Audition Day

Auditions can turn the quietest studio into a zoo. The bigger the group, the louder the room. If you have an actor booked every 15 minutes, it won’t take long for a crowd to form. Take advantage of it. This is a good time to meet new talent, catch up with old friends or just put names to faces. 

In anime, the talent pool is small enough so that most of the players know each other very well. Producers, writers, actors, directors, and engineers have worked on projects together year in and year out. The actors will want to study the audition sides in order to do well. Beyond that, they will probably want to get in some socializing, too. Chances are, your lobby will spontaneously be transformed into a networking party.

You will need three things ready on audition day:

- a copy of the schedule for your director and your recording engineer

- a sign in sheet for the actors

- enough sides for everyone

The director needs the schedule to know who is next in line. The engineer needs the list so he/she can properly label the auditions. A sign in sheet lets you keep track of everyone who actually made it to the audition. It can be as simple as a lined sheet where the actor sign their names. For non-union jobs, a sign in sheet may not be necessary. We covered sides and schedules in detail in previous installments.

If you are not directing the auditions yourself, it is your responsibility to prepare your director for actor questions about the series and individual roles.  So by this point, you should have given the director as much information about the show as the client wants released to the public. A good director will be self-motivated, enthusiastic about the project and happy to do their homework.

Of course, you can only lead a horse to water. 

I am going to take a step back here and give a little advice to those of you who are thinking about becoming voice directors. Voice directing is a great way to make a living. The pay is good plus you get to sit in air-conditioned bliss all day telling actors what to do. You even get free coffee and treats and there's usually a lot of laughing involved.

So for those of you who want to be directors, let the following be a cautionary tale.

I was present at an audition where the voice director clearly knew nothing about the show and had no interest in finding out. Every question was met with “I don’t know” or a derivative thereof. Thankfully, a marketing executive for the production company happened to stop by and saw what was going on. He wound up staying for the next few days until all the auditions were over. Then he fired the director. 

I can pick up the phone and replace a voice director in about five minutes. But I cannot pick up the phone and replace a voice director who knows the show inside and out because she has read the manga, watched the fan subs and already knows what’s going happen in the next season.

If you want a plum job, you cannot be lazy. Your reputation will often walk in the door before you do.  Be professional and know your material. Just because you have a job today, does not mean you will have the job tomorrow!

Now back to our scheduled show…

Auditions require a degree of acting by everyone involved. Whether you are the producer, the voice director, or the receptionist, you will repeat the same things over and over again, hour after hour, sometimes day after day. Try to treat the last actor who’s reading that day with the same enthusiasm as you treated the first. Remember that each audition is a job interview and we all know how nerve-wracking job interviews can be. So be nice.

As a producer, you are there to support everyone attached to your show. If you bring in the right actors to read, help those actors feel comfortable, and help the director and engineer feel prepared, then your auditions should be a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

The next time, I will discuss what happens during the auditions and after.