Beneath, Between, Behind the Scenes: Audition
M. Francis Enright is a filmmaker. His first short film, HR, was accepted into zero of the 23 festivals to which it was submitted. His second short film, The Routine, was nominated for Best Dark Comedy at the Georgia Comedy Film Festival. His third short film, Say Your Name, won Best Drama and Best Director at the Top Shorts Films Festival and has been selected for the 2024 Boston International Film Festival.
Zair is playing Marcus, an aspiring actor. Like all actors who are just starting out, he is pretty bad. He goes on auditions and routinely hears, “Thanks, we’ll be in touch.” He has come to understand that this means, “That sucked. You will never hear from us.”
He does the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet. He doesn’t do it well. There are maybe three actors in history who have been able to pull off that soliloquy. The only issue was that Zair is a really good actor. He was doing it too well in the beginning. He really invests himself in acting so I think it was hard for him to do it badly, like Lebron James throwing a game. It is not in his nature. However, he loosened up after a while and had some fun with it. Playing a bad actor is always fun. You just need to check your ego.
Marcus doesn’t do the soliloquy well because he doesn’t understand it. And if he does not understand it, he cannot internalize it. He recites the words, but he has no feeling for the character of Hamlet. If an actor cannot feel the role, there is no way they will ever make anyone else feel it.
Marcus just doesn’t get it. And he knows he doesn’t get it. Which is why he hates going on auditions. But auditions are part of the job. And an actor has to embrace auditions as the job. The job is not to land the role. The job is to do the best you can in the audition. That is the work. Landing the role is just another part of the job.
We shot the audition scene in the studio. The camera operator, Mitchel, got up on a ladder to point the camera down at Marcus, to show him as weaker and vulnerable. This is how all actors feel about going on auditions. There are people watching and judging. Their validation is essential. If they don’t validate, then the actor is not worth anything. At least in this context. It is a hard life, looking for validation from others. What do they know? Who are they to judge?
As the director, I have had to reject actors. And I don’t know anything. I am no one. Who am I to judge? No one. I always feel bad about it.
Marcus stumbles over the lines. He leaves words out and has to go back and repeat them. It frustrates him because he knows the lines, but when he is in front of these casting people, his mind goes numb. He is not thinking about the character; he is thinking about saying his lines. And that is not acting.
I’ve rejected actors for no reason other than I didn’t really get the performance. It’s on me. I don’t know. I’ve probably rejected actors who are worthy of Oscars. It just goes to show how bullshit the industry is.
No one knows what is good and what isn’t. It’s all one big guessing game.
I told Mitchell to keep Marcus off-center of frame. I read a book about filmmaking called The Conversations which is a series of conversations between sound editor Walter Murch and Michael Ondaatje, author The English Patient, about writing and film. Murch says that keeping an actor off-center of the frame gives the audience the impression that the character is in a place of weakness and uncertainty. So I decided to give it a try. It worked for me, though I don’t know if people watching the movie picked up on it. It’s something that is supposed to appeal to the subconscious.
Who the fuck knows?
The scene really came together in the editing. Rui made a bunch of jump cuts and the sound of the dialogue doesn’t match with Marcus’s face. It is disjointed and unsettling. Which is how Marcus is feeling: disjointed and unsettled.
It’s great when someone else sees something that I don’t. I would not have thought to edit the scene that way but Rui captured the vibe perfectly. It is a scene that more than one person has commented on.
Marcus didn’t get the Hamlet soliloquy but Zair nailed the scene perfectly. It is so wonderful to watch people bring a creative vision to life. It gives me hope that I am not crazy, that I am not delusional. That maybe there is something to this.
Or maybe not.
No one knows.
