Amount of time per actor for Auditions

A

AJinNYC

Carbonite Member
Looking to know how much time I should allocate per actor for auditions. Looking at holding them at ripley-grier with a limited budget, so I kind of need to move people in and out as quickly as possible, since you rent a room by the hour.
 
I'm familiar with Ripley Grier. They audition a lot of musical people there so ask for a studio away from the pianos, if you can get it. Have someone with you wrangling and signing in the actors so you can stay in the room. Issue sides and have a dedicated reader. Are you going to be taping these auditions? It depends on what your casting but I would give try to give 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the part, how many takes you want to give, how many people you're bringing in, etc. Casting sessions like that can easily go all day, as you probably know, usually takes all day.
 
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It's a character-driven indie feature. So with that, then let me ask this, do you think two 10 hour days to cast 14 parts (5 of which are vital) would be sufficient, if I pre-screen actors so I don't have 300 people show up.
 
It's hard to say without knowing the script, and the character breakdowns. How are you accepting submissions? Actor's Access? For your principals, you want to audition people and then bring a few of the front runners back for call backs so it's usually over more than one day.
 
In my experience 15 minutes per actor will generally be fine, unless you get someone (or a couple of people) you really like, and run them through an additional scene or two to get a better feel for them. Then there's callbacks. For callbacks I think you want to set aside at least 30 minutes per actor, probably more if you're going to have them act with other potentials and rotate the combinations to find what works.
 
FYI when I held auditions for a short film last year about 25% of actors were no shows. May be different where you are
 
I scheduled everyone at 15 minute intervals which was really no problem to keep up with. some broke early some took all 15 minutes. none went over. There will be cancelations, some being too late to fill the spot.
I did 30 minute intervals on call backs.
 
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