Every actor knows that audition skills are extremely important and play a central role in whether or not they will succeed in building a career as a professional actor.
I’ve seen actors dedicate several years to learning “the proper audition procedures” just to end up stuck in their careers like everyone else.
I’ve also seen other actors skip that step almost entirely and build incredibly successful careers, consistently being booked over actors that focused on “the proper audition procedures.”
Why does that happen?
Common sense would tell you that, all things being equal, it should be the other way around. The truth is that many actors don’t truly understand the audition process.
I’m not talking about it in a technical sense. By and large, most actors know how to audition or they figure it out very quickly.
I’m talking about it on a strategic level. Not many actors really understand the overall purpose behind the audition process, so it’s almost impossible for them to truly grasp how they fit into it.
If you want to build your career as a professional actor, this is something you have to master quickly. Here’s where to start...
First, let’s talk about something most actors get completely wrong about auditions.
Few of them really understand what an audition is. An audition is not about impressing casting with your talent.
In fact, auditions are not something you should even approach the same way every time. Here’s what I mean...
Your initial audition is an opportunity to catch a CD’s attention. Nothing more! If you fail to do that, everything else becomes irrelevant.
Contrary to what most actors believe, it’s not your opportunity to book. I know that sounds backwards and that’s precisely why most actors fail at auditions much more often than they succeed.
Again, I don’t mean that in the sense of skipping the remainder of the process and booking things on the spot.
What I mean is that your only goal during the initial audition is catching the Casting Directors attention.
Being able to catch their attention will almost always yield a callback audition.
That’s the goal of the first audition, but most actors treat this audition as an opportunity to showcase their talent range and wow the CD.
You would be better served by taking things one step at a time.
Instead most actors make the mistake of treating every audition the same, when each step of the process is uniquely different from the others, and you can’t progress to the next step, without first mastering the current one.
In a general sense, if the first auditions are about standing out from everyone else and catching a CDs attention, what is the step after that?
Typically, that’s the callback audition.
Callbacks are more about CDs getting to know your angle on the character you are reading for.
This is where showcasing your talent really comes into play. That’s why you treat the first audition completely differently from this one.
At this stage, they are starting to focus more on finding the actor that will be able to deliver a stellar performance on set.
What this means is that, during your initial audition, your angle on the character and your character choices can be completely different from what production originally had in mind and you can still progress to callbacks.
In fact, many actors do that purposely, just to catch the Casting Directors attention. That’s an incredibly effective strategy when done correctly. We’ll talk about how to do that in a bit...
What’s most important during the callback stage is showing casting that you can be effective on set and proving that you will be up to the task, creatively.
If you can do that, you are likely to continue moving through the audition process.
Beyond callbacks, Casting Directors and industry decision makers will be trying to gauge how well you fit with the rest of the cast and how your character choices, thus far, match with what production has in mind for the project.
It’s at this point that they will give you direction to move you closer to how the character was written, if you made choices that were different from that.
Sometimes, your character choices will end up working out and production will move towards reorienting the character in the way you portrayed it.
Either way, subsequent auditions are more about getting to know you on a personal level, getting to see how well you interact with other actors, and how you take direction.
Of course, there are a ton of nuances and we’ll spend the coming weeks going deeper into those.
What we talked about today is helpful when you have enough opportunities to get in the room and put it to use. If you don’t currently have enough auditions lined up, this could help.
See, actors tend to focus almost entirely on the creative side of the industry. After all, it’s much more fun to take an acting class than it is to work on your auditioning strategies.
However, that creates a situation where actors end up ignoring some of the most important parts of building their career.
There’s also a very common negative feedback loop that a lot of talented actors fall into. They feel that because they may be going on a lot of auditions, they just have to keep playing the numbers game until something works out.
They feel that because they are “busy” then things are bound to go their way eventually.
If you do have enough opportunities to audition but you are not booking as often as you should, it could be that you are not treating the initial audition properly or it could be that there is a disconnect when CDs dig deeper, after your initial audition.
It’s important that what they find about you shows that you are a professional and not a hobbyist.
Them not being able to find much about you can also be at the root of why you may not be booking as often as you should.
After all, if they don’t know you, they can’t cast you so it always helps to make yourself highly visible to Casting Directors and industry decision makers where they are already looking for talent. That’s why I created this.
It helps you take care of what could be an important factor in casting decisions, while you focus on the creative side that helps you move through the audition and casting process.
I know that we went over a lot of complex strategies today and as you start putting it to use, you will probably have a ton of questions about how it actually works.
Remember I’m always only a comment or an email away. Feel free to get in touch anytime, even if you just want to bounce ideas about what we went over.
As always, I’m happy to help however I can because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott