About This Project
In the hilarious, all-improvised web series The Infinite Need, I star opposite Mandy May Cheetham as a casting director to Cheetham’s actor, who preys on her money while dangling the hope of an acting job on a popular television show. From the website for the web series:
The Infinite Need is a 10-episode improvised web series that focuses on the interaction between a casting director and an actor over the course of several paid auditions. The paid auditions, marketed as “workshops,” are hosted by an organization that puts actors in touch with casting directors for 8 minutes. The cost of those 8 minutes? $40.
The Infinite Need follows Bette Moore, a hardworking actor with respectable training, as she tries to garner the interest of Scott Baron-Worth, a casting director at Meade Dolenz Casting. Scott casts the long-running television show Crime and Punishment, and his $40 “workshops” and $595 “on-camera intensives” are hosted by a company called Casting Access. Bette is paying to audition for Scott at Casting Access as a means for landing a role on the show.
We shot the entire series with basically two Flipcams and about $300, most of which went to either the room rental or the website. The web series was released one episode per week in the Summer 2012 on the YouTube channel for the series, and the series generated interest through flyers, word of mouth, Twitter, and Facebook.
The Infinite Need: The Hilarious, All-Improvised Web Series about Casting, Paying, and Playing
It started off as an experiment: My good friend Mandy May Cheetham and I wanted to improvise some scenes on film, and we wanted them to satirize some of the shenanigans that can and have happened when we have done paid auditions for casting directors.
The experiment was a thrilling success. In the experiment, we turned out a ten-episode web series titled The Infinite Need. The story chronicles one actress’s story as she auditions nine times for the same casting director, paying every time. Mandy plays the actress, and I play the casting director.
The series ran on YouTube during the summer of 2012. As a subversive series, it also won 17 iNeed Awards, sweeping the entire competition. The series is incredibly painful and incredibly funny. Check it out!
Before the release of the web series, we teased its story with a handful of promos:
Life imitated art a few episodes into the series, when I caught Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News make a flub similar to the flub my character repeatedly makes. We posited that Lester Holt had been watching The Infinite Need in this video:
Awards
The Infinite Need nabbed 17 awards at the 2012 iNeed Awards. (I won an outrageous 10 awards!)
Read the press release for the 2012 iNeed Awards »
Credits
Scott Baron-Worth: Ben Hauck | https://benhauck.com
Bette Moore: Mandy May Cheetham | http://www.mandymaycheetham
Additional credits and information available on the website for The Infinite Need »