This week, I’ve been dealing with something I call “The Long Shortlist.” It’s sort of a state of casting limbo. Somewhere between the longest list of submitted actors and the shortest list (the final cast list), there are three more lists: the not-terribly long list of actors who will preread, the shortlist of called back actors, and in between those two: the long shortlist!
It’s the list we make after prereads. It includes the names of actors whose work we loved at prereads, those who didn’t come to prereads but will be considered for our “straight to callbacks” slots, and a couple of “meeting only” or “offer only” actors we’re also considering for various roles. The long shortlist is always very interesting to me, as I know it includes the names of the actors who will, eventually, be cast in each role, but it also includes the names of actors who won’t earn callbacks even though they certainly did well enough to have been called back.
Let me break down the numbers on my current project, just for the sake of clarity. Our feature film breakdown yielded nearly 7000 electronic submissions. The names of the actors there would make up the first, longest list. Next would be the list of actors we saw for prereads. Just over 300 actors for 20 roles. At callbacks, we’ll see around 75 to 90 actors (anywhere from three to six actors per role, in general). And finally, offers will be made to the shortest list of actors: those 20 we plan to cast.
The list I’m talking about today is the long shortlist because it’s the one that lives between the 300 we saw for prereads and the 75 to 90 we’ll see for callbacks. I’d like to suggest, whenever you feel you read the room correctly and just know you should be getting a callback (but then don’t) that you consider imagining that you made it to the casting director’s long shortlist, but were then cut by the producer or director (or ad agency or product client or network exec) when the final callback list came together. Certainly, some casting directors create the final callback list without input from the producers on the project, and in that case there’s no existence of this long shortlist I’m describing. The long shortlist takes us from 15 to 25 actors per role at prereads to a recommended top eight or so. If we don’t need to check in with a producer for another round of cuts, the long shortlist doesn’t even really exist. We just make a list of our top three to five after prereads from the get-go. When we get to the actors who top our long shortlist, we’re basically pitching them just like the actors’ agents or managers did to get them in front of us to begin with. And if actors got themselves in front of us on their own, you’d better believe we’re telling the producer and director how excited they are about the project and well the actors hustle.
Now, here’s where the long shortlist is cool: If you made it to my long shortlist, that’s just about as good as a callback, to me. If you’re an actor who keeps getting prereads with me but who doesn’t make it to callbacks, you should know that means you’re very likely making it to my callback list every time, but then coming off that list before we set callbacks (through no fault of your own).
I always tell actors to keep this in mind: Every time you’re invited into a casting office, you’re being told, “I believe you. You’re an actor. Come show me what you can do.” And every time you get a callback, you’re being told, “I think you are castable.” After that, it’s just a matter of which way they decide to go. It has nothing to do with your castability, once you’re asked back for a callback. Trust that!
Okay, so if you’re also castable (in the mind of the casting director) just by ending up on the long shortlist, that’s reason to be pleased as well. Yes: You can even be pleased even when you don’t get invited into the room again. If you are regularly invited back into particular casting offices on various projects, you’re doing enough right to get asked in again. It’s only when you stop being asked back that you may need to examine more closely what you could do differently. Of course, it’s also fine to work with a coach in the hopes of improving your callback ratio (I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ever do that), I’m just asking that you relax a little bit when you worry you didn’t make the long shortlist. You probably did, more than a few times!
What I’d like to know is: How much do you like to know? I will occasionally ask the top few called back actors whether they want to know how close they came. Some will tell me they don’t want to know. Others are very eager to hear if they “came in second.” I don’t know if they end up beating themselves up after hearing that news, but at least they seem interested in knowing. So, I tell them. What about you? Do you like to know how close you came? Do you enjoy knowing that over a thousand actors were submitted on a single role, 24 people read for us, and as a non-cast actor among the five actors we called back, you still came closer than 99.5% of those who tried to get in front of us? And do you like to know that you came closer than about 80% of the actors we saw for the role just by making it to callbacks? Or do you only focus on the fact that you had a one-in-five chance once you got to callbacks and somehow couldn’t land the role? I know we all focus on how close we got and how bummed we are we missed the target sometimes. But when you look at how far you came instead of how close you got, that has to feel good on some level!
When agents and managers call me asking for feedback on actors I clearly enjoy bringing in again and again, I’m always happy to say, “She’s on my short list!” or, “He’s got a fan in me!” And if you aren’t getting feedback but keep getting invited into the room, you can assume the same is true for you.
[Note: Again, huge thanks for keeping the emails coming regarding my question on how casting directors can help make your job easier. I have some great material from you that will lay the foundation for my columns for the rest of the year — all based on the rants, requests, and general head-scratching vents you’ve sent my way! There’s some really funny and heartbreaking stuff in there — and I love it all. Thank you!!]
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Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000314.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.