The watched pot never boils, my friends!

Yesterday I got to play casting director. I posted a breakdown for the webisode we shot this morning (the grand finale of Inner Confidence the Webseries). I thought to myself, “oh, this will be easy, there are so many actors in LA and they’re all looking for a chance to be on camera… I’m going to be batting away talent because they’ll all flock to me!” So I posted the breakdown. And they began submitting.

After a few hours, I had about 100 submissions for three roles. Pretty good selection of people, too, so I marked all the ones that I liked. Then I started calling them. The first girl didn’t answer her phone. “Oh, no problem,” I thought, “she’ll call right back, because I know I always call right back when I get an opportunity to audition.” I went about my business and continued calling others. The next girl didn’t answer, either. Eh, she must be at work, so I tried a third one… okay, no answer there, either. After ten calls and NO ANSWERS or CALLBACKS I started to panic a little. How come no one is answering or calling me back!?

As soon as you do something else, the steam begins to rise...

I freaked out a little because it was really only a matter of hours before we were scheduled to shoot, and if no one showed up… I thought for sure any actor would be thrilled to get a booking without even having to audition. It happened to me last week and I loved it. Three hour shoot, no audition, and you get copy and credit for stuff that’s shot on an HD camera? Yeah!

Finally someone called me back. A sweet girl who sounded really happy to get the role. One down. Two to go. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening calling people’s answering machines, leaving the same message over and over again until 6:30 at night (at which point I thought it would be a little rude to call after for work-related stuff). I gave up and started making dinner.

You know the saying – a watched pot never boils! As soon as I gave up and distracted myself the phone started ringing. A couple girls called me back and voila – I had a cast. Thank God.

The point of this post is: wow, I always thought that casting directors would have a tough time because they would be overloaded with submissions and people bugging them to get cast, but it looks like they have the opposite problem as well!!!