July 12, 2023 • 15 mins
Today, we'll examine how the audition process has transitioned from in-person sessions to self-tapes in the post-COVID world. Additionally, we'll provide a brief overview of "The Righteous Gemstones," a show featuring John Goodman and the exceptionally funny Edi Patterson
------------------------------------- Closing Music by Carly Ozard Contact Ray at Green Room on Air: greenroomonair@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Green Room on Air.
Green Room on Air.
The podcast ISL Parts of the Inter World.
Hello everybody.
You have reached Green Room on Air, and I'm your host, Ray Reti.
How are you doing today? I hope you're doing great.
I'm doing good.
(00:21):
I had a little visit to the emergency room last night.
I've had some fatigue and I went to the doctor.
She had me do some blood tests and I'm in Costco yesterday evening around seven 30 shopping for some produce and thanks Whole Foods, of course.
And I get a call from my doctor, go to the emergency room right away.
(00:44):
There's something wrong with your kidney.
Okay? So I go trying to keep calm.
I'm there for three hours doing all the tests.
Nothing wrong with me.
Doctor tells me, well she shouldn't have really sent you here.
It really wasn't bad.
So now I'm pooped cuz last night I spent in the emergency room, but I'm here.
(01:11):
You know when you get in your sixties, they start, they suddenly start all the doctors your doctors suddenly start getting very cautious.
I noticed anytime you have a little complaint, man, they're like, All right, we're doing all the tests.
We're sending you an emergency room.
We're gonna scan you here, we're gonna scan you there.
(01:31):
We're gonna stick stuff up that hole in this hole and make sure you're road ready.
You know, today, I don't have a guess, but I wanted to talk about how auditions have changed since Covid.
It's incredible.
For those of you who aren't actors, Normally you have you have three kinds of auditions basically.
(01:55):
Of course, there are others, but basically you have three.
You have a theater audition, which is either musical theater and or a straight play, which means no music.
You have a com, a commercial audition for a TV commercial, and you have a TV or film audition.
Now, it used to be, That you'd head down to your casting director.
(02:22):
Your agent would send you to your casting director, and you'd you'd do your audition there.
And it would either be well for TV and, and film and commercials.
You usually just had some sides, which means some lines that you had to do and you prepared for those before you went usually.
And then you went home and you waited, and maybe you got called back for another audition and maybe you didn't for theater.
(02:46):
Usually you'd have to do a monologue and or a song, or sometimes they would just give you a script that is usually way longer than you'd get for a movie or commercial or tv.
And you'd do a cold reading sometimes with a reader behind a desk.
Usually for equity theater, it's just a stage manager.
And then often, for whatever reason, I'm not sure with non-equity, non-professional theater, you'd, you'd read with the other actors.
(03:15):
And of course that's not a steadfast rule, but that's the way it was done.
And then you'd go home and you'd wait to see if you got a callback.
Lo and behold, we had Covid our favorite little menace.
Well, no longer could people go in in person to audition because you might spread yield plague to your yield actor friends, and you wouldn't wanna do that.
(03:43):
And they wouldn't let you anyway and or you'd have to audition with a mask on, which happened sometimes later, but not always.
So what evolved was something that happened once in a while before and now became the rule.
This self tape, it's not a tape of course, although it's still called a tape, the self tape.
(04:11):
It's called a tape because back in the olden days, that's, that's how you recorded stuff on tape.
For those of you who are under what, I don't know, 40, and it has become an industry in, in and of itself, there are a myriad of people who will teach you how to make great self tapes.
(04:32):
So that you can send them in and hopefully get a call back or get cast in your favorite show, TV show or movie or commercial or play.
The thing is, and here's the thing, and almost every actor I've talked to hates this.
It used to be that all you had to do was act.
(04:54):
You learned your lines as best you could.
You made choices.
You went in and you acted.
And you went home.
Now you have to have equipment and they tell you, oh, it doesn't matter that much, you know, just to make sure it looks professional and all.
But the thing is, if somebody else has great lighting and, and a good camera and a great backdrop and you don't have that, you're gonna be, even if you're acting is great, you, you're, you're, you're one step behind the eight ball folks.
