Auditions: Circuit City Commercial

Sometimes, commercial auditions can be as complicated as theatrical auditions.  So on Thursday, August 28, 2008, I got two of those in one day. 

The first was Circuit City.  They are debuting the Circuit City version of the Geek Squad.  In the commercial, there's an average guy in his house, and there are characters dressed up as objects - i.e., a guy dressed up as the remote.  And all these characters are running around the house going crazy, climbing walls, hiding under the table, etc.  My character, the "guy", is on the phone talking to Circuit City's "Geek Squad", but has to put them on hold to try to keep everything in his house under control.  So here's the complicated stuff that was required in the audition:

1) Lead guy looks around at objects in his house going crazy while on the phone.  He says (to the person on the phone), "You're almost here?  Good, because it's getting out of hand."

2) Guy sees some characters sitting on the television, and says "Hold on," to the person on the phone.  Then, to the characters on the TV, "Careful, get down from there."  

3) Then he sees other characters run across the room, so his eyeline has to follow these imaginary characters

4) Then he spots some characters, i think they were people dressed up as remotes, hiding under a table.  he says, "Stay where i can see you." 

5) Then the Geek Squad arrives, he opens the door and greets them.  I have to open an imaginary door somewhere near camera.  

6) The guy then looks around the room as the Geek Squad fixes everything, and says "I don't know how you do this everyday."  Line is delivered to an imaginary character somewhere near camera.  

Pretty complicated, huh?  

Well, still a couple choices to be made.  So before I read, I asked, is the guy "very stressed, moderately stressed or calm?"  And the director said, "Calm."

So I did it and the director said, one more time, even more calm, the guy likes everything under control.  The director even performed a bit of it, and I would interpret it as very even keeled, calm in face of the storm, even slow paced with the text.  I tried to copy it, hard to tell how close I was (well, I didn't book it, if that means anything).  

One other thing that was interesting.  It was a straight to callback at 200 S. La Brea.  And I was a bit early, but there weren't many for my spot reading for my character.  There were other Asian guys, but they were there for a different spot.  So did they see people and not like the first round?  Impossible to tell until the commercial comes out.  At which point I'll update this post.