Actor Growth

One discussion that was brought up during the workshop was the question on whether or not joining a larger agency gives an actor an advantage over joining an agency that has a very small roster. Usually from an actor’s point of the thought is that the large agencies get most of the attention from casting directors and hence people who are represented by them get more opportunities.

Therefore, the assumption as well is if the agency that you joined has a very small roster, or often referred to as boutique agencies, then most likely you are being overlooked for a lot of potential roles as the agent doesn’t have as much power/influence.

For the most part, what was told to us is that generally speaking many casting directors could care less who your agent is as they mainly care about the talent. The message was that casting directors would be doing themselves a huge disservice if they only limited themselves to auditioning actors from specific agencies only.

In fact, one thing that was mentioned is that casting directors sometimes like to find new and promising talent as that way they can have bragging rights that they discovered them first in a way. Was useful information I thought as this is definitely a question that crossed my mind.

So I attended the casting director workshop today that lasted for about 7 hours or so. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect as this was the first time I have taken a workshop of this nature and I must admit that beforehand it seems kind of strange/scary to go to a workshop conducted by people who play a role in casting you for parts that you have never seen before. Hence, I considered this a first impression.

It was actually a very informative session I thought as I learned some interesting insider views when it comes to doing good at your auditions and what a casting director expects. I think I will break them down into different posts. There were some hilarious examples too such as how people try to dress up too much for the part.

For example, a girl that wears a skirt so small where she is revealing a bit too much and hence the casting director is fighting to not look at the actor. She also mentioned that in terms of an actor submission she could receive up to 500 different headshots for a single role. That should give you an idea how competitive it is.

One tid bit that I really wanted to learn about was the question about diversity and how big of a factor ethnicity is when it comes to casting for non ethnic specific roles. I was told that the production people give the casting director a figure of sort ahead of time in terms of what percentage of people should be of a certain ethnicity. So in a way, I suppose it is like they could say that want to X percentage of Asians, Caucasians, South Asian, etc. I’ll dive into the other notes later.

The variety of people there were interesting too such as a model going into acting to people who are semi active in the film industry already. We did auditions from sides that were given to us ahead of time as well as cold reads and I felt that I did well.

In the end, the personal advice that was given to me was to not focus too much on what people on the outside tell me what to do. Instead, focus on what I believe is the right thing to do and go at it.

I still remember paying for a membership for this site and I realized that I haven’t really been using it that much. I was just trying it today and it seems like a very chaotic message board that they have on that site. There is basically a couple of places where people are supposed to be able to find agents for representation or possible auditions to go to.

The thing is the forum seems so stone aged technology wise that the messages get cluttered up easily. As well, it seems very difficult to flesh out legitimate postings such as whether or not the agents who are advertising there are reputable or not. Basically, there just seems to be so many people trying to desperately break into the industry where one simple post can easily get dozens of replies.

I am going to try and dive into this a bit more and see what more I can get out of this service as like many times it’s what you do with it that counts.

I saw a posting today which was kind of interesting as for their audition process they requested actors to send a self taped audition. As well, they requested that the actors upload it to Youtube for consideration. This wasn’t for say a big Hollywood as it was just a independent production, but I thought this method sure raises a lot of questions.

Now there are many times where actors would simply create a self taped audition which is then sent to a casting director to review. This is usually for situations such as since I am in Vancouver. BC Canada, there could be a part in LA that a person thinks I would be great for. Therefore, instead of wasting time flying down to just audition they can pre-screen me this way.

Cost wise and efficiency I think it makes sense. In many ways it is like ditching the old paper headshots and submitting digital copies instead. My main concern would be quality though. Especially with film, the lighting can play a huge role in terms of what the person will look like on screen.

Literally, a person who is normally very good looking can look horrendous when the lighting isn’t proper. Now imagine an actor who doesn’t have the best equipment or know-how to create a good digital video. On top of that, usually the video quality degrades a little when uploading online to places like Youtube. Hence, you will look even worse if you don’t know what you are doing.

You may say it is about the talent, but many times it can be too distracting where you won’t take the person seriously. I guess that is something to think about as an actor where if you don’t already know so, it might be a good idea to get some technical skills if this is the way of the future. Unless you can afford to outsource all of your taping needs, then that would be different.

I will be volunteering for that video tomorrow and one thing I realized was that the person didn’t give me any details in terms of what I should wear. I suppose this isn’t too big of a deal since it is just a PSA, but usually for auditions it can be a more stressful decision.

For example, some people go in just as themselves which doesn’t help in making them look like the character or vice versa some people try to dress too much for the part which makes casting directors oversee you for other potential parts.

I think I am just going to go with casual. People often say that wearing black highlights your face more, so I think I will be going with that direction.

So I auditioned for a part on Thursday and interestingly enough I got an e-mail stating how they would like to see me for a callback next week on the same day that evening. In the e-mail, they also indicate that they have auditioned a lot of other great people as well.

Funny thing is that I see that they are continuously advertising for an actor to play that very same role too which kind of makes me question how genuine the callback really is. An interesting thing for myself too, all of the parts I have gotten thus far always came from the first audition.

My usual thought is that a callback means they think you can act but they are not quite sure which person to go with in terms of one’s look. In this case though, it just seems a bit too weird to go for a callback when they are still advertising to audition people for the very first time.