(05:28):
So you have to be actor, producer, director, lighting designer, editor.
Yeah.
Or you can pay somebody to do this for you.
And believe me, there are tons of money who, people who will now take your money to help you do your self-tape auditions.
(05:49):
It's an art in and of itself.
I have a setup now.
I have a couple different backdrops.
I have a couple different frames.
I have a blue backdrop, which I use most of the time.
I have a tan backdrop.
I have a my, my mirrorless Nikon camera because I'm a photographer, but you can use an iPhone in that iPhones.
(06:10):
Now, God, they, they shoot in super high resolution, so they work great.
The only problem with it, it's a little harder to get the video off the iPhone than it is on a regular camera, but, People are figuring that out.
There's even apps now, there are even apps for doing auditions on your phone specifically.
(06:31):
I bought lighting for video, which I didn't have.
I, I have a tripod.
I have a couple of different shotgun mics.
I have wireless mics that pin and hide on your body.
I've had to invest quite a bit of money and and still with all that, I have never made the perfect audition tape.
(06:59):
I just did one today.
I even have now I even now have now a teleprompter on my laptop.
So it looks like I know the lines if I don't know them, because sometimes, It's just too many to learn, and then you have to hold the script in your hand and then you're constantly looking down and trying to not, and it gets very cumbersome.
(07:23):
With the movie, usually the lines aren't that long, so you can pretty much memorize 'em.
But if you're auditioning for a play and they give you like five pages and you have to do it with a reader who's behind the camera, like my wife, Well, I either ho have to hold the script in my hand and, and try to relate to her or use my teleprompter, which is out there.
(07:46):
So that's what I've been doing.
I'm sure they realize I don't have it memorized.
They probably realize I have the lines out there somewhere.
But today I did one for a play.
I won't say what or where cuz I'd like to get the part and I don't wanna jeopardize that.
But I go through the whole thing.
And I was gonna have it done yesterday, but as I said before, I ended up going to the emergency room.
(08:09):
So I had to wake up super early this morning after going to bed extremely late.
So I have almost no sleep and I'm about to pass out.
But right now, actually so I, I did this audition today and I put on a green shirt and I did the audition.
And it was pretty good.
I mean, there were things I could have done way better, but yeah, it was, overall I was happy with it.
(08:30):
The only problem is the left shot of my shirt was all wrinkled and I couldn't see that when I put it on.
My wife said she saw it, but she didn't wanna say anything, which is weird because she always says something.
I guess she knew I was in a hurry.
And so now when I watch the audition video that I sent in, all I can see is my wrinkle shirt.
That's all I see.
My wrinkle shirt.
(08:57):
Oh yeah.
So you also have to be a wardrobe person.
There you go.
Well, you always had to kind of do that, but you know now it, now it just adds on to all the other things you gotta do.
Actor, director, producer, editor, lighting, designers, sound designer, wardrobe person, hair, makeup, you're everything.
(09:22):
And it's taken a lot of burden off of pro producers and casting directors.
I mean, you do all the work now, they just sit there and watch it on their computer screen.
And so now, even though they don't have to do it that way, some of 'em are still doing it that way.
It's becoming the norm in, in some cases, I hope it goes back to the in-person stuff so that I can just act.
(09:50):
Concentrate on that, but I don't know.
The world has changed quite a bit and it keeps changing and I ain't getting any younger.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you're in your sixties and you're in a profession and the profession changes and you feel like you're kind of getting slowly pushed out of it because of your age and.
(10:16):
Now because of maybe your gender or your race cuz of diversity, which I'm all for, not against diversity, but the problem is kind of leaves me out of a lot of stuff now and that's neither here nor there, but it means what do I do? You know? So I have to think of new ways to keep doing what I'm doing or do something else.
(10:40):
Yeah.
So the industry.
For actors in terms of auditioning, has made a huge, huge shift and I don't think most people are aware of that, nor do maybe they care.
(11:02):
I don't know.
But I just wanted to educate you and let you know what's been going on.
