The festival life
Junior Diem Dang gains a professional opportunity be attending the Beyond Wonderland music festival.
During my Semester in L.A., I’ve been working at a talent management company called Velocity Entertainment Partners. Usually, my workload consists of preparing drafts of audition appointments for our various actors, answering phones and doing tasks that make it easier for the partners to focus their time on getting their clients jobs.
However, every now and then I get to do something called a self-tape. This means I tape our actors and actresses while reading a scene with them that will be submitted for an audition. Self-taping as an audition device is an example of how innovation in media continues to shape the entertainment industry. For me, this use of video mixed with actual performance in pursuit of a job has given me media experience that’s relevant to a theater and drama student.
The specific self-tape that really piqued my interest was a scene with one of our younger actors for the pilot of an upcoming TV show. There was a lot of thought involved, from both the actress and her representation, on how she should present herself in the tape. With a more mature adult, a conversation about how to read a line would be a much easier procedure, but talking to a younger actress presents challenges in how to explain how people are conditioned to view acting on-screen. The ease with which her representative approached critiquing her performance provided a good example of talking to performers in a way they can understand.
This experience was important to me because it was a behind-the-scenes experience in the process that performance media goes through before it hits the screen. As a person who enjoys acting, I find it pretty refreshing to see a person willing and able to teach, as well as actors of all ages who are happy to learn.
This gives auditioning a new facet in that it is now more susceptible to the editing process of television and film. While some would say editing might take some of the humanity out of auditioning, I’ve found that what it really does is inject a great deal more discussion and conversation into auditioning. That, to me, is a very important part of humanity.