Actors who contact you.

Azmyth

Azmyth

Veteran
I'm not entirely sure what the standard is for this so I figured I'd post it here and see what other actors thought.

After you've gone to an audition and done your thing. If you haven't received a callback after a certain period, do you contact the casting director yourself and ask?

I have had several actors contact me wanting to know if we'd made any decisions yet, while others want to know if they got the part point blank.

I was under the impression that it was done on a "don't call us, we'll call you" basis.

I know with jobs its usually good practice to send a followup/thank you email to the job your trying to get to let them know your still interested, but this just feels different to me and almost unprofessional.

thoughts?
 
do you at least give them a callback date, so if they didn't get a call by that date they at least know they didn't get it?

and talking about actors contacting you, I had this actor find my personal email and track down the location of my studio... and from the casting call.. freaken didn't expect that.
 
I've had people text me two minutes after they finished auditioning with "Did I get the part?"
Had emails that night from people.

Had one guy who stalked me and my crew, with several different run ins in walmart, and other places in town. We'd never seen the guy before until he auditioned. He came to the open call, and was there before any of us were. Scared the crud out of us.. then, he auditioned early but decided to stick around the WHOLE DAY outside. We started at 8 am and ended at 5.. he was there at 7am. The next set of auditions were closed, and while we were setting up I made the comment "I bet.. "the guy" shows back up".

Sure enough, the others walk to have a cigarette and they see him pull up. We caught him at the door and sent him on his way. He wanted to audition again, he didn't feel his performance was his best the first time. He's friends with a very big name in Hollywood.. CSI? Pirates of the..? and claimed to have been called personally by him for a callback. Of course every time you run into the guy, he has a different story and eventually he added the "I need this role because my homelife is terrible and we lost our house.. blah blah..." Not sure why he's chasing little indie films if he has friends in high places like he says...

So far, we've had about 7 run ins with him, he emailed us last night again asking. I told him all the people that were cast were contacted via phone, and where he could find a list of the roles and who we cast in them. Hopefully that takes care of that.

We saw over 150 people. No way I could call everyone of them and say "you didn't get the part". We told them we'd be making decisions at the first of the year. Not sure why people thought we'd be doing it any sooner than what we told them. Oh well.. when you deal with people in any facet thats what you have to deal with.
 
That's REALLY annoying. Actors or aspiring actors should just get used to going to an audition and then forgetting about it. A person can drive themselves nuts obsessing over past recent auditions and whether they are getting a part or not.

As a shooter, I've gotten so used to this process and this business that I sometimes even forget that I sent an estimate out for a certain job because I don't give it a 2nd thought anymore.

You might get 10% of what you attempt for if your lucky, so why bug out about it?

.
 
if they contacted you...bad on them. only an agent should check with you and ONLY IF you HAVE told them you might be considering someone and then ONLY if the agent knows of a potential conflict. period. if an actor can't handle that...too bad.

if you are doing this without agents and an actor wanted to send a note saying they were cast in something else and send you those dates (again showing conflict), but without asking if they got a call back or part...that would border on ok. but only without asking...

i am sitting on two call backs right now. won't hear if i don't get the parts. that IS part of an actors job to deal with.

sooooo..in other words...ditto what most everyone else said.
 
On very rare occasions I will gently, respectfully, and by email only, ask a casting director if a role I auditioned for has been cast so I can clear (or continue to hold) any time they might have asked me if I was available for. I never do this sooner than a week or so after the audition, and only if the 'availability' questions seemed particularly serious on their part, and *only* if I have a clear and present conflict for those dates that I must immediately resolve. I always preface the inquiry with "I wouldn't normally ask this, but...". No one has yet indicated to me any unusual surprise or indignation at my politely worded requests. I'd say I've done this maybe 3% of the time or less...
 
We just finished our last day of auditions, and it went smoother than the previous two but none were "terrible". I really only had issues with amateurs who have never done this before, or at least not film.

And those who "did" do that were almost always people that weren't the best actors either.. Most I just didn't even bother responding to. We told them at the auditions, that if they got the part they'd be contacted personally, and that a list of those we did cast would be available on all our sites for them to keep an eye out for. Which most of the time you don't even get that, you just don't get called at all.

Those who did do this who were considering, automatically went down a notch on our list because if they are that impatient, then I can't imagine working with them when we need them to be patient during long days of filming. I can see those people being drama queens.

The one I did respond to, I just pointed her to the cast list so she could see.. as I don't feel comfortable delivering bad news (which I shouldn't even be doing) I figured that would be the end of it, but she felt the need to reply and ask what she did wrong. As an actress I'd think she would be aware of the fact that you don't have to do anything "wrong" to not get a part.. you may have just simply not been right for it.. no matter how perfect your audition was.
 
Azmyth said:
As an actress I'd think she would be aware of the fact that you don't have to do anything "wrong" to not get a part.. you may have just simply not been right for it.. no matter how perfect your audition was.
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Sadly this is one of the hardest lessons any actor ever learns. at least Ted is respectful and only makes contact about conflicts. That is within the lines as an indie actor.
 
DadinWestchester said:
"Don't call us, we'll call you." It is very unprofessional for an actor to contact a CD or director after an audition.
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I agree, I think it's sort of an unspoken and understood rule that if you don't get called back that generally means you didn't get the part. This works the same way in every industry and is understood by everyone...
 
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