Friday, January 21, 2011

Game Face. No Face.

I remember a little over 2 years ago, I was at an open seminar - where a guest is invited to talk about the business of Acting. While waiting for the seminar to start, a group of us (actors) were talking about commercial classes. I guess for Actors, the word "Casting" is a very sensitive word. Just right when we were talking about Brooke and Mary and Actress jumped in, and asked "Casting? Which Casting Director?" One of us replied "House Productions."
All of the sudden, this actress' face went flat "Oh, they only cast Non-Union stuff." and turned her face away and totally ignored us - like nothing ever happened.

Rude, wasn't it?

Just because a Casting House that cast more Non-Union projects, that doesn't mean they don't cast Union productions. It's up to the Producer, not the Casting Director.

A similar situation happened recently. My friend Audrey was talking to another actress while we were waiting for our class to start. She mistakenly introduced me as someone who works at Wulf Casting. This other actress all of sudden got excited and pulled out a pen and paper, and wrote "WOLF CASTING" on the paper and asked me if she can email me her headshot and resume. I told her Wulf Casting is own by Matthew Wulf, who used to worked at Impossible Casting, and I'm not associated with any of them. I have my own company.

Then I told her that currently, most of the projects that I cast - that actually PAY the talents are very Asian-specific. Industrial and Voice Overs that require talents who speak an Asian language or trained in an Asian Culture-related skill. My other projects with more diverse cast are either low-pay or no-pay.

All of the sudden, this Actress' face went flat, and moved her attention back to Audrey, and started to talk about her commercial audition.

Just because I currently don't have a good-paid projection that suits her type, that doesn't mean I will never come across a project like that.

There's no need to be rude.
If you like to be superficial, the keep your game face on at all time.

4 comments:

Meg said...

Wow. Great post Wayne. I just started reading your blog. I hope that's okay. I helped with an audition last week and it was actually a FREE event for actors to meet an up and coming casting company. Things were a little chaotic so I did my best and I had 2 actors actually be very aggressive and rude to me. It was so awful. I just don't understand rudeness in general in this business. Needless to say, I remember their names and faces...just wanted to vent. I hope all is well with you!

Anonymous said...

Hey there's a new company you might want to check out. The address is newtalentalltalent.com, check it out, it's totally free.

Matt @ Wulf said...

Hey Wayne -
Just curious, who introduced you as working for me? Im guessing it was Celia.

But yeah, this scenario happens... not much you can do about it.

-M

Wonderfulcow said...

Matt, actually, Andrea got the wrong impression when I invited her to join WULF CASTING group on Facebook. :) She was pretty new to FB at the time...

W