There are plenty of acting opportunities in 2021, but most actors will miss out on a lot of them. What that means for you is that, if you know how to find those opportunities, you could have very little competition.
For years, Casting Directors would sometimes even struggle to get people to come in and read for many of these projects, and agents would even discourage talent from considering them.
Today, even A-listers are going all in on some of these opportunities and I can think of a few actors whose careers completely skyrocketed after booking one of these opportunities.
See professional actors are willing to take chances at the right time. If you want to be a professional actor too, you should pay attention when they start to do projects like this.
Here's how to find these acting opportunities...
Chances are, if you are relatively new to the industry, you would take on these projects without giving it a second thought. But, you would be surprised at how many “experienced” actors wouldn’t want to go anywhere near them.
So what are these opportunities?
It’s difficult to put them into a single category, so let’s keep it simple and call them voiceovers.
There is a ton of work available doing voice overs. We’ll get into “mainstream” stuff over the coming weeks.
What we’ll be focusing on today are the areas that have little competition, so you have a better chance of booking.
For example, the category of video game voices has largely been left untouched by actors. It was seen as something that you wouldn’t do as a serious actor.
But, the industry has changed and now you can see A list actors voicing and playing video game characters.
Because of all of the advances in technology, video game motion capture has made these full roles that you can actually dive deep into.
A lot of actors don’t know just how intricate the story lines are to some of the more popular video games. Some cut scenes would be nearly indistinguishable from a live action blockbuster movie.
As someone who wants to be a professional actor, you can’t ignore this category.
Not only is it growing incredibly fast, without any signs of slowing down, you can actually build a fanbase doing this.
Here’s why...
The number of people that will view your scenes in the video games they play, is often more than the number of people that buy a ticket to a relatively successful movie.
Sometimes, it’s several times more people.
So, when you become recognizable to them, and move from their console to the big screen, they will move with you.
Currently, it’s mostly going the opposite way and that’s where a big opportunity is.
If you want to pursue it, you need to have a conversation with your agent. Don’t be surprised if they have more than a few questions about why you want to do it.
This is relatively new territory for them as well, and they may not know exactly how to go about supporting you in this.
If they are unable to help you with pursuing some of these opportunities, they usually know someone who can.
They will either work together, or each one will focus on finding you different opportunities.
Besides this, there are a ton of other opportunities available for actors to do voiceovers and some of the projects are incredibly exciting. It’s becoming more common to film in augmented reality or do motion capture.
That’s a bit of a different category, wth its own set of challenges so we’ll go into the details on that another time.
If you went through this and decided that you just do not want to be involved in video games at all...that’s ok!
What I hope to do more than anything else is help you see that there are other ways to get your foot in the door.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but you should be doing something different than what everyone else does.
Start thinking about how you can differentiate yourself because if you want to be a professional actor you have to give yourself every advantage possible to succeed.
I get to work with so many actors, and I see the same things happening over and over again. So many of them follow the crowd because it’s just the way things have always been done.
But, the industry has changed. CDs are now actively looking for talent in places that are easily accessible to you. Use that to your advantage!
Typically, when a CD asks you to come in and read, it is either because you have a body of work that they have come across in some way, or it happens by showing up in the places that CDs are already looking.
So what do you think about what we went over today? Can you see how the opportunities we talked about could be used to boost your acting career?
Let me know in the comments below or shoot me an email. I’m always happy bounce ideas and help in any way I can, because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott