Go From No to Whoa in Commercial Auditions with Kelly Moscinski

Kelly is a casting director at Voicecaster. They receive 80% non-union (NU) work.

She asked, “Why do you book?” It’s because you found the connection. Then you perform with confidence.

When you read the specs and it says “conversational,” what does that mean? Relatable, with personality. Imperfections and flaws also contribute to relatability.

So bring yourself to it. The final spot may not sound like your auditions, but that audition will get you booked. Think about CIA:

• C - commercial

• I - intention - why? Share, inform, excite

• A - audience

Casting Process and Multiple Audition Takes

Agents listen to demos, cast the talent, arrange the script, specs, rates. (If the rate isn’t available at first, the client may be unsure of their media buy.)

Kelly (and many others vetting auditions) will only take 3-5 seconds to listen because their time is limited, so don’t put your “safe” take first. She advises that you do a few takes on instinct before reading the specs.

Show your range on the other take within those first few seconds. You can change the pacing, pitch, character, enunciate more or less, emphasize different words, honor some/all punctuation, or change who you’re talking to.)

She does “rounds” of vetting, so if the first few seconds are great, she’ll add it to a list of maybes, and circle back after she finishes doing the same with all the other auditions.

What was really eye-opening was when she put a script on the screen, and played the first 5 seconds of 40-50 auditions for that script. Most of them were read the same way, and a few were hard to hear (lack of audio quality). Imagine having to listen to hundreds of auditions, where 95% of them sound the same!