[flickr id=”13889737932″ thumbnail=”medium” overlay=”true” size=”original” group=”” align=”none”]It’s been an eventful few weeks here at Columbia College Chicago. There’s a lot of action in the Cinema Art + Science department. It’s not because classes are beginning to wind down. (Beginning to wind down…is that an oxymoron?) Would you believe it’s exact the opposite? Well, you should. If you walk the halls of 1104 S. Wabash you’ll see as many as four or five productions holding auditions every day. At Columbia we know how to keep things going.

Before I jump ahead I want to give you a little film production 101. For those of you who don’t know, there are three stages of a film production. Preproduction (the development stage), production (the shooting stage), and post production (the finishing stage). Why is this important? Preproduction is the stage where you come up with the idea. The other two stages are where you execute the idea.

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I bring this up to say, many people are still in the preproduction mode. They are still developing and cultivating ideas. I think that’s wonderful. It means the creative process never stops.

The audition is the bridge from conception to reality. This is when you know things are getting real. So just a few days ago I was holding my own set of auditions. It was an enlightening process. One actor after another auditioned with the hope of bringing my character to life. I tried to make the process as efficient as possible. You may have from one to four people run an audition. I ran mine by myself which is a challenge. When you run lines with the actor you sometimes concentrate more on acting the scene rather than watching the audition. That’s why I had one hand on the script and the other on the camera to tape the audition.

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But as I watched people pass in and out I thought about how often we are judged. Whether it’s a job interview, a Columbia interview, or an audition for a film, handling the stress is a key to personal success. So I challenge you to ignore the judges, do your best and move forward no matter what the result.