Samantha Reeds gritted her teeth as another auditionee came in an hour early.
"It's unfortunate but we are still finalizing our preparations. We won't be able to open the hall until 1:15. You can stay here and wait if you wish." She made sure to put on her sweetest smile, "If you would excuse me." She gave the woman another smile and discreetly snatched the little bell some intern must have left.
She power walked into the function hall and had the satisfaction of seeing the woman's shock as she closed the door in her face.
"We are not the help, and she is not some aristocrat to ring a bell to call us." She slammed the little bell right in front of an astonished intern.
This is the last one. The last one. Deep breaths.
Sam took a deep breath and smiled at the intern, "We don't even use a bell. Why was a bell outside?"
The intern looked at the bell, "That must be Laurent's bell. He uses it to call that little puppy for food."
Sam stifled a groan. Of all the people she can't get angry at it's Laurent, one of the best photographer's currently in the business. And as all artists he was finicky and had odd habits. Among which, apparently, was trying to train a dog Pavlov style.
"Hide it until he looks for it." The intern gave a firm nod and took the bell away.
"You have just terrified that poor intern," Bev, one their talent associate commented as Sam passed by her table.
"I'm tired and I haven't had decent sleep for 2 weeks." Sam lamented.
"Well, it was your idea to have the initial audition this way." Bev teased as she straightened the papers on her table. "I say all this suffering is purely of your own making."
"They wanted diamond in the rough, I proposed how to get there. I didn't want to be here for it." Sam nearly whined. "I'm in project management for God's sake. I have no idea they would actually say yes to that crazy proposal I thought of off my head."
"Oh yes, oh great project manager, you have no idea how many people in the Talent department want to gouge their eyes out after watching endless tapes of auditions, bad drama and some such." Bev waved at the bags under her eyes, "I have about had it with it all. And after this would be another crazy round of a few weeks trying to trim them down again."
"At least this is the last batch."
"Sure hope we get something from this batch, the higher ups were getting more and more frowny as the days went." Bev shrugged, "Not a particularly good sign."
"That is out of our hands." Sam sighed, "To be honest, I thought they'd be better. Most of these kids were from other agencies. Sure, they've acted in small roles but they must have learned something doing all that. But I never thought they'd actually freeze up in front of a camera just because we asked them to take off their make-up."
Bev pointed at Sam with her end of her glittery pen, "And that, is an example of someone who has never been on a set before. Those make-up artists on set? They're magicians, they work their little magic to hide things they don't want seen on camera plus all the lighting and angles." Bev then waved her pen like a wand.
Sam swatted the pen away from her face, "But still, I've expected more. Some star quality or something."
Bev shrugged, "Most of them haven't had formal training. We can't really ask for more than a glimmer."
Sam let out a stretch, "Well, here's hoping we get a good catch in this batch. I have some money in it."
Bev laughed, "I'm out of the pool, unfortunately, I bet on batch 3 and that might have been the worst one yet."
"Well, here's to hoping."