Filmi Chakkar

"Required an Indian actor, based in california with age between 23-28 for a lead role in a commercial film. He should have some prior exposure to acting. The movie will be shot in New York and India. The shoot in India is in Feb/Mar and the expenses for his travel will be incurred by the production company along with the payment for being a part of this production. The auditions will happen next week in our office in San Jose."

I received this mail on my work email ID when I was visiting California on business. A collegue of mine who knew about my interest in theatre forwarded me this mail. This was really exciting. I have been doing theatre for past 5 years now and consistently, 2-3 plays a year. I took all the opportunities which seemed possible and made them work for me, but I was never eyeing for something big like this. Being in San Jose at the right time for this audition was a mere coincidence, but I was up for this and try my luck.

I responded to that email describing my career in theatre so far and got an immediate response. "We would be happy to you have audition for this role, Mayuresh. Please come to our office with your resume and 2 photos next monday at 12:15 pm".

ashTe! I was on cloud nine. When I responded to their mail, I thought there is nothing to loose here and definitely worth trying. But, their positive response was really encouraging and I was thinking of what if I really get this role ?? This would change my life altogether, or may be NOT!! It took me sometime to get over this phase, but it was really exciting. That sunday night, I spent long time in front of the mirror.

Monday 12:00 pm, I entered their office. It was a small office and the assistent of the casting director greeted me and gave me couple of forms. Couple of other guys were also present there and that made me realize the kind of competition that I am up for. All of them were really smart and jaunty. The first form was general information about me, which I think will go in their records. The second form was very interesting. It was to fetch information about the candidate which could be useful for an actor. The front page had a lot of descriptive questions and the other side was mind-blowing for me. That entire page was a just one table. All possible skills in the world were listed in there, right from swiming, badminton to extreme sports, dancing, etc etc and you have to rate yourself as 'Novice/Satisfactory/Expert' for each of them. I used to think I do a lot of activities but when I actually filled up that page, I hated myself. I could attempt hardly 10% of that page.

Casting director came out in some time and told us about the film. then, she took us to the audition room. There were 7 more guyz with me and noone was really outstanding, so I was thinking I do stand a chance here. I am sure everyone was thinkin the same. I was very confident about my acting but One thing that was different between me and most of them was their american accent. I was no where near to those folks. The casting director had given us a script and I was practising my lines.

The scene was quite well written. It was between one indian guy (whose lines I have to read) and his american friend. The amreican guy wants to date a girl that I know and I am telling him about why such things should not happen here in india and so on.

I was going to go in 4th. 3 guyz prior to me didnt take much time. When I went in, I was asked to say something about me on camera. So, thats when I faced the camera for the first time. I wasn't really nervous and that went pretty well. The casting director was trying to make me comfortable by asking questions while it was being shot. After that, she asked me to read those lines with her assistent as the other friend. This was just the mock rehearsal. At the end, she said your toning and voice modulation is quite good, dont move too much when we are live and be confident. "Fine, thanks".

"Action!!" heard that for the first the time. and It started... the other guy was in the conversation but only I was getting captured in that camera... It took about 3 minutes for that scene and I was doing it very well... At the end, I got a good WOW from that casting director and her assistent told me that this is the first time they finished the entire scene today. Now, that was really cool.

Even the audition went well, to me, I had very little hopes about really getting into all this. I never got anctious as to why I didnt get any call, and I never got one. So, It was clear NO.

I was quite happy to have taken up that opportunity and got a feel for this entire film business which earlier was just based on stories I have heard before.

It will be very interesting to see that movie released soon.