Would you rather wait 10 years to start making real progress in your acting career, or would you rather be successful right now?
If you have a pulse, the answer to that would be obvious. Now one wants to wait for success to happen, but there is a huge problem!
Every step of the way we are told that we must wait our “turn.” The ways we are told and made to wait are countless, especially for actors.
We’ll get to that in a moment.
First, I want to clear something up.
The best things don’t come to those who wait. They come to those who seize opportunities.
Those things include getting more quality auditions, so you can stop going to open calls and waiting for sometimes hours on end, just to get 2 minutes with a CD’s assistant.
When you seize opportunities, you can also open doors to things that most actors can’t even imagine, like being asked to work with production teams over and over again, or having top tier agents pursuing you.
The secret to having a long and lucrative acting career is not what you may think...
I see this happen all the time.
A new actor will come to town and immediately start to focus all of their attention on getting into the “best” acting classes.
While it’s important to have a good group of driven actors around you and supporting you, training will not substitute for real world acting experience when it comes to casting decisions.
Think about it this way.
CDs are charged with making decisions on more than just talent. They must also select actors who will not drop the ball on a multimillion dollar production.
Casting mistakes can be very expensive and they can also be detrimental to a Casting Director’s reputation.
So rather than focusing on training, focus on doing. Here’s why...
Imagine that you needed a complicated medical surgery and the surgeon comes in to take you to the operating room and says “don’t worry, I have seen this surgery dozens of times and I have practiced it in the mirror too.”
How comfortable would you be going under the knife?
This is what we often ask of Casting Directors. Even if you do have acting experience, if it’s not the “right” kind of experience you may also be asking CDs to take a chance going under the knife with you.
You can’t get leading role experience in quality productions, without first having experience in lead roles with quality productions.
That’s kind of the catch 22.
So, where do you go from there?
Most actors will simply keep trying for the same type of roles over and over again. Sometimes that means that they are relegated to being bit players for the rest of their acting careers.
Other times it means never really getting your career off the ground. Sadly, that is where most actors end up.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way. The industry is structured in kind of a stair step fashion. Each step up leads to roles with more screen time and more responsibility.
However, if you focus on just a couple things, then you bypass most of this and go straight to the top of the ladder.
Going back to the surgeon example, what CDs really want to know is that you have what it takes to be part of a production without dropping the ball. They want to know that you have actually done the procedure successfully, before choosing you to go under the knife with.
This is what your reel is for.
Most actors are highly mistaken about what a reel is supposed to be.
Your reel is supposed to be a summary of your body of work of course, but more importantly, it should demonstrate to CDs that you are qualified to take on roles with big responsibilities and lots of screen time.
I’m sure you have heard of the saying “don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.” Think of your reel in this way. Dress up your reel so that it’s a fit for the jobs you want.
If all you have are clips from poorly lit projects and a commercial for the local mattress warehouse, that’s not going to put CDs at ease when deciding whether to cast you.
This is one area you really need to focus on if you want push your career to new levels of success quickly.
If you don’t have quality clips for your reel, get some! You don’t have to wait to be cast in a big, quality production.
Script out a few scenes and get a group together to shoot the scenes. You can all agree to use the clips in your respective reels.
Make sure that they represent a quality production.
Don’t script scenes with lots of action or that require special effects, as these are difficult and expensive to produce.
If what you need is an action reel, then you can still accomplish it. Just, think foot chase and hand combat, rather than high speed chase and pyrotechnics.
Shoot on location, rather than on a sound stage and pull in some production staff to help. Lighting is a big giveaway, and people can spot a poor production on lighting alone.
Lighting pros, sound techs, makeup artists, hairdressers, and editors need to show their body of work too so pull them in to your reel production and you can all use the material for your own reels, portfolios, etc.
In the end you will have a reel that is full of scenes that appear to come from large scale productions. This will take some time and effort on your part to put together, but it will be well worth it in the end.
Just showing up at another audition, is the easy thing to do and that’s why it’s what most actors do. Doing the same, will only get you the same meager results.
If you want an extraordinary career, then you have to do extraordinary things.
Success begets success, so when you send out a reel like this you will be asked to read more often. The roles you are asked to read for will change too.
They will get bigger and have more screen time, because CDs will know they can trust you. In their minds you will have already been a part of bigger productions.
Perception is reality.
Just make sure that your industry reputation matches your goals so you maintain that perceiption.
This doesn’t mean that you have to make up the credits and put them on your resume. Get creative instead.
Partner with screen writers to bring selected scenes from their scripts to life. This will keep you having to script them yourself and it will also help them to sell their scripts more easily, because they will have their own sizzle reel to show producers.
Partner with producers who are looking for funding for their projects and the same thing will happen. It’s easier to get funding for project when you have a sizzle reel, so they will gladly partner up with you on this.
If the production lands on your IMDb page, then all the better.
It’s such a huge factor in casting decisions because it is a measure of an actor’s reputation and it’s a storage place for your body of work.
Even with a great reel, you should also have this in good standing to demonstrate that you are a professional, working actor rather than a hobbyist.
I know this may sound like a huge undertaking, but if you spread the work around, by pulling in production and support staff, you will get to focus on doing what you do best while others take care of the rest.
A few days ago, I read about a study conducted by a marine animal trainer. She had a shark in holding tank.
When it came time to feed the shark, she would dump in a bucket of fish, which the shark quickly gobbled up.
The shark got used to this, and the trainer then placed the fish in an indestructible, clear container. She placed that in the water and for a few days, the shark tried and tried to get inside the container, to no avail.
After a while, the shark stopped trying. The trainer put fish directly into the shark’s tank, without a container, and the shark didn’t even flinch.
Had he tried just one more time, he would have gotten what he was after.
Don’t let this happen in your career. Success can be just around the corner, but you can only get there as long as you continue to try.
Sometimes, this means trying to do thing differently than you were before.
If you ever need ideas, or even just to talk with someone who understands the unique struggle of an actor, shoot me an email.
I always read and respond to every one that comes through because my goal is to...
See you at the top,
Scott