Actor Growth

Just the other day I self submitted myself for a commercial as the description seemed to be something that was within my range. Unfortunately, by the time I submitted the session was already full and the casting director informed me of this.

The interesting thing though was that she asked if it was okay to keep my headshot and of course I was fine with that. It was kind of strange though as I would think this kind of thing is a normal practice. After thinking about it, I think I saw more positives out of that remark.

I never seen this casting director before personally and I’m betting she has never even heard of me either. However, I think her asking if it was okay to keep my headshot was another way of saying that she thought I had a good look that may be suitable for future projects that she was casting for. In that sense, I guess it’s really good.

I noticed that there was a another casting director workshop happening in about two weeks and I decided that I will attend this one. There have been a lot of advertisements lately as well for these types of workshops and what attracted me to this one was that it seemed like it was going to be conducted in a semi audition styled setting.

I read that first you would get trained by an acting coach to prepare a scene and then afterwards you will perform this scene on camera for a real local casting director. This fitted in perfectly with my current direction which was to learn less about the actual acting process on set and to focus more on the auditions as you need to land those roles first and foremost.

As well, I wanted to again avoid those “Paid to get seen” type of workshops as I don’t think those are beneficial at all. Unlike the last casting director workshop I went to, this one insisted that all actors must have previous professional training to enroll. Hopefully that is a good sign that this will be some good stuff too at a higher level.

So I was talking with my agent recently about my growth and direction thus far as I was curious if he had any input when it comes to myself in comparison to other local Vancouver actors who get seen by casting directors. Essentially, I was trying to find out what other people’s competitive edges were where they would be called for something over myself or vice versa.

He began by mentioning how it would make his job so much easier if he knew exactly what a casting director wanted. However, most of the time they just ask for very generic descriptions for a person such as the age and sex of the actor.

Out of that conversation too he addressed that a casting director usually calls 15 actors to audition per character. As well, he estimated that there were approximately 60,000 male actors here in the BC area. Putting that number into perspective should really make you think how competitive this field is.

He even mentioned that even though I’m ethnic, which puts me in a smaller demographic, there is no way to figure out what characteristics a casting director is looking for unless they mark Asian males only in their casting information.

You know, casting directors always say that if you even make it to the audition room you should be super happy. Many times I don’t really think too much of it, but thinking about those numbers sure puts everything in a different perspective. If here in BC we have 60,000 male actors, does that mean LA has like 500,000?

Now I know what my old acting classmate meant when he said he went to New York and couldn’t even get seen.

While on set for the shooting of season 2 of Fringe yesterday I was talking to another local actor that was currently in the midst of seeking for new principal representation. His reasons are pretty straight forward as he knows that there are a lot of auditions that he could be suited for but is not getting called for them.

He then dove a bit about the issue on how if a certain agent has a bad relationship with a specific casting director then most likely you won’t ever get called for potential roles that they may be casting for. I’ve been told many times that it is definitely small network of people that

The interesting thing is I personally can’t think of a non intrusive way to verify if say an agent and casting director hate each other for whatever reason as for the most part you are only going by rumors and hearsay from other people. In reality, if you are semi established with a unique skill then chances are things like this can be just a hurdle. But for up and coming talent this is more crucial as virtually no one knows you and things like this don’t exactly help the situation.

It seems like the only real way to find out is to network with a lot of other actors to get their general experiences where you then compile it to come up with your own conclusion. I know in general an agent can make a big difference though in terms of how much potential work you can get professionally.

Yesterday I heard a conversation where a bunch of actors were talking about the things that they have tried thus far to promote their acting career. Example, taking workshops, doing independent films and so fourth. One person made that age old joke about how some people sleep with the director to get the parts except in this case the casting director was referenced instead.

That was funny I thought as usually from the outside even my perspective as a film viewer that it’s always the actual film director that you have to convince in order to get the part. Actually, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “casting director”. However, as an actor I came to realize just how different it is.

Similar to what I learned in the workshop that I took that was conducted by a casting director, a lot of times the production would simply trust the casting director to provide the talent. Therefore, it’s important that these casting directors are aware of your capabilities and presence.

So if you are starting out, don’t forget these people.

I was reading this interesting article at the Showfax site by a casting director named Bonnie Gillespie at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/index.html which had a lot of important notes about knowing your character type I thought.

There was a lot of insightful points such as if an actor submits themselves for virtually every role it can come across as desperate or that they don’t know their own look range. Another interesting note was the one I read about meeting casting directors.

Basically, she talks about how there are so many casting directors out there where it is better to just research the one’s that usually cast for projects that you would have a good chance of getting as oppose to just trying to meet everyone. Usually people tell you to always take every casting director workshop for example. I guess this puts it in perspective in terms of narrowing down your focus. You can probably end up saving a lot of money too.

It was a good read and I would recommend everyone take a peak at it if you are an actor as well.