Production: casting

The producer I'm interning under is working to develop a show for television and today I helped with a casting session, which was held in a room at a casting studio. This was all new to me, but the way it worked was we hired a production director who helps us (and other productions that hire her) cast actors.

We were given a room in her casting studio, while the other rooms were being used by commercials for Intel and Geico, so I saw a lot of their actors come and go. My duties were to stay in the lobby with a copy of call sheet of the actors, copies of the asides (excerpts of scripts for character-specific dialogues), and help check them in and keep track of who was here at what time for each role. It took about six hours from start to finish.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened was a woman auditioning for a Geico commercial brought in a small white dog. Next thing I know, I've got the dog in my lap, holding onto it while she auditioned! Even while actors for our production checked in I held onto that dog (it was a wiggler), giving out asides and checking off names with only one arm available.

One thing to note was half of the actors were late and a handful simply didn't show and with no explanation. My producer later told me that was typical.