The industry is changing. If you have been around Boost My Star for any length of time, you have heard me say this at least a thousand times.
The problem is not that the industry is changing, it’s that actors are not changing with it.
If you think of your actor friends, and the way almost everyone approaches the industry, you will notice that they all approach it the same way.
Enroll in acting classes or improv, find agent, wait for phone to ring. That’s pretty much how it goes for almost all of us.
However, if you are still acting in 2019 you have to change the way you do things.
If you want to have a long and prosperous career as a working actor you simply cannot afford to do what everyone else does. Doing so will get you the same results that everyone else gets, and most actors are on their way out of the industry, about as soon as they enter it.
The industry is undergoing a massive shift and getting more auditions, especially more quality auditions, is crucial to your success as an actor.
More than ever, you need to deploy every advantage available to you, and what I’m about to share with you will give you a huge advantage!
Let’s start with the 1 super simple change you can make right now that could lead to you getting tons more auditions immediately...
As you progress in the industry, your body of work will “do the talking” and open up doors for you.
However, as you start to build your acting career, your body of work may not be sufficient enough or visible enough to do this for you just yet.
That’s why we rely on tools such as resumes, headshots, reels, personal websites, IMDb, etc.
This is what casting looks to when evaluating whether or not they want to invest time into the process of considering you for a role.
When your agent looks through the dailies, they will match you with opportunities you may be a fit for. They then send out your resume, headshot, and reel to casting for their review.
This is the part where most actors believe the “ball is out of their court” and it’s now up to casting to identify their talent and give them an opportunity.
However, the process is just getting started and there are a number of things you can do to practically ensure that you shine each step of the way so that you can breeze through the various steps and eventually be called in to audition.
The first item that Casting Directors will review is your headshot to determine whether the vision they have for the role, is one you match up with.
If they determine you are a close enough fit, then they will skim your resume and place you into a “keep file” or if they don’t see a fit, they will disregard your submission completely.
More on this in a second.
If you are lucky enough to go into the “keep file” this is when the casting department will review your reel and start to determine your castability index. We’ll come back to your index in a moment.
The question is then how do you get yourself into the “keep file?”It starts with your headshot and resume.
The biggest mistake you can make here is to have a headshot that is indistinguishable from the hundreds, if not thousands of other headshots CDs look over every day.
Your headshot should reflect your current casting type. If you are going for girl next door type of roles, then your headshot should not be done with a full face makeup and smoky eyes.
Think of ways that you can make yourself standout, without going against type.
Also, consider what projects you may be submitted to. We are coming up on another election cycle, which means that more projects of a political nature will be greenlit, than in recent years.
For example, adding an American Flag lapel pin to your headshot would instantly make a connection to you and the role you are auditioning for in the mind of the CD.
You should have a couple of different variations of your headshot available for agent to submit, depending on the nature of the roles you are going to be submitted to.
If you have the cashflow to do a reshoot to add things like this, great! Otherwise, you can have a friend photoshop a lapel pin onto your current headshot. You could even have them add frown lines to your images, if you are being submitted to darker and more serious roles.
It’s all about doing whatever you can to standout and move along in the casting process.
Contrary to popular belief, your resume is not as important as it used to be. There are so many production companies and so much content being produced that casting simply cannot keep up with all of them.
This is why your resume is largely irrelevant now, and what CDs look to instead is IMDb. So, to give yourself the best chance of being called in, you need to make sure that your reputation on IMDb is in good shape.
Here’s how I can help with that.
Once, casting determines that your experience level and reputation are good enough, and your headshot has been approved, they will then look to your reel for final confirmation before calling you in.
This is the most time consuming part of the process for casting, and that’s why it is reserved for last.
The mistake nearly every actor makes is to send out the same reel for every audition they go on. At best, some actors (very few of them) will have a dramatic reel and an action or a comedy reel.
However, just as you should have a few different variations of your headshot, you also need to have reels that are specifically tailored to the roles you are going out for and most importantly, they should be tailored to the people that are going to be viewing them.
If you are being submitted to a play a doctor for example, but there is not a single frame in your reel that shows you playing a doctor, how well is your reel going to serve you?
This is where you have to go beyond what everyone else is doing. If you don’t have time to shoot new material for your reel, you can at least make subtle changes.
One of our tribe members changes her background color to match the CDs preference.
This is the age of social media and practically everything you have ever wanted to know about almost anyone is pretty much readily available.
Look for the Casting Director online and see what they like. If you see that the CD is always wearing something pink, then the background of your reel should be pink rather than the traditional black bars.
You can make quick changes like this on the fly and without needing any technical skills whatsoever.
You might think “I don’t want to be known as the person that sent in a reel with a pink background!”
Consider whether you would rather be known for that, or would you rather be forgotten about?
Remember, it’s all about getting to the next stage in the casting process. If it takes a pink background for you to get called in...why not do it?
Go above and beyond what everyone else does, and you will get disproportionate results that they cannot even imagine.
Your reel, and your body of work along with a host of other factors will determine your castability index. Chief among those factors is how the industry views you and that’s why you have to make sure that your reputation matches your goals.
As long as no red flags come up when casting is doing their due diligence and looking into your reputation, then you will be called in to audition and it’s your time to shine.
By now, casting will be eagerly anticipating your arrival because of the impression you made long before you ever walked in the room.
Approaching the industry this way is something that no acting teacher and no colleague would ever recommend.
I have pieced together what is working right now based on my countless daily interactions with other actors and industry decision makers, and by exhaustively studying, interviewing, and extracting every bit of knowledge from actors that have made it and built lucrative and enviable careers.
They always march to the beat of their own drum and are not afraid to color outside the lines. They force themselves out of their comfort zones and simply do the things others are unable or unwilling to do for fear of being ridiculed or making a mistake.
Without fail, all of them use 2 strategies to succeed.
1. They do things differently.
2. They make themselves highly visible to the industry.
If you want to be the next actor to make incredible career progress quickly, here’s how I can help with both.
I’ll stop at nothing to give you every advantage possible to succeed as an actor, because my goal is to...
See you at the top,
Scott