Top 10 Things Director's Look For/don't look for/are annoyed by/are inspired by When Casting Actors (Or at least what I look for/don't look for/are annoyed by/are inspired by)
Filmmakers, Actors, etc, lend me your ears!
Here we are for the first edition of how Benjamin MulHolland thinks you should make films. But hey… what do I know?
I’ve had many actors ask me what Directors look for when they’re casting. I usually have just one or two things to say, but I’ve decided to compile all the advice I’ve given actors over the years into one little list. I hope it’s helpful, honest and informative.
Now, this list is made to reflect primarily what indie filmmakers will go through, who have to do their own casting or are heavily involved in the early casting sessions with their casting agents. If your a studio director, life is easier… kind of.
When I first consider an actor I look for prior performances. A lot of people like to have cold/warm reads. After years of people fucking it up… I’m no longer a fan. The only time I will employ the cold/warm read is if I am trying to decide between two thespians and the read is the tie breaker.
Now, a word on the aforementioned film performance.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a reel, scene or film for an actor I was excited about and their shitty demo made me shelf their headshot. Camera work, directing and editing can all make an actor look great or bad, but usually the actors subpar performance is the deal breaker. It’s better to have no reel at all, an excellent resume and a good head shot than to have a crap demo attached to an otherwise astute package.
If you think your video performance is sub par… if you even suspect your video is not up to snuff, quickly grab someone who will tell you the truth (not mom and dad, or you significant other) and find out if your performance makes you look good or not.
It happens all the time, especially to new, young actors. They include some crap student film, just to send you something and there goes your headshot floating away… to nowhere!
2) I AM THE PROFESSIONAL!
I can’t state it enough! Be professional!
I’m generally a nice person, meaning I will nod my head and look sympathetic to your life story if you decide to tell it to me. Let’s face it, they’re generally interesting sometimes, but I usually don’t really care. That’s just the truth. And it also kind of makes me hate you because I only want to hear your life story if I ask for it or I’m impressed with your acting.
Newbie, nubile actors and actresses, please come in, be cordial and be swift with your first meet and greet, audition, whatever. We’re not colleagues, or friends… at least not yet, so please don’t try to convert me to Christianity.
You heard it right. I once had an actress that failed miserably at her audition and then began to tell me about the wonders of Jesus.
Listen, I’m sure Jesus is a great guy and when I was a kid, through no choice of my own, I used to know him. But it is not your place, especially when you’re auditioning for a part in a movie, double fucking especially when you epically failing your audition to try to salvage that debacle with a religious recruitment plea.
Not only will I NEVER hire you, Not only will I tell my colleagues that you are bat shit unprofessional…
You will have just insulted me.
Not because you want me to be saved, but because your emotional religious plea is being used to curry favor for an acting part. You’ve got a better chance employing the casting couch technique!
3) PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT & PERFECT MAKES…
Especially theater training. Get some of it! Get a lot of it. Theater is acting at its core! It’s where acting came from! Smart directors look for a foundation in the theater. Almost all great actors have it.
I will tell you a story… I am full of stories. I once auditioned a young Russian woman… I presume she was Russian by the accent, but maybe she was Austrian or Czech, whatever… she seemed Russian to me. So for the purposes of this story… she’s Russian!
She was beautiful! Extremely beautiful! She walked in and the table full of men and one woman fell silent. That’s beautiful. I was praying she was a great actress. And then she acted… if that’s what you want to call it. She had an accent like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger… I could live with that cause she was comprehensible, but when she said the lines and performed action, it was all I could do to not laugh in her face.
You can say that I’m an asshole, but we’re not here to talk about manners. We’re here for truth and the truth was that she had no training, except for a summer camp stage play course.
