Getting ready to audition

I've got an audition tomorrow at CBS, so I thought I'd write about a few things I'm doing to get ready. 

As usual, my agent sent a copy of the sides in PDF format. There are several pages, but what I do is type them into my word processing program so I can condense them down to a page or two. I don't need all of everybody else's lines. The only ones I keep are the ones that effect my lines, or are cue lines for me.

After re-typing them in 12 pt font, I go through and make my lines 14 pt. After printing the sides out, I will also underline the lines in red ink. With the bigger font size and the red ink, my lines really pop if I need to quickly glance at the sides during the audition.

After I do that, I look at the given circumstances: the who, what, where, when, why and how. Where does the scene take place? How does that affect the character? I answer all of those questions and establish the character's motivation - what does he want, and how badly does he want it? Why does he want it? What happens if he doesn't get it? Answering these questions help us to "raise the stakes." The more important something is for the character, the more interesting his actions will be.

Now I work on memorizing the lines. And I don't just sit in a chair and do it - we need to move around and do other things while we're memorizing. This not only helps us memorize, it saves our butt if the casting director decides to have us do some action at the audition, because getting directions to move can throw us off if we have only been sitting in a chair memorizing. (The exception might be if your character is going to be sitting in a chair the whole time at an audition, but you never know if the CD will decide to try something different. You want to be ready for anything at an audition!)

If I have a chance, maybe I'll take a couple of pics of the studio lot tomorrow and post them next week.

Cheers,

Michael