3 Ways To Handle The Post-Audition Waiting Game

So you just left the casting office after auditioning for a recurring role on that gritty new cable series everyone’s raving about. There are easily 10,000 actors who would give up an organ to land a part on that show. You feel you’re perfect for the role and have prepared for the role responsibly.

As you’re walking back to the car muttering your lines under your breath, thoughts—both crazy and lucid—are racing through your mind. “I think I nailed it, but what did they think?” or “Oh shit, that was a mess. I hope they didn’t notice.”

A very common and constant question actors have after a film or TV audition is: “When should I expect to hear back from casting?” The answer is: There’s no way to know. The soonest you may hear is that day and the longest may be up to seven months. Aside from staying positive, owning a functional cell phone, and checking the status of the project on IMDb, here are some other fun and proactive things you can do.

1. Get feedback. Many actors don’t know it’s possible to get audition feedback from the casting director through your reps. Getting an audition critique from casting directors can be a valuable validation or confirmation that something wasn’t working. This type of communication is also part of a healthy routine of building and maintaining relationships with industry professionals. Keep in mind that this isn’t always possible. For example, your reps might have a fragile relationship with a given casting office so they will straight-up tell you that they don’t want to risk either hounding the office or seeming to lack confidence in their clients. Thus, they will opt out of asking for feedback. However, it’s important to ask your agent or manager if they’ll seek out some answers.

2. Prepare a piece for your reps. One of my superbly talented clients regularly performs new pieces for his management team throughout the year. His goal is to show them other types and genres he may also be right for. This is exactly the kind of agent/manager relationship you ultimately want—one in which you regularly communicate.

Make an appointment with your agent or manager to show them another side of you—something they haven’t pitched you for that you feel could be in your wheelhouse. For example, I have one client who constantly goes out for edgy, gritty women. But this woman can actually flawlessly conjure the demeanor of the spoiled debutante with great ease. Instead of making a full-on appointment to perform a piece for her reps as this character, this client just dropped by her manager’s office dressed like a modern, Kennedy princess. After she had dropped off a box of exquisite cookies with her manager—always a good idea—she asked if she could perform a one-minute monologue. Her management was pleased and impressed with the impromptu performance, and now they had evidence that she could dress and act within a new type.

3. Meet up with your believers. As tough as this town can be, everyone has friends who believe in them. Sometimes the best way to smooth out the rough feelings and rawness post-audition is to meet up for drinks or dinner with your friends who are also your fans. Here’s the trick: Don’t talk about the audition; don’t even talk about show business. Make the one stipulation of this hangout that no one can discuss anything industry-related. At first, you’ll find it’s a bit tricky, and you’ll instantly want to discuss the usual—acting class, auditions, the movie you saw last weekend. But when you force yourself out of these habits and you push each other to connect over the other aspects of your lives—yoga, her idiot boyfriend, your telepathic iguana, the new exhibit at MOCA (or MoMA), the new coffee joint with the hot cashiers— you’ll find yourself reacquainting with your lives outside of show business. This will be a refreshing moment, as at the end of the day, you’re a human being first and an actor second. And you’ll likely find that it helps to neutralize the sting of the post-audition waiting game.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

10 Tips For A Winning Taped Audition

The last three years have seen a landslide shift in the casting process. Actors are being asked, with greater frequency, to “self-tape” their auditions and e-mail them directly to the casting office or production team. Every other private coaching session I run is now an audition on tape, where I help my clients capture their absolute best performances.

What’s so thrilling about this trend is the ability to still compete for roles when you’re out of town. You can be enjoying your life anywhere in the world, outside the bubble of the “industry,” and not miss an audition opportunity. Taped auditions minimize the worry of pissing off your agent/manager because the moment you arrived in Cabo, you get an audition for a coveted Q-tip-initiated-eardrum-rupturing scene on “Girls.”

However, it is true that occasionally offices will still insist to see you in person so you must be prepared to jump on a plane to compete for that role!

Here are some tips to make your taped auditions soar!

1. Technical Expectations. During a recent Q&A with my students, the renowned television director David Semel (“Homeland,” “American Horror Story,” “House M.D.”) described what he expects technically from a taped audition (aside from great acting). He said, “It’s important you’re well-lit and that I can hear you.” We’re dealing with industry professionals with extremely demanding jobs. If they click on your footage, and the sound is too low or they can’t see you well, they might adjust the settings on their computer or they might just as likely click to the footage of the next actor.

2. What You Need. Here’s the basic equipment needed to properly self-tape and audition: A quality camera (a no-frills digital camera with a good built-in microphone is all you need), basic tripod, even lighting (natural works great!), a solid color background that is not distracting or shiny, and a reader. Before you begin your performance, do a test to check the lighting and sound. Say a few lines for the camera, record, and then review the footage. Does the lighting look blown out? If so, adjust. How does your shirt look against the background? Inviting and appropriate to the character or unflattering and amateurish? Can you be easily heard on a laptop computer with the volume at a normal level?