Would I go and audition for running a nuclear weapons reactor without a nuclear engineering degree? (an extreme example I know, but stay with me)
So don’t come auditioning for my film without taking the time to train. Respect the craft, get trained! I have a degree in film-making, tons of debt from financing movies; some good, some bad, some outright epic failures- BUT it was all training. I know what it takes to make a good movie, cause I FAILED at it until I got it right. I trained, I read, I studied, trial and error, consultation with professionals, agonizing nights, 16 hour days, my AD talking shit about me, tons of “constructive criticism”, people telling me I sucked and then how to fix it, 3 mentors in varying fields of film-making (One actor/director, one DP, One engineer)… Sheesh.
RESPECT THE CRAFT or go bake cookies!
4) WHEN HE CRIES… YOU CRY HARDER!
I hate when an actor has a temp script for two weeks to prepare for a warm read and then they show up and recite their lines just like they would if having a regular conversation with me. And by the way the character is a Japanese Ninja assassin who has been living in France for the past 7 years. You asshole your resume said you could speak French and do a Japanese accent. You sound like a California surfer… SERIOUSLY!
I love it when an actor gets ready to read and they’re off book (yes you can do it cause the copy was only two pages) and they lower their head, then look back at you and a character comes out.
Full blown French speaking Japanese fucking ninja!
That’s a beautiful moment, because I’m transported. I want to know more about this new person that just came alive in front of me. I get to see my character that I spent months writing, breathe life! My baby is born!
Now I have to have to hire you, cause you’re my baby mama… or daddy.
When a Director gives you a character to read, invest the time and go there.
5) NO PICTURES PLEASE… OK, IF YOU MUST!
Ahhhh the headshot. We love the beautiful faces. I swear every actress is still 19 in their headshots. Every actor is in the best shape of their lives in theirs.
If you’ve aged 5 years since your last headshot, please don’t submit your pre-pubescent photo in order to get your foot in the door. It’s just going to piss me off. It never fails, I send out a call: Actress, lead, 21 -35. I pick the actresses that have the sultry, athletic “look” I have in mind and she shows up looking like a mom of 2, with pot belly and warts.
Why did you send in that misleading headshot? I’ll tell you why! Cause you think I’m a fucking idiot and I wasn’t going to notice that your headshot looks nothing like you!
Look, all directors are prepared for a little headshot fibbery, it comes with the lovely job, but it just deflates our faith in truth, justice and the Hollywood way when an actor/actress blatantly submits an out of date headshot.
And another thing… don’t submit polaroids, Walgreen prints or bedroom shots.
I shit you not, I had an actress submit not once, but twice, some “come fuck me” shots of her in bed. And the part was not for a late night Skin-emax special either. (I might have forgave it if it was)
Aside from giving me permanent copies of your… ahem… “bid'ness”, I just think your crazy and will steer clear of you if I randomly run into you in public. It doesn’t make me want to cast or sleep with you. If you want to seduce me, be more subtle. Ya fucking weirdo!
The bane of all actors. The damn cold read.
I really don’t use these anymore, but when I do, I look for you to do the best read you can. In the event I ask you to do one, the secret is to ask for 10 minutes to review the material and go off in a dark corner and build a character out of thin air. This shows me you are at least attempting to craft a character from my unreasonable audition request. I will remember this, grant you the time, and hope lightning strikes.
Draw on your improv skills and nail it.
If you are tasked with doing what I call a “warm read”. Meaning you’ve gotten some sides ahead of time and have been asked to create a performance, please do just that. I am looking for #4, for reasons I outlined in #1. Take the time and use #3 to accomplish number #7. Go with your gut and use the zen way of wei wu wei! Action without action. The Christian from #2 will pray for you.
If you have an agent or Rep and you want to involve them in the process of negotiating your deal, involve them from the beginning.
DO NOT involve a newly signed agent post contract signing or even post production in the hopes of changing what you’ve already agreed to.
If you do this, and it has been done to me a couple times, you better hope I like you enough to be understanding, or we’re friends or some shit, because you will call down the wrath of MT. KILIMANJARO!
