I’ve enjoyed the
last few advert castings I’ve had, including the one I did today.
I go in and out
of phases with them. It usually depends on how many are coming in. If I have a
few audition-dry weeks, I start to go off my game. Another factor is how
right - or not right - the jobs are for me. I’ve always felt very comfortable
doing small-scale, naturalistic, comedic stuff to camera – regardless of how
good – or not good – I may be at it. I like the spontaneous, minimalistic,
reaction-based nature of an advert casting; there’s generally not much dialogue
to remember and little time to over-think what you do.
Strangely, the
sort of characters that tend be right for me in castings are slightly at odds
with the persona I adopt for Doggett & Ephgrave’s sketches, or our
duo-based / my solo stand-up. I usually play the strong-minded, sarcastic and
faux-arrogant one of the two of us, whereas my breakdowns tend to be for awkward, nerdy, self-conscious stuff. I’d write a study on this, if it weren’t
for the fact that no-one would be interested.
While I’ve had a
good time at my last few auditions (well, as much as you can at what's essentially an interview), it’s been a long
time since I’ve got a filming job. I could do with one coming good soon,
before I have to sell off my vital organs to raise some funds to live off; the
irony being that the number of body parts I’d need to auction off to live would probably
result in the opposite.