Cause I think it's kind of interesting myself.
I do.
What else is going? I've been watching the Righteous Gemstones on H B O.
Wow.
What a f what a fun show.
(11:23):
I'm on season two now.
The Righteous gemstones stars.
John Goodman, Danny McBride, Adam Devine.
Edie Pearson, Cassidy Freeman, and well, we all know John Goodman is, is great, right? Most of you may know him from Roseanne or the Big Lebowski.
(11:54):
Danny McBride is, is Danny McBride.
He writes his shows the way he writes 'em, and you know, it's a Danny McBride show and it's.
Dark, sarcastic comedy, and that's what this is.
They're a family of modern day preachers.
And they're basically horrible people.
(12:17):
But I would like to talk about Ededie Patterson, not Edie Peterson.
Ededie Patterson is the most, one of the most hilarious people I have ever seen on television.
You just gotta just watch it for her.
She is so damn funny.
It's amazing.
(12:38):
And then if you watch her interviewed, she's completely different than the character she plays.
I just love it.
She has a huge background in improv.
She's a member of the the Groundlings, which is a very famous improv company.
She's a main member there and she performs there still apparently.
(13:01):
So she's just great.
She's just great.
And I love the show, so if you get a chance, check it out.
Check it out.
It's called it's the exact title.
I wanna make sure I got it right.
The Righteous Gemstones.
It's on H B O or I guess if you don't have H B O through like Comcast.
(13:23):
You have to get it on Max, which is also H B O.
I don't understand why HBO O Max, which is the subscription streaming version of HBO, changed their name to Max.
I have no idea why they did that, but they did.
It was somebody's brilliant idea in corporate.
(13:47):
All right, folks, that's my show for today.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Keep keep on trucking.
Don't stop trucking.
And until next time, I will see you on the boards.
And don't forget, if you love this show Iterating on Po Apple Podcast.
(14:11):
Tell your friends, tell your enemies.
And if you, if you wanna get ahold of me, send me an email at Green Room on air gmail.com.
All righty folks.
As I said, until next time, I will see you on the boards.
Take care of your sales.
Bye-bye.
(14:44):
It's easy if.
(15:04):
All the people for today, it.
(15:29):
Nothing to kill or die and no religion to all.
Green Room on Air.
Green Room on Air.
The podcast ISL Parts of the Inter World.
Hello everybody.
You have reached Green Room on Air, and I'm your host, Ray Reti.
How are you doing today? I hope you're doing great.
I'm doing good.
(00:21):
I had a little visit to the emergency room last night.
I've had some fatigue and I went to the doctor.
She had me do some blood tests and I'm in Costco yesterday evening around seven 30 shopping for some produce and thanks Whole Foods, of course.
And I get a call from my doctor, go to the emergency room right away.
(00:44):
There's something wrong with your kidney.
Okay? So I go trying to keep calm.
I'm there for three hours doing all the tests.
Nothing wrong with me.
Doctor tells me, well she shouldn't have really sent you here.
It really wasn't bad.
So now I'm pooped cuz last night I spent in the emergency room, but I'm here.
(01:11):
You know when you get in your sixties, they start, they suddenly start all the doctors your doctors suddenly start getting very cautious.
I noticed anytime you have a little complaint, man, they're like, All right, we're doing all the tests.
We're sending you an emergency room.
We're gonna scan you here, we're gonna scan you there.
(01:31):
We're gonna stick stuff up that hole in this hole and make sure you're road ready.
You know, today, I don't have a guess, but I wanted to talk about how auditions have changed since Covid.
It's incredible.
For those of you who aren't actors, Normally you have you have three kinds of auditions basically.
(01:55):
Of course, there are others, but basically you have three.
You have a theater audition, which is either musical theater and or a straight play, which means no music.
You have a com, a commercial audition for a TV commercial, and you have a TV or film audition.
Now, it used to be, That you'd head down to your casting director.
(02:22):
Your agent would send you to your casting director, and you'd you'd do your audition there.
And it would either be well for TV and, and film and commercials.
You usually just had some sides, which means some lines that you had to do and you prepared for those before you went usually.
