Think of the auditions that you’ve been on recently, when you were cast for the role.
Now think of the auditions you went on but were passed over for someone else.
What was the difference?
Was it your performance, did you have an off day, were you truly just “not a fit?” What was the reason that you didn’t win the role?
Most actors are masterful at justifying why they weren’t cast, but the truth is that if you lay the groundwork you should be cast in every production for which you are castable and audition for.
I know it sounds like a stretch, so let me explain…
Do you think that if Mark Wahlberg expressed interest in doing a film casting would say “eh, no thanks.” He has laid the ground to be cast in everything for which he is castable.
This doesn’t mean that you have to be a superstar to make this happen.
Everyday actors, many with less experience than you might have right now, are making this happen all the time.
Here’s how…
First and most important is that they focus only on pursuing roles for which they are a fit.
Most of us have the mentality that “any audition is a good audition” and this is true to an extent. If you are just starting, by all means go see anyone that will see you. Not only will you get into the groove of audition and build some thick skin along the way, but if you pay close attention and review your wins and you losses after you get the news, then you will pick up on what you did right and what you could have done better.
For example, early on in my career I had a set of criteria that I would judge myself on, immediately after finishing an audition.
I would measure from 1-5 my interaction with the Casting Director. Then I would note how I arrived at that number. Did the CD like me? Did she have no interest in learning more about me (which is never a good sign)?
I evaluated my performance, as objectively as I could, also from 1-5. Would I cast myself? How was my vocal tonality? Did my arms flail about mindlessly?
I had at least 10 different categories that I evaluated immediately after leaving the audition, sometimes more.
Just about every successful actor that I’ve ever met has had a similar system in place. Some of them did it in their head. Others made voice memos in their iPhone recounting how the audition went.
The most successful of them wrote it down and had a rigid framework for what to measure and why they measured it that way.
It’s not enough to just mentally go over it in your head over and over again.
See, when you write it down, not only do you commit it further into memory, but you can also review it when you get the news about whether you were selected for the role or not.
Personally, I kept my evaluation sheets filed away in a 3 ring binder. Every time I got news that I won the role, I went to the binder flipped through to the sheet for that audition, read it and then filed it behind a green divider.
Every time I got news that I was passed over, I went to the binder again, flipped to find the sheet for that audition, read it and then filed it behind a red divider.
Over time it became sort of a playbook for auditioning. I could comb through the green sheets and look for the trends.
For example, almost every time I won the role, I had a great interaction the CD and of course delivered a 4 or 5 on the performance scale. I noticed that nearly every time, my vocal tonality was on point.
So, I focused on that whenever I went into an audition.
I came up with all kinds of ways to ethically charm the CDs and make myself unforgettable to them.
My results got even better and my casting percentage went through the roof. I then focused on really honing in on my vocal tonality. I immersed myself in real world applications of tonality. I found that acting classes weren’t as helpful with this as I had hoped, because they were situational.
Toastmasters and Dale Carnegie courses were much better for working on tonality because they focused on real world scenarios, and that’s the feel you want your performances to have: real world.
I mastered tonality and my casting percentage skyrocketed.
I’m far from being the only one. If you study actors that have achieved the kind of success that you want to achieve, you will pick up on this too.
They may not all have the same system, but they will have variants of a system like this. When you start to consider what you want your system to look like just be sure that it has elements that are clearly defined and that you can measure objectively.
You should also be doing this on set. This one will be a little bit less objective but it’s just as important. With auditions you can measure the outcome: cast or not cast.
On set, scenes are seldom composed of a single take. Often they are made up of multiple takes. If you do 4 takes to get a scene, chances are, pieces of all 4 of those takes will be used in post.
Pick apart a take of the scene as a whole and evaluate it using criteria that are also clearly defined and that you can measure objectively. For example, you can measure your vocal tonality, whether you were in your character or in your head (on a scale of 1-5), etc.
File your “good performance sheets” and your “not so good performance sheets” just as you did your audition sheets, and review them before the start of a shoot day. Review them before you step on set and at the end of the day.
Over time you will be able to subcategorize them based on the type of scene.
The key to making this all work is getting enough auditions to so that you can gather data. To do that you have to make sure that your industry reputation matches your goals. Here’s a quick fix for that.
If you rely on your agent to get you auditions, you are not fully leveraging your industry opportunities. In the end no one is as invested in your career as you are, and that means you have to take responsibility for your success and make yourself visible to the industry.
As actors we have a thousand and one things going on at any given time so it’s easy for things like this to fall by the wayside.
Keep in mind that even if you build the best review system in the world and are gung ho about putting it to use as soon as your next audition, it doesn’t matter…if you don’t have one.
So, whether you are self representing, have an agent, or ideally doing both, this will at least give you a leg to stand on when you pursue opportunities.
Put your review sheet together right now, before you need it, so that when your next audition rolls around (and if you do the above it should be sooner rather than later) you can put it to use.
Feel free to send it over in an email if you would like me to give it a look. After all, my goal is to…
See you at the top,
Scott