First Casting Call

What Hadleigh had to say...

I thought I was going to take the picture in the front of me and put me in a contract. I hoped I could get my hair done. They took my pictures in a Cinderella princess dress. There were lots of kids there and I was shy because I didn't know them so I didn't play. I didn't want to. I broke the camera.

Mom filling in some details...

Hadleigh received a call last Friday for an upcoming casting call for Dawn Foods. We were all so excited! We traveled to Kansas City early this morning for our first adventure in the crazy business. We first headed to Hadleigh's agency, Hoffman International, to pick up her comp cards (the modeling businesses version of a business card...if you want, she'll send you one as she's quite proud of them. Just need your mailing adddress) and spoke with, Pam, the Agency Director who gave Hadleigh some quick words of encouragement and we were off.

Thank heavens for the new car --equipped with GPS...we made it downtown to Rush Wade 2 (check out their site...they ROCK!) studio and nervously made it to the casting room. There we found LOTS of kids between the ages of about 5-6 with all different looks. Both boys and girls. Hadleigh and I signed her in as child #12 (which was mommy's number back in her pageant days) and waited for her turn. The drill was to put on the princess dress, hold a marker board with Hadleigh's name and agency on it for photo #1, no board...just a nice smile for photo #2 and then turn around for a photo from the back for #3. Hadleigh just had to ask "Why do you take a picture of the back of us?" The response she got was that they wanted to make sure they had ALL the awesome parts of each child.

Oh...the "breaking the camera part". When it was Hadleigh's turn the photographer shot her but the photo wouldn't transfer to the computer screen. Just a black square... I had her convinced she broke it:-)

We were in and out in less than 30 minutes...about 25 minutes of waiting and 5 minutes for the testing. No questions were asked and no one really interacted with the kids. This made me think they were in search of a particular "look" and not necessarily a personality or talent.

My eyes were opened to some new things as well. In our short time we encountered a definite pageant child, a stage mom and some kids who really preferred not to be there. There were some shy kids, outgoing ones, some who could only muster fake smiles and some very naturals. I'm sure we'll get to see all kinds of things as we move forward.

Hadleigh did great! Smiled a real smile and left with a "Thanks! That was a lot of fun."

If Hadleigh is chosen we will adventure to our first paid photo shoot on Friday. Hadleigh is excited to get a "job" and when I told her the job was to have her picture taken she refused to accept that. She thought that was too easy and offered, "I can mop their floor too."