This step may take some experimentation to get the lighting, the colors of your wardrobe, and the sound just right. That’s OK. This first step is crucial in creating a solid foundation for you to record your audition and to ensure that industry professionals don’t click away in the first three seconds.

3. Acting. Check out one of my recent articles on this one!

4. Keep that script in your hands. Those lines must be as down-cold as the alphabet when walking into any prepared audition scenario. Though fully memorized, you must keep that script in one hand for two reasons. The first (only applies to in-person auditions), so a casting director never needs to worry if they have to feed you a line. Second, and most important, is that your performance looks like a “work in progress.” Having the script in your hand lends a subtle cue to the director and producers that you’re still flexible, adaptable and more importantly directable with your performance and that you’re not married to a particular take or reading of the character.

5. Don’t slate! Unless specifically instructed to, a rookie mistake is to always slate for a self-taped audition. It’s an understandable error as it’s pretty much standard before every live audition in a casting office. When the frequency of video auditions started taking off last year, my celebrity clients always refused to attach a slate to their tapes. When I asked why, the reason was always the same, “I don’t want this to look like every other audition they receive.”

6. Follow all instructions. Most self-tape requests come with very specific, seemingly anal, instructions from the casting office—some with very strong warnings that if even one small step is overlooked the tape will be automatically rejected. These instructions pertain to: lighting, framing, sound, file names, and your reader. It’s extremely important you read and follow all instructions for taping and sending. Triple check them. You don’t want your audition to be eliminated for a silly reason like not following some office’s fantasy of precision and competency.  

7. Your reader. Your reader should be as close to you as possible while being off-camera, positioned just right or just left of the camera. It’s perfectly fine if your reader is the opposite gender to the character he/she is playing. It has never made a difference in an actor booking the role off the tape. 

8. Framing. You should be in the center of the frame with the bottom of the frame at the center of your chest and the top of the frame slightly above the top of your head.

9. Sitting or Standing. Ideally, the camera should remain in one position throughout the scene otherwise you risk distracting your viewer (producer or casting director) from the main event: you. Don’t let the person behind the camera try any artsy or fancy camera movements. Chances are, it will just look off-putting and clumsy.

Listen carefully to the start of the piece and make a choice whether you’re sitting or standing throughout the scene.

10. Shoot every scene individually. Unless instructed, shoot every scene separately—they can all be edited together afterwards. Getting to put your best performance on tape is an awesome opportunity! You no longer have to deal with those awkward transitions between scenes that you can’t escape in a live audition. It can be tough in an in-person audition to go from the scene where you’re begging for your life from the lunatic gunman to rattling off highly technical data as an engineer for robots in space.

Taped auditions allow you to shut off the camera and take as much time as you need to jump into a new scene, allowing you to truly capture and record examples of your best work ever.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Personality Is Half The Audition Battle

This pilot season, 17 of my clients booked roles in major network and film projects. There's no mystery as to why. The secret to booking a role begins and ends with this: Don't try to guess what "they" are looking for. Assume you are what they're looking for and bring yourself to the role! Your secret weapon as an actor is your unique personality.

Bringing your personality to the role starts with realizing that you are interesting enough without having to add anything (technique, character, etc.). If you have prepared and coached the role responsibly, the work should be planted deep inside you without you having to "show it" when acting. You can never "act" your preparation. Any worthwhile preparation should only strengthen and elevate your performance, not take the place of or protect you from it.

Dealing with oneself can be terrifying. Many acting "techniques" feed off an actor's need to escape from himself into something warm and fuzzy, essentially doing everything but the work at hand. What inevitably happens is the work starts to smell like acting technique and loses the actor's humanity.

The personality of the actor is nine-tenths of the performance. I help my clients reflect their own humanity back at their audience, not by playing themselves but by bringing themselves to the role. It's "you" at your best, under the influence of and filled up with deeper, more powerful, and more fun emotions. This creates the illusion of character. The higher art is not to ask, "How should I play the role?" but rather, "What would I do if I were in that specific situation?"

The difference between "good" and "great" is very small. Beginning your audition emotionally full of something specific instantly sets you apart from every other actor starting with nothing, having to warm up as they go. You can't force yourself to feel that emotion or squeeze yourself into some emotional place -- it must be activated in a flash as if on the tips of your fingers, ready to go seconds after your slate or call of "Action!" on set.

Don't let anyone try to steal your talent and sell it back to you in the form of some stale technique or method. Fight like hell to bring your unique and original self to everything you do.

This article was originally posted on Backstage