And then you went home and you waited, and maybe you got called back for another audition and maybe you didn't for theater.
(02:46):
Usually you'd have to do a monologue and or a song, or sometimes they would just give you a script that is usually way longer than you'd get for a movie or commercial or tv.
And you'd do a cold reading sometimes with a reader behind a desk.
Usually for equity theater, it's just a stage manager.
And then often, for whatever reason, I'm not sure with non-equity, non-professional theater, you'd, you'd read with the other actors.
(03:15):
And of course that's not a steadfast rule, but that's the way it was done.
And then you'd go home and you'd wait to see if you got a callback.
Lo and behold, we had Covid our favorite little menace.
Well, no longer could people go in in person to audition because you might spread yield plague to your yield actor friends, and you wouldn't wanna do that.
(03:43):
And they wouldn't let you anyway and or you'd have to audition with a mask on, which happened sometimes later, but not always.
So what evolved was something that happened once in a while before and now became the rule.
This self tape, it's not a tape of course, although it's still called a tape, the self tape.
(04:11):
It's called a tape because back in the olden days, that's, that's how you recorded stuff on tape.
For those of you who are under what, I don't know, 40, and it has become an industry in, in and of itself, there are a myriad of people who will teach you how to make great self tapes.
(04:32):
So that you can send them in and hopefully get a call back or get cast in your favorite show, TV show or movie or commercial or play.
The thing is, and here's the thing, and almost every actor I've talked to hates this.
It used to be that all you had to do was act.
(04:54):
You learned your lines as best you could.
You made choices.
You went in and you acted.
And you went home.
Now you have to have equipment and they tell you, oh, it doesn't matter that much, you know, just to make sure it looks professional and all.
But the thing is, if somebody else has great lighting and, and a good camera and a great backdrop and you don't have that, you're gonna be, even if you're acting is great, you, you're, you're, you're one step behind the eight ball folks.
(05:28):
So you have to be actor, producer, director, lighting designer, editor.
Yeah.
Or you can pay somebody to do this for you.
And believe me, there are tons of money who, people who will now take your money to help you do your self-tape auditions.
(05:49):
It's an art in and of itself.
I have a setup now.
I have a couple different backdrops.
I have a couple different frames.
I have a blue backdrop, which I use most of the time.
I have a tan backdrop.
I have a my, my mirrorless Nikon camera because I'm a photographer, but you can use an iPhone in that iPhones.
(06:10):
Now, God, they, they shoot in super high resolution, so they work great.
The only problem with it, it's a little harder to get the video off the iPhone than it is on a regular camera, but, People are figuring that out.
There's even apps now, there are even apps for doing auditions on your phone specifically.
(06:31):
I bought lighting for video, which I didn't have.
I, I have a tripod.
I have a couple of different shotgun mics.
I have wireless mics that pin and hide on your body.
I've had to invest quite a bit of money and and still with all that, I have never made the perfect audition tape.
(06:59):
I just did one today.
I even have now I even now have now a teleprompter on my laptop.
So it looks like I know the lines if I don't know them, because sometimes, It's just too many to learn, and then you have to hold the script in your hand and then you're constantly looking down and trying to not, and it gets very cumbersome.
(07:23):
With the movie, usually the lines aren't that long, so you can pretty much memorize 'em.
But if you're auditioning for a play and they give you like five pages and you have to do it with a reader who's behind the camera, like my wife, Well, I either ho have to hold the script in my hand and, and try to relate to her or use my teleprompter, which is out there.
(07:46):
So that's what I've been doing.
I'm sure they realize I don't have it memorized.
They probably realize I have the lines out there somewhere.
But today I did one for a play.
I won't say what or where cuz I'd like to get the part and I don't wanna jeopardize that.
But I go through the whole thing.
And I was gonna have it done yesterday, but as I said before, I ended up going to the emergency room.
(08:09):
So I had to wake up super early this morning after going to bed extremely late.
So I have almost no sleep and I'm about to pass out.
But right now, actually so I, I did this audition today and I put on a green shirt and I did the audition.
