Pilot season tends to be grueling, because you can be thrown all of these auditions at once - last-minute, always - and you're going on three a day, especially back in the day.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Usually pilot season is very busy, and there are lots of auditions and lots of near misses and rejections. This year, I had two auditions, landed this role and it felt like being home again.
The reason I've never gone for pilot season even as a younger actor, and wouldn't entertain that sort of thing now, is the idea of signing a piece of paper that binds me for six or seven years.
Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot.
With a pilot, there's a lot of information that gets packed into 46 minutes or whatever it is. Usually what happens is that, throughout the season, you get to spend a little more quality time with the characters and get to know them a bit better, whether it's based on circumstance or relationships they've created with other characters.
The funny thing is that making a pilot is sort of an audition, at least for me. There's something psychological there, where you're sort of asking for the job while you're acting. And then when it's been picked up, it's a completely different psychological dynamic.
I go on at least 2-3 auditions a week in the pursuit of more work. So I'm constantly working on material and constantly honing and trying to perfect a craft that is never perfectible - it's always new, and it's always different. It's always a work in progress.
I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting. Even some of our best shows have had substantial re-shoots and reworking before they've gone on the air.
If you go to pilot then you are probably going to go to series. That's my feeling about it.
As I slowly managed to take what I had learned into a transition from contestant to announcer and warm-up, I first had to prove myself on pilots. And as you know, many pilots are taped for each show that is lucky enough to breakthrough to being a series.
From an actor's point of view, you never really like to hope that anything will go beyond the pilot. I'd always say to my agent every time I filmed a pilot, 'Great! Well, I'll see you at pilot season.'
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