Donna in Hollywoodland

The blog from Los Angeles and Hollywood by Donna Grayson

Tuesday, May 31, 2005


Commercial Callback - Singing and Cues


Yeah !!! I did something right. I got a callback for the commercial.
My agent called me last Friday as I was running around taking care of the Automobile Smog-check. So last night I left my boss and a coworker a voice-mail, saying I would be late this morning.

The callback was once again in West Los Angeles on Bundy. And I allowed myself plenty of time to drive there. It was at 10 am, and I was worried about the morning traffic. I wore the exact same thing I wore last Thursday. I had it waiting on a hanger, just in case.

This time when I arrived, there were less people there. Instead of a gazillion people all dressed in black - there we only a billion. No, No, No ... They had it whittled down to around 50 .

When I got there I signed in. There was a man and woman engrossed in conversation at the sign-in table. They were holding everyone up.She seemed more engrossed in him, than he and her. There was a line behind them, and it was getting jumbled because of the wait.
A young man was standing in the jumble. I said "Are you in line?". He said "Yeah".
I said "Oh, okay - well, then I'll get in line right after you, since you were here first."
The look on his face was one of shock and amazement. An actress being kind to another actor... actually being polite and considerate waiting my turn. He looked like I had just handed him a big bunch of money. It must have been a while since someone in the industry had showed him alittle compassion.
Yeah, being nice to one another in the entertainment industry ... well, I was not entirely without motives. I figured I could build up some Karma so maybe God would look down and smile on me during the audition.

Our audition instructions now had changed. They wanted us to go into another room and listen to the music playing. And then actually sing the choir parts - outloud - even if we were awful. No more lip-syncing to what was recorded like we did last time.
Its been awhile since I have been in a vocal class. I mean, if I knew this was going to happen, I have some practice cassette tapes and I would have been prepared and done my vocal exercises. But no... it was Surprise, Surprise. ...

After rehearsing the song in the room a few times, I had quite the wait. I just sat there patiently. I thought of reading Yahoo news on my new cellphone, but no - I was not in the mood. So I just sat there and waited.
The guy across the way was chatting with a young woman. He seemed to be down in the dumps, and reminded me of a young Woody Allen . He was saying something like "I mean, look at everyone - they obviously don't even know what type they want yet. How can they not know what they are looking for when this is the call-back already."
I wanted to say "Ahh, its a Choir. And every choir I have ever seen always has a variety of different looking people in it."
But I didn't . I would just occasionally grin at him. I was trying to get to the "Calm" zone.

Then it was my turn to go in. My group was a total of 6 people. We had to wait outside the room while the group before us finished.
Why is it when people get nervous, they say really stupid things, and act really weird ? There was one guy in our group who was doing just that and talking really loud and making really bad jokes.
The Casting Assistant kept "Sush-ing" him. Just on the other side of the door where we were standing, people who were auditioning. And The Producer and Director, and who knows who else. The general rule of thumb is That if you can hear them, they can hear you. So I just stood there looking at the floor, as if to say "hey, I'm not the one making all the noise".

Finally, it would my groups turn to audition. In the room was the camera person, and three people on the couch. Those three people seemed really laid back and relaxed. Somewhat unusual for a Call-back situation.
The camera person gave us our instructions, and started the camera.
Oh-Oh, not good.... when we were to walk in on our cue, he didn't tell us where to go or where to stand. He was filming. And so I just did what the really tall guys in the group were doing ... and I ended up in a bad place, blocked behind the tall guys. The other short women who was now also blocked from the camera, tapped me on the shoulder. We moved up to the side. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to be there.

It was all so confusing, because we were singing acappella, with no musical accompaniment at all - and I was just realizing it, while trying to figure out where to stand.

Once the camera was stopped, they switched a few people around. And I was wondering if they were going to give us better instructions on where to stand. But they didn't
So one of the guys said "Did we just screw that up? Did we stand in the right place ?"
I never heard an answer. So for the next two times, myself and the other short girl just did the same thing. She said something to me that we needed to be standing where the camera could see us. So I guess we were in the right spot, even though we weren't with the other two tall guys auditioning for the choir.

We actually got to film it twice more. The three guys were talking between themselves as we auditioned. I heard one of the three guys say something to the another "Yeah, yeah - she's singing. I can hear her."
I sang as loud as I could. I wasn't sure if they were talking about me or the other girl.
And then they made some mention about people not knowing the lyrics. We had been told to keep the lyrics in our hands. So I just didn't even look at the lyric sheet again for the rest of the time. They didn't have them posted on the wall.

All in all, the guys who auditioned us were very nice, and low key. This was really a non-stress audition. They seemed really nice, and made a point to even say good-bye to each one of us.
But I left kind of feeling that it didn't go so well. Mainly because we didn't know where to stand when we came in on our cue. And also I wish I had known they were really looking for singers, not lip-sync-ers, and I would have practiced.
I guess if we had messed up, they would have said something. But I still left feeling "Dang, we screwed it up."

Later, I was looking at LA Casting and I saw a casting notice for band players in this commercial. And they wanted people to actually play the instruments. So I wonder if they did decide to go with real singers who would sing in the choir, and not just lip-sync. I will be watching for this commercial, I really want to see how it turns out.


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