And it was pretty good.
I mean, there were things I could have done way better, but yeah, it was, overall I was happy with it.
(08:30):
The only problem is the left shot of my shirt was all wrinkled and I couldn't see that when I put it on.
My wife said she saw it, but she didn't wanna say anything, which is weird because she always says something.
I guess she knew I was in a hurry.
And so now when I watch the audition video that I sent in, all I can see is my wrinkle shirt.
That's all I see.
My wrinkle shirt.
(08:57):
Oh yeah.
So you also have to be a wardrobe person.
There you go.
Well, you always had to kind of do that, but you know now it, now it just adds on to all the other things you gotta do.
Actor, director, producer, editor, lighting, designers, sound designer, wardrobe person, hair, makeup, you're everything.
(09:22):
And it's taken a lot of burden off of pro producers and casting directors.
I mean, you do all the work now, they just sit there and watch it on their computer screen.
And so now, even though they don't have to do it that way, some of 'em are still doing it that way.
It's becoming the norm in, in some cases, I hope it goes back to the in-person stuff so that I can just act.
(09:50):
Concentrate on that, but I don't know.
The world has changed quite a bit and it keeps changing and I ain't getting any younger.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you're in your sixties and you're in a profession and the profession changes and you feel like you're kind of getting slowly pushed out of it because of your age and.
(10:16):
Now because of maybe your gender or your race cuz of diversity, which I'm all for, not against diversity, but the problem is kind of leaves me out of a lot of stuff now and that's neither here nor there, but it means what do I do? You know? So I have to think of new ways to keep doing what I'm doing or do something else.
(10:40):
Yeah.
So the industry.
For actors in terms of auditioning, has made a huge, huge shift and I don't think most people are aware of that, nor do maybe they care.
(11:02):
I don't know.
But I just wanted to educate you and let you know what's been going on.
Cause I think it's kind of interesting myself.
I do.
What else is going? I've been watching the Righteous Gemstones on H B O.
Wow.
What a f what a fun show.
(11:23):
I'm on season two now.
The Righteous gemstones stars.
John Goodman, Danny McBride, Adam Devine.
Edie Pearson, Cassidy Freeman, and well, we all know John Goodman is, is great, right? Most of you may know him from Roseanne or the Big Lebowski.
(11:54):
Danny McBride is, is Danny McBride.
He writes his shows the way he writes 'em, and you know, it's a Danny McBride show and it's.
Dark, sarcastic comedy, and that's what this is.
They're a family of modern day preachers.
And they're basically horrible people.
(12:17):
But I would like to talk about Ededie Patterson, not Edie Peterson.
Ededie Patterson is the most, one of the most hilarious people I have ever seen on television.
You just gotta just watch it for her.
She is so damn funny.
It's amazing.
(12:38):
And then if you watch her interviewed, she's completely different than the character she plays.
I just love it.
She has a huge background in improv.
She's a member of the the Groundlings, which is a very famous improv company.
She's a main member there and she performs there still apparently.
(13:01):
So she's just great.
She's just great.
And I love the show, so if you get a chance, check it out.
Check it out.
It's called it's the exact title.
I wanna make sure I got it right.
The Righteous Gemstones.
It's on H B O or I guess if you don't have H B O through like Comcast.
(13:23):
You have to get it on Max, which is also H B O.
I don't understand why HBO O Max, which is the subscription streaming version of HBO, changed their name to Max.
I have no idea why they did that, but they did.
It was somebody's brilliant idea in corporate.
(13:47):
All right, folks, that's my show for today.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Keep keep on trucking.
Don't stop trucking.
And until next time, I will see you on the boards.
And don't forget, if you love this show Iterating on Po Apple Podcast.
(14:11):
Tell your friends, tell your enemies.
And if you, if you wanna get ahold of me, send me an email at Green Room on air gmail.com.
All righty folks.
As I said, until next time, I will see you on the boards.
Take care of your sales.
Bye-bye.
(14:44):
It's easy if.
(15:04):
All the people for today, it.
(15:29):
Nothing to kill or die and no religion to all.
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