would bring your “book” and perform a selection of your own choosing. You might be asked to prepare material from the show if you were called back. If you were auditioning for a voice-over your reel would be sent out, and you would do your callback, and ultimately your booking, at a recording studio secured by the producer. If auditioning for T.V. or film, the casting director would have a camera set up to film you, and a reader to read the scene with you.
Slowly, things moved online. Backstage.com replaced Backstage Magazine, and an Actors Access profile became just as vital as a headshot and resume. Self-taped auditions (meaning auditions where an artist is filming themself doing a scene or monologue) became just as common for T.V./Film auditions as being called in to read in person with a casting director.
And now almost everything has gone online and self-tape. Film, theater, singing, even dance auditions. The voice-over industry is 99.99% online, and it is possible for an artist to have an entire voice-over career without ever leaving their house.
Some of this was a saving grace during Covid – it offered a way for auditions to continue in anticipation of projects starting up when quarantines were lifted. But it has also created a tremendous hardship on artists – a hardship that often goes unspoken.
Well, we need to talk about it.
In the early days of self-taping, it was mainly a “just get it done the best you can” world. Have someone hold your phone and just press record. It doesn’t have to be perfect, casting just needs to see you. Perhaps the turnaround for casting the project is too fast to actually call artists in person…perhaps an artist is out of town but still wants to be considered…
But then the stakes got higher. Equipment got better and more accessible. And artists were told in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t enough to give a good performance in a self-tape, they needed to compete with other artists who were sending in top quality recordings.
Here’s what that means in practical terms.
If you want to be taken seriously as an artist, if you want to be legitimately competing for roles, you must own and know how to single-handedly operate the following equipment:
Retractable backdrop
Retractable/Adjustable backdrop stand
Ring light
Umbrella lights (ideally)
Up to date iPhone (or pro-quality camera)
Lav mic
Camera stand
iMac with iMovie (or equivalent program)
File conversion capabilities
If you are a singer/voice over artist you must also have:
Pro mic
Pop filter
Mic stand
Mixer
Headphones
Garageband (or equivalent program)
A Source Connect membership (which is required by producers and charges a monthly fee.)
In addition, you must also have at the ready:
A reader (If you can’t get a friend to do you a favor you may have to pay someone)
Music accompaniment (You will have to pay someone to record this for you)
A quiet place to record
Just to acquire this basic equipment will cost thousands of dollars. If you don’t have the money to front for the equipment you will have to pay a company to film you for every audition you get.
And that’s not taking into account that once you’ve actually filmed your audition you will have to learn how to become your own audio and video editor (not to mention cinematographer – yes, the angle of the camera and lights is very important…) We’re not just talking trimming your clip…if you’re doing a voice-over audition you need to fully edit and master the mp3 before anyone at casting listens. For videos, you’d better know how to color grade, reduce background noise, do fades, add titles, include screen cards (as requested by casting,) put in your headshot and contact information, and export in the proper format (as requested by casting.) You’d then better have an Actors Access profile (which costs money) YouTube, Vimeo, and Google Drive accounts so that you can upload to casting’s preferred site, and know how to make the video private/unlisted/or public (as requested.)
Etc. etc. etc.
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t wonderful benefits to being able to control your audition. Let’s look at the pluses and minuses, from both sides of the table…
Auditioning in Person
Benefits for Artist
- All the technical aspects are taken care of for you. You are going to a quiet studio where a reader, pianist, camera, camera operator (etc.) will be provided for you. All you have to do is show up and perform!
- You have a scheduled time for your audition and you have a general idea of how long it will take. If this is for an agent call you probably have a 15min or so time window so, adding in the time it takes to get ready and get to the audition and the fact that casting is likely running late, once your audition is over you’re done and free to go about your day. If it’s an open call obviously this will take longer but, ideally, you know how much time to budget (though this can get a little fuzzy…I’ve often seen situations where things got changed at the last minute or ran REALLY late and artists were forced to choose between not auditioning and getting to their day job, or being seen and getting fired…)
- You get seen by a real person who you can interact with, can give you direction and who can see a bit of your personality, not just your performance.
