Do you ever walk into an audition totally unfamiliar with the material you’re given? Or worse, unable to look over your sides and unsure if it’s even a comedy or drama?
David Dalton, who has experience both behind the casting table and in front of the camera in Los Angeles and Chicago, decided in 2008 to give the whole process new life after seeing one too many flubbed auditions. Upon founding his own Denver-based acting studio with Chad Schnackel, he remembers, “there were actors we knew personally to be really good actors but didn’t always audition well.” This all-too-common problem led the coaches to an unconventional solution.
“We felt it was really important that we had original scripts for the actors to work with,” Dalton says. With Schnackel, who holds a BFA in screenwriting and directing, he began crafting brand-new audition material for individual students. “It was just easier to do that than to hunt down scripts. Two years later we had about 100 scripts, and that’s when we launched our website, mocksides.com.”
Since 2010, that website has been a free resource for any working actor or industry professional with an internet connection. MockSides features fictional scenes for two or three people, broken down by gender and age, and can be downloaded for practice in workshops and classes or for shooting demo reels.
So convincing are his sides, Dalton says, that he occasionally receives requests for the entire teleplay. “And I’m, like, ‘There is no teleplay, that’s all it is!’ I’ve also had casting directors send me an email saying, ‘Can you tell me what TV show that’s from?’ It’s not from a show!”
The point of MockSides Studios, he says, is to use this fictional material to better actors’ audition skills in more ways than one. “Your agent doesn’t have the info, you just have your sides, so you have to make up a backstory.” Not only is it difficult to learn how to commit to such an audition—as Dalton says, “to pretend the writer and director are not present”—it’s also tough sometimes to gauge the nature of the material.
“We realized a lot of [the problem] had to do with a lack of training when it comes to understanding story,” he recalls. “Film actors often didn’t know what to do with sides. They didn’t know the entire script; they weren’t even sure of the genre sometimes.” Dalton and Schnackel’s sides are each written in a specific Hollywood style, from dark crime thrillers to half-hour family sitcoms. “When we started writing scenes, we wanted to make sure they looked like something that came from a TV show or movie,” Dalton says.
That way, when actors are auditioning for a real project, they can recognize the trappings of that genre and adjust their delivery accordingly. Especially when it comes to small “under-five” roles, Dalton says, it’s important to understand that the writer has created each character with a specific purpose in mind. “We have a saying: Serve the story. Your job is not to out-act the star.” In order to serve the story, an actor must be familiar with how his or her contribution fits into the bigger picture.
It’s also helpful to understand type. “Master your casting type first,” advises Dalton. “Then you can expand your wings.
“Take a look not only at your strengths but also your weaknesses, and learn to own that,” he adds. “Any casting director will tell you that the people who do the best are the ones who are confident and comfortable in who they are.” If you understand both yourself and the material you’re delivering, auditions are a piece of cake.
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