Nothing infuriates me more than having to deal with some “late to class” agent who wants to insert themselves into a film deal already done. First of all, in my un-humble opinion, only asshole agents do this. Take that how you want.
Secondly, it just makes us hate you as a business person. And for some reason we never forget what you did, which is that you just annoyed the shit out us by calling me on a Sunday morning to ambush me with an agent on three way call. It’s just amateur. If you’ve ever seen the “amatuer hour” scene in Ronin where Robert DeNiro ambushes Boromir with a cup of coffee, that’s what we want to do to you. Burn you with the coffee (that we’re drinking on Sunday morning when you called), choke you out and take your agent away from you.
CASTING CALL: INDIE FILM, FEMALE Co-Starring SAG/SAG Waiver, Age: 21-30, African American, Athletic, Some stunts and Nude/lovemaking scene. Pay $*00 a day.
READ THE CASTING CALL AGAIN.
UNDERSTAND THE CASTING CALL.
ASK YOURSELF IF YOU CAN DO WHAT’S BEING ASKED.
There’s nothing worse than getting to an audition and loving an actors performance, they look the part and seem generally agreeable.
Then you double check about stunts or nudity or a lovemaking scene and their face turns into that shitty half a frown. The one where it says they just read the call’s head line and ignored the important bits or their ignoramus Agent just wanted to get them to the audition and left out the questionable/objectionable pieces in the hopes that the director would love their client sooooo much that we would abandon our vision for the character and neuter the film to hire you.
Guess what… you guessed it.
We’re not going to hire you. (Unless a studio requires us to and then we’ll get a double)
But we’re still gonna be pissed that you didn’t take the time to understand what the part entailed. Instead of being an adult and saying you won’t do what we want and not showing up; you’ve now complicated our lives.
Maybe thats immature, but I do.
Because I was upfront and you were not. In indie films this is especially aggravating as we don’t have a lot of time or money and when you waste either it matters. Be honest with yourself, know your limits. And if Spike Lee asks you to show your tits… make it art. (Or tell them to go fuck themselves, politely, by not auditioning)
10) THE TRUTH! YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Ah, the adventures of wedding ring removal.
Why do actors do this? Listen, I’m here to cast a movie, I’m sure there are plenty of men who make movies to fuck their stars, fine do you, but I only tried that once when I cast my first short and never again.
But, please don’t do the wedding ring removable thing fellas and ladies. Directors need to trust our actors and when you do something that seems disingenuous during an audition (ie. removing wedding rings, dropping names, feigning that you are from the same home town as me) we have to ask ourselves… why?
And then we get insulted.
Insulted that you thought we would like you better if we thought we had a chance at bedding you. Even if we did want to “make-a-da-love-to-you” we’re gonna resent you later when we find out we can’t.
Just wear your ring proudly, its your ability as an actor that we really care for, at least I do, and I want to feel that I can trust you as a person. Actors and Directors become close during shoots and if that trust gets muddled from the start, by you attempting to tip the scales in your favor during an audition, that trust is going to be tainted. Its like lying in a relationship, if you do it, don’t let me find out.
And speaking of stretching the truth, If you don’t know how to competently shoot a bow and arrow, ride a horse or fight with a sword; don’t put it down as a skill. I actually look at the skills section of a resume and will test you if the part calls for you using one of those skills. Directors know that you can’t be the master of 25 different awesome skills, so don’t claim to be a stunt driver unless you have had actual training. ( See #3)
And badminton is not a skill.
Also, for the ladies… Since I’m a man, though I quite enjoy you showing up and exposing your best assets at an audition. If you come in, sans bra or panties, I’m not going to be paying attention to your acting. I’m gonna be looking at your goodies.
And I’m not going to hire you. I might lead you on and invite you over for drinks.
You can be sexy at an audition, just don’t be slutty. (Unless I’m casting a slut)
I can go to a bar or strip club if I’m looking for that. In the audition room, I’m look for the character, be that and be that well.
Cause I want to work with you!
gummygunk
blakekathryn