- It’s free!
Benefits for CD/Creative Team
- You get to see everyone IN PERSON! You can interact with them, give them adjustments, see how well they take direction, and what kind of person they are.
- Everyone is there, in the room, and you can discuss artists at the moment – meaning you will have narrowed things down significantly by the end of the day.
Drawbacks for Artist
- Remember my note above about timings getting messed up or things running really late?
- You MUST be available for your audition whenever they decide to give you a slot. If you’re lucky you can maybe adjust it a bit, but if they need you Monday at 1:30 pm you’d better figure out how to get a cover at work… (hence the #1 reason artists take flexible day jobs.)
- You’re at the mercy of the accompanist, floor, camera, etc. you’re provided.
- You get one shot and everything needs to be perfect.
- You only get seen by whoever happens to be in the room that day. You could be auditioning for the entire creative team (yay!) or an intern who has no actual casting power…
Drawbacks for CD/Creative Team
- If an artist is unavailable to audition on a specific day, that’s it. They’re basically out of the mix.
- Someone might be sick or having a bad day and you’re not seeing them at their best.
- Unless the audition is being filmed you have to rely on your notes and your memory of an artist’s performance.
- You’re at the mercy of the piano, floor, etc. you have in your audition studio.
Auditioning via Self-Tape
Benefits for Artist
- (Within reason) you can do it in your own time!
- You can record as many takes as you like until you get it just the way you want it.
- You’re in control of the audition the creative team is seeing.
- You can be seen by multiple people via this one audition – it might go directly to the casting director, but all they have to do is forward your video to the creative team and everyone gets to see the same audition.
- If you can submit material of your own choosing instead of having to learn new material, this could be the best audition scenario ever – assuming you have pre-taped standard monologues and songs you frequently do, you can just send them directly to the CD. Five minutes and you’re done! (And you didn’t even have to fix your hair.)
- If you have to learn original material for the audition it gives you some grace when auditioning…if you mess up the words, you can always do another take.
Benefits for CD/Creative Team
- You can audition people from all around the world who might not be able to come in person at a specific time.
- You’re (hopefully) seeing artists at their best.
- You have their audition on film so you can review it as many times as you need to.
- You don’t have to give up a whole day sitting in a studio only auditioning people for one project. You can sort through artists from the comfort of your own office/home.
- You don’t have to pay for a rehearsal studio, accompanist, reader, etc. (though this is a catch-22 since, as we’ve seen, these costs are basically being passed on to the performer.)
Drawbacks for Artist
- It costs money! Either you’ve had to pay for a lot of equipment or you’re having to pay someone who has the equipment to do it all for you (or calling in a lot of favors…)
- You can’t rely on the tools you’ve always had prepared for auditions (namely, if you’re a musical theater artist, or singer, your book.) Even if you want to sing a song that’s a “go-to” you have to get someone to record an accompaniment track (often more than one for different cuts of the song) and, once again, that costs money.
- Turn around is usually CRAZY fast. CD’s will often expect self-tapes to be uploaded within just a couple of days (if they’re nice,) but frequently they only give you a few hours…that gets even more stressful if you’re auditioning for an original musical which is requiring your self-tape to contain a song from your book, sides they’ve sent you (yes, you should ideally be memorized,) songs they’ve sent that you need to learn (yes, as memorized as you can be,) and sometimes even a dance audition which, if you don’t have enough space in your apartment, you need to rent a studio for. What are you supposed to do if, at 6 pm, when you’re at work, you get a last-minute self-tape request that’s due by 10 am the next morning?
- You are relying on equipment/Wi-Fi/etc. to work properly. Many’s the time you’ve finally finished your self-tape only to be racing the clock getting it to upload and your Wi-Fi keeps glitching.
