Being in touch with so many actors and industry insiders gives me a unique vantage point on the industry.
It also allows me to bring you the best of the best when it comes to building your acting career.
The last couple of weeks we have focused on the business side of the industry and how to create the most opportunities.
Now, it’s time to switch gears and talk about what to do with those opportunities and how to make the most out of them.
If you have been keeping up with the action steps then you are already quite a bit ahead. If you haven’t been following along, don’t worry. I’ll show you how you can catch up quickly.
See, timing is very important in the industry and there is a window of opportunity right now that won’t be open for long. If you want to make big career moves, the time to act (pun intended) is now...
Some actors struggle to make career progress because they do the wrong things at the wrong time.
Some struggle because they do right things at the wrong time.
Most tend to let things happen as they will and without a rhyme or reason, but Boost My Star is all about taking your career destiny back into your own hands.
See, the greatest thing you can do as an actor to prove yourself industry decision makers is deliver a stand out, world class performance.
Whether it’s a Casting Director, a fellow actor, or a director, everyone wants to work with a rising star.
So, now that you have been booked for the part, it’s time to focus on following through.
This means you have to build dynamic characters that pop off the screen and stick with your audience, long after they have finished watching your performance. When you are able to do that, you start to build a strong reputation.
More on that in a bit...
Most actors approach a performance with the wrong goal in mind. Your goal isn’t to deliver a strong performance. Your goal should be to create an experience.
To do that you have to layer your character, and it goes way beyond just knowing “where they are coming from.”
Acting class teaches you about creating a backstory but it doesn’t really teach you how to connect your character choices to that back story. That’s where the DCM comes in.
For example, let’s assume that you have been cast as a character that is battling bulimia.
Creating a backstory will help you with surface level choices, and obviously the script would contain most of the surface level elements.
However, when you build a character using the Dynamic Character Matrix (or DCM for short), you will build in several layers of nuances that will impact your performances incredibly.
There are 4 ways that character traits and choices can be added to layer your performance, and each of the 4 ways will impact the trait itself.
Does your character know they are bulimic? Do know that it is a condition or do they just consider it something they do? If they do know they are bulimic, where are they on their journey?
From there you can evaluate whether that trait is known to others.
Does anyone else know the character is bulimic? The script will guide you, but you have to take it deeper than just the surface action and dialogue.
Here’s how...
When someone is suffering from an eating disorder like bulimia, they tend to have low blood sugar levels almost all the time.
Naturally, this should guide your performance as you add the symptoms of low blood sugar to your performance.
That’s where most actors stop, but using the Dynamic Character Matrix you create a much deeper performance by following the thread of whether it’s known to anyone else.
For example, low blood sugar leads to feeling dizzy, shaky, and it will often lead to headaches.
If the bulimia is unknown to others, those are symptoms your character would try to hide. Rather than popping a handful of aspirin at their desk everyday, chances are they would do it in the car or in the bathroom.
Knowing this would keep you from making an unnatural character choice.
They would also be very self conscious about shaking because they wouldn’t want anyone else to ask questions. Maybe it would mean that, when around others, the shaking doesn’t manifest as shaking at all. Rather, it shows itself as restlessness.
That’s a small pivot, but with huge meaning behind it.
Your character might often go from massaging her temples to brushing her hair aside in this case, so people don’t ask questions about why she always has a headache.
Then there’s also the possibility that the trait is unknown to you but everyone else knows about it.
Even an “active trait” like bulimia could fall into this category, if as I mentioned earlier it’s just something you do and don’t really think anything of it.
If it’s something that you are unaware of, you have to consider just how unaware your character is about the given trait.
Does the character suspect that everyone else is in on some secret and she’s the only one that’s out of the loop.
If that’s the case, your dialogue and interactions with others might play towards being in a constant state of suspicion. You might feel like you are constantly under a microscope without really knowing why.
See how that is a completely different set of choices compared to a character trait that stops at the surface level of bulimia?
That’s the simple version of how the Dynamic Character Matrix works and the entirety of this could easily fill a book.
We’ll go into this deeper over the coming weeks, but start with this for now. Don’t over complicate it. Just get used to going deeper with your character choices by asking the 4 questions.
Is this known to me? Is it known to others?
Is it unknown to me?
Is it unknown to others?
The top level actors that all of us look up to, do this to build characters that stick with you long after you leave the theatre or shut off the TV.
It’s how they create characters that you cry with or laugh along with. This Dynamic Character Matrix can be the difference between delivering a good performance or delivering a world class performance that people can't get out of their head.
As an actor, working at building your career, you need to have this kind of an edge. It’s what will make Casting Directors, Producers, Directors, and high level industry decision makers want to work with you over and over again.
Of course none of it matters if you don’t have the opportunity to showcase your talent and get on set. Here’s how I can help with that.
Building a career is all about doing the right things at the right time.
When you are on set, you need to focus on delivering a world class performance. Most actors focus on this in one way or another the majority of the time, because it’s a lot more fun than the procedural and often repetitive nature of making yourself visible to the industry.
However, when you are not on set, your chief focus should be doing whatever is necessary to book a job and get on set.
That’s not the fun part of being an actor and it doesn’t do much for you creatively.
That’s why I created a way for you to let me take care of that, while you do what you do best.
Do that first and if you have a project or an audition coming up, run your character through the CDM to prepare.
If you find yourself on set and feeling like your performance is lacking, run your character through the CDM again to find the areas where there may be a character conflict and how you could improve your performance.
If you don’t have anything coming up, write a scene and create a character from scratch with the CDM or pick one of your past characters to do this exercise with.
Note how you would have played things differently and how the choices you made on set could have been enhanced by putting them through the Dynamic Character Matrix.
You should even write down the 4 simple DCM questions and carry them with you on set, so you can refer to them anytime.
If you have questions about how any of it works, shoot me an email or leave it in the comments below. I’m always happy to help however I can because I want to...
See you at the top,
Scott