Audition Query

So, this year, I had decided to put myself out there more on the acting side of things. I wanted to work with new people in new cities. Due to my work/life schedule, I targeted day player roles. I auditioned for several things, way more than I had in the past, and learned a lot (mostly, I learned how much I don’t know about auditioning). I found some success and had some crushing failures, but overall I enjoyed the process far more than I expected.

One of the faults in my plan of working more abroad is that it makes day player roles harder to budget and plan for due to many productions having such a short lead time, leaving me no time to get off work. One role, would’ve been great, up in Detroit, but they had to re-schedule the shoot 2 times and the third time, I was unable to make the trip. The extra bummer was I was offered another role that i had to turn down, but ultimately could’ve done it since the Detroit one got rescheduled.

Felt like a double gut-punch.

But, I’m looking at this year already as a success and a much needed audit on how I feel about acting and what my next steps should include. Those of you that know me and my complete lack of planning are laughing and, I guess, I’m chuckling too. We both know I’m simply going to stumble and fumble my way forward as always.

On the music front, The Firmary has a song coming out on October 2nd, which will appear on the soundtrack for Bunker Heights (out October 13th). It’s a song i’ve wanted to record for a long time called Dear Ndugu (anyone know the inspiration for the title?). Joshua is still recovering from his motorcycle accident, so William and Adam handled the music, me on vocals.

I do appear in a lottery commercial for the state of West Virginia…that was a lot of fun to shoot, but i didn’t take many photos as we worked through the night. If I find any, I’ll add them. Here are a few random self-tape auditions from this year:

Back in March, I took the family to a convention in Cincinnati, Oh to see a screening of Bunker Heights and we stopped at the Dayton Airforce museum since my son loves planes.

SO, tell me about your self-tape auditioning process…what equipment, lighting, backdrop etc. do you use/prefer? Do you have a separate slate to tack on to your auditions? I guess I need to start following the rules at some point.

Maybe.

About douglasesper

Father of two, husband of one, Douglas Esper is an author, screenwriter, actor, and musician from Cleveland, Oh. He has published two music-related non-fiction books (Reintroducing Chuck Mosley and Break When I’m Dead), a novel (A Life of Inches), and several short stories, including The Day We Hung The Tallest Thomas, which appeared in Frontier Tales. As a musician, Douglas toured with Chuck Mosley (Faith No More, Bad Brains) until the singer’s death in 2017. As an actor, he has 20 credits in films like: Bunker Heights (2027), The Obsidian Mirror (2026), Trivial (2023), and On Gallows Hill (2026?), which is currently making its rounds at festivals worldwide. His coming of age, road trip screenplay, Both Hands In is in pre-production.
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