- There’s no way to receive direction on your audition. You make the best choices you can with the information you’re given, but whereas in a live audition the CD/creative team could give you adjustments, in a self-tape, they usually take what you submit as “what you can do with the part” and eliminate you if your choices don’t happen to align with the choices they would have preferred.
- Depending on the audition requirements it can sometimes take far more time to do a taped audition than an in-person one – even including travel time. Between setting up equipment, multiple takes, putting equipment away, editing and uploading it can take hours…
Drawbacks for CD/Creative Team
- You’re seeing a highly polished version of someone’s audition – you don’t get them live in the room, you don’t get to work with them…you don’t know if the audition they submitted is what they threw together on the fly or the work of hours and hours of getting it just so. You don’t get a sense of how well they take direction or what kind of person they are…
- Whether casting realizes it or not, the quality of an artist’s equipment is factoring into their casting decisions…it’s a lot easier to view an audition in a favorable light that looks like it’s straight out of a high budget movie than one that may be equal or better performance quality but was done with the limited means at the artist’s disposal. The story of how Elijah Wood got cast as Frodo in “The Lord of The Rings” has become infamous, and is a great example of this issue. Wood really, really wanted the part, so instead of doing a standard audition standing against a neutral wall, he went out and got a full hobbit costume and equipment, enlisted the aid of some friends, went to the woods behind his house, and full-on shot his audition scene as if he were shooting the actual movie. Let’s assume his acting would have been the same in either situation – the cinematic quality of the audition he sent in certainly had an impact on how Peter Jackson viewed it.
- Auditions are arriving in staggered timing so it may be difficult to keep track of which artists are auditioning for which roles in which projects.
But pluses and minuses of an adapting industry aside, I think the reason this issue concerns me so much is that it feels like it’s turning into a potential form of elite gatekeeping. There have been wonderful articles written (I immediately think of this Business Insider article from 2015 that quotes Dame Judi Dench about the growing elitism of going into the acting profession, in conjunction with statistics about the backgrounds of many of our most successful actors: https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-posh-british-actors-spark-concern-over-elitism-2015-2) and I feel like this issue needs to be added to the ever-growing list of reasons rich people are more likely to be successful in this industry. Thinking back to Elijah Wood’s “Lord of the Rings” audition…I know one of the first things people tend to think is “See? If you really want a part you’ll go all out!” But Elijah Wood was a very successful actor who had the means to do such an audition at his disposal. What if he hadn’t? Would that mean he wasn’t as deserving of being cast in the role? That he didn’t want it badly enough?
I don’t know what the solution is, but it concerns me that we’re now basically requiring artists to pay in order to audition. Whether it’s in purchasing equipment, hiring people to help with a filmed audition, or taking classes to learn how to edit, what is an artist supposed to do if they simply can’t afford these things? And that’s in addition to tuition for school and training, costs for headshots, the need for reel footage, the new “pay to play” model of getting seen by agents and casting directors…the list goes on.
There are some resources that have been developing in response to this dilemma. Members of SAG/AFTRA can take advantage of self-tape, voice-over, etc. resources – in free classes and (sometimes) studios to record an audition. But keep in mind, these resources are only available to paid up members in good standing – to even get in the union you have to be successful to some degree as an actor (meaning you’ve already shelled out most of this money before you can book jobs to make you eligible to join the union in the union in the first place,) and you have paid the several thousand dollar membership fee and are paid up on your dues. There are of course YouTube tutorials on how to operate certain programs and equipment, but more needs to be done if we are to level the playing field and give everyone a fair shake. (Not to mention that we shouldn’t be requiring actors to also be good editors, sound engineers, and cinematographers just to get a job being…an actor. They only job they wanted to do in the first place.)
It would be wonderful if there was a way to take advantage of the benefits of new technology in our industry while minimizing some of its drawbacks. But in either case, it’s something I hope gatekeepers are aware of and take into account as we move further and further into a digital world.