Somehow before leaving I missed the part where it was in the “Library” and when I arrived I realized in a quandary. The Scottsdale Civic Center is kind of a large place with many different buildings. I parked, came to grips with the fact that I may end up wandering around on foot for an hour and miss my audition. With that, I set out.

I was lucky to run into an old man who pointed me toward the library. I was a little hesitant because I figured if the audition were really being held in the library that they would have put “library” on the audition notice somewhere. But having nothing better to go on, I went to the library.

As it turns out that is where it was, and apparently the audition notice did in fact say “library” on it. Right.

The audition itself went pretty well. I read for two characters, Jesse and Shane. I felt good about the Jesse read, but the Shane one didn’t feel right. Also, these were cold reads, as cold as you get. I walked in the room, sat in the chair, was handed the two scripts, stated my name for the camera, and we started. Not to say it was processed like that, we talked and whatnot, but as far as preparing for the audition, there was none of that.

We’ll see if anything materializes.

They had the auditions at Jimmy Flowers studio, it went very well, I feel comfortable with my performance. We’ll see how that turns out.

I didn’t feel in character at all – my performance felt flat to me. After auditioning for the character I planned too, they had me read for another character. That one felt allot better. My theory is that the first character being a cocky and arrogant character, is outside my comfort zone. But the second character is supposed to be this creepy sexaholic character. Totally in my comfort zone, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have to act for that one.

haha, I kid. ;)

Moral of the story is you win some and you lose some. But you can still take a lesson from the losses and , in some senses, turn it into a win. So what is it I can take from this experience?

Pace yourself: This last week (preceding the audition) was packed with events in my personal life. I was migrating jobs, and other projects consumed my time. I need to pace myself, and bite only as much as I can reasonably chew. This means either cancel the personal-life events, or cancel the audition.

Put forth the effort: I had the script for a week. I should have done the character development. I should have worked through all the quirks. But I didn’t, and it showed in the most glaring way possible.

Perspective: Not to encourage these types of situations, but the bad taste in my mouth will significantly sharpen the sweetness of future performances with the proper preperation. :)

They have expanded the scene’s we will potentially be reading for, all the same character.

These next few days are going to be fun. I’ll be updating this post regarding the callbacks when i know more.

*update 2008.04.23 @ 1:12pm: Today is the big day. I have math class tonight, after which I’ll be heading straight over to the call back. I’ve had only a few butterfly moments today. Regardless, I’m still calm.

*update 2008.04.23 @ 11:45pm: I’m back! What an experience.

First of all, lets get it over with. I did pretty well; with one glaring exception. An exception that kinda-sorta invalidates the “pretty well” claim.

When I was called in to audition, they had me do the 3rd of three sides they had provided for the barista character. This is a scene I was excited to do because it actually had some emotion (scared) involved. And while I’m traditionally scared (ironic I know) of scene’s that require emotion, I did kinda figure something out yesterday that seemed to work. I felt confident.

Much to my horror, about 3/4ths the way through the scene, I found that I was done, but the other actors were not. As it turns out, I somehow missed printing the second page of the scene. An exceptionally amature mistake. The cherry on top is that when I “thought” the scene was over, i kinda broke character and … yeah, kinda a mess.

I guess I can kinda forgive myself a little because after realizing I was missing something I went back into character … kinda.

Awkward.

How did that happen? Well a few of the sides that were emailed had a generic cover-page on them that had stuff like “name of project” and “name of first writer” etc. And I didn’t want to waste paper, so I thought I’d just select the pages to print in the Print Dialogue box. And by selecting them myself I missed the whole “page 3″ thing that happened to be present in that side.

Regardless of how it happened, its my fault. A real actor (which is what I’m striving for) would have carefully reviewed and double checked everything to be certain they had everything in order. The good news is that this experience will always be there to remind me to double/triple/quadruply check everything.

Lessons learned/reinforced

• Double/triple/quadruply check everything
• Don’t break character when you “think” your done, wait for someone to say “cut”

To end on a good note. I met a lot of really nice people. All the other actors I talked to were really nice and fun to visit with. I broke up my practicing with mingling. I think I did well on the “your there to audition, not to socialize rule.” – this audition was kind of an exception just because I stayed after.

Some people report sleepless nights just before an audition. I slept just fine last night. Nothing out of the ordinary.

My hope is that this seemingly calm and collected state can be retained throughout the audition process. I tend to shake like a leaf when i get up in front of everyone, so this journey of discovery is not quite over.

I’ll be leaving from work to go directly over to the audition. I have the map printed out. I have my two Headshot/resume’s that they will need. I have my “wardrobe” – which consists of my nerdy glasses, a plain white t-shirt, my leather belt with the skull and web, and my brown/tan Etnies.

*Update 2008.04.18 @ 3:42pm: Uh-oh, over the last half hour, I’ve had increasing hits of “the butterfly” – which would be that flitty feeling in my stomach. I’m not aware of any conscious thoughts causing, probably my subconscious breaking down or something.

*Update 2008.04.18 @ 7:42pm: Bam! Done deal. Alright, so the audition went great. Why? Well, I didn’t screw up the lines, i didn’t have long awkward pauses where I looked around and thought to myself “oh crap oh crap, I’m not supposed to be doing this!”, and I was only kinda awkward once I was through. Also, i didn’t get butterfly stomachy befor-hand, and didn’t start shaking until about half way through the scene.

I think they liked what I did. Partway through my schpeel Craig McMahon reacted to something I did. It was a good reaction, but part of me was wanting to look/listen/stop; luckily my practicing took over and I continued without ruining my presentation (which would be my audition).

Also I was finally able to meet Craig McMahon, so no longer is he a little 48×48 pixel image on the other end of the message board. :) Very nice guy. And I was able to meet Elizabeth DaSilva, and Matt Hyne? (i hope i got that last name right, sorry.)

Overall, for a first audition, it was awesome. I don’t think I could have had a better experience. Hopefully they’ll find my performance appealing enough to put it in their movie. We’ll find out in a week or so.