sorting the headshots

I packed my bag full of headshots yesterday morning, thinking that I'd polish off yesterday's Radiostar show and sort through them after work, before my tango class. About halfway through the morning I checked my calendar to realize that I didn't have class tonight, but a BAPST leadership meeting over at the Theatre Bay Area offices. Whoops! I was able to get the show up thanks to lunch and breaks, but I lugged all the headshots to the meeting and was able to do a preliminary sort while we met.

The first pass of headshots is an amazingly superficial part of the casting process. I have hundreds of headshots in my files (or in this case, in my backpack) and I simply sorted them into two stacks. One stack had asian men and women, young white men and white women in their twenties to early forties. Everyone else went into the other stack. That split my headshots into two, fairly equal stacks. It was literally as basic as putting a headshot into a pile every time my eyes rested downwards for a second.

Once I got home, I did a second sort. Asian males in one stack, asian females in another. White men in one, white eomen in another. Sort through the Asian males into stacks of "Wilson Woo" and "Johnny Tanaka". Sort the asian women. Anyone too young looking goes into the reject pile. If they don't sing, they go in the reject pile. What is left is in the "Lily" pile. Tackle the white men. Anyone who looks over 30 at a second glance goes in the reject pile. Anyone with an area code that looks like they are more than an hour drive to rehearsals goes in the reject pile. Anyone without an email address on their resume goes in the reject pile. Yep. I'm not making two dozen phone calls to get people into auditions. Still too many people. I only want to see about 15 people for the role. I think more and more about the character. Wealthy, a bit naive, but a noir character. Not too soft. More go into the reject pile. I finally get it down to 15. Now the white women. I'd like to look at latinas and black women, but the script has as a plot point that these are white women. I make two stacks, older women for "Sydney" and young women for "Ruby" and "Ellen". I go through the Sydney's first. Same process. Distance and ease of contact are the first items. Then a more considered pass. Ex-cop, private investigator assistant, tough... but intimidated by authority figures. I get the stack down to about 12 people. On to the young women. Another stack into two piles. "Ruby" is tough, rude, ambitious and mean. All the femme fatales go in a pile. "Ellen" is by all appearances wholesome, if not completely innocent. They go into the other pile. If a "Ruby" doesn't sing, she goes in the reject pile. Otherwise, it's the same routine, although I have to go through the "Ellen" stack several times. She has to look like she could be in a noir film. Difficult at times with headshots, especially as I've written on more than a few, "looks nothing like headshot" from when I saw them at the Theatre Bay Area General Auditions. If I've written otherwise good things, I keep them in the pile anyway.

By this point I've got the stack down to about 50 headshots, maximum, for six roles. I've already sent out audition notices for people I've worked with before.

It should be enough. I've already gotten back some emails with requests for particular slots in the schedule, and more with people who have moved to LA or NYC since I got the headshots in the first place. I'd like to have this cast in the next two weeks though. This is the least fun part of the process, after all.