What I am sharing with you in today’s report is one of the most important things you can work on to improve your acting career and dramatically increase the impact of your performances.
Few things have this kind of an impact on your career and working on things like this is what takes someone’s acting career from zero to a hundred seemingly overnight...yet, almost no one does it.
That means you can effectively eliminate the competition and basically create a situation where you are the only logical choice. You can create a situation where Casting Directors and industry decision makers have to take you seriously as an actor.
So put your phone on airplane mode, turn off the tv, and shut off any other distractions so you can focus on this right now.
By simply going through this report and putting into action the few key items I spell out for you here, you can send your acting career skyrocketing and make the kind of progress most actors only dream of, and you can do it faster than you ever thought possible.
Here’s how...
Most people take the completely wrong approach when it comes to building their acting career (by the way, when I say “most” I really mean everyone except for a handful of people at the very top levels of the industry).
They take some acting classes that don’t really go much further than building a character’s back story and discovering their “true motivation,” take some headshots and throw together a reel rather haphazardly.
Not only do they miss out entirely on the business side of the industry, which we have been talking about extensively over the last couple of weeks, but they also focus on the wrong things creatively.
That is a recipe for career disaster!
It’s also why most actors never make any real career progress: most of what you learn in an acting class sounds good on paper and in a classroom setting but it doesn’t do much for you on set.
For example when you chase your character choices through one level after another, you typically end up trying to force character traits into your performance that don’t make any sense.
What actors are trying to get out of exercise like this are things that would make their performances better, but that’s only the surface level motivation.
The true motivation is to get better career opportunities and to get more of them. Here’s what I mean...
Most actors are taught that if they just get “good enough” the industry will seek them out and hand them their “big break.”
Of course it doesn’t really work that way and that type of advice is what has actors working on the wrong things.
If you were to focus on the right things, you could end up turning one acting job into 2, then 3, 4 and even more, since producers, directors, and casting directors tend to work with actors they like over and over again.
Think of how many times Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg or Leonardo Dicaprio and Martin Scorcese have worked together.
A director will take a liking to an actor who makes things easy for them, and that doesn’t have anything to do with “motivations” or your character’s backstory.
Here’s what I mean...
Have you ever thought about how blocking and editing go hand in hand?
The way a scene is cut and put together in the editing room, depends a lot on how the shots come together on set and as an actor, you play a role in that and it goes way beyond what most actors realize.
They don’t truly understand their role in the blocking process and usually leave it up to the production staff to decide what’s best.
However, leaving it entirely up to someone else puts your performance in someone else’s hands.
For example, editors use motion to piece different shots together without a jarring jump cut. That is, if there are enough shots to piece together.
This is something to keep in mind. You may deliver a fantastic reaction to what is going on in the scene, but if the cut to your reaction doesn’t flow naturally it will end up on the cutting room floor.
So, if you are not well versed in the editing process and how the camera movement affects that, you won’t be able to tell when things are not quite right.
An editor’s main job is to lead the audience to the emotions that the director and you as the actor are trying to portray, while keeping the fourth wall intact.
A rough cut will take the viewer out of the scene (emotionally) and diminish the effectiveness of your performance.
A seasoned director will have the ability to “see the edit” while shooting and help you, but an inexperienced director may end up hurting the pacing of your scene by remaining in the moment with you.
For example, let’s say that you are shooting an intense scene where you are having a verbal altercation with someone.
In the “real world” as emotions flare up it would be natural for you to speak over the other person, cut them off and raise your voice to make your point.
On screen, that same dynamic might kill your scene.
An editor won’t have the freedom in editing to amplify the scene by piecing your strongest moments together. Instead they will have to use as much of each take as possible, regardless of the quality of the take, potentially weakening your performance.
That can throw off the pacing of the scene or it can even reduce your screen time dramatically.
Particularly when there is overlapping dialogue, you have to take into account how that dialogue will be layered when it comes to editing, how the camera angles will play into the shot selection and more.
That only scratches the surface. We could do an entire masterclass on this, and we’ll continue to go deeper into things like this over the coming weeks.
For now, what you need is to open your mind to the bigger picture of what it means to be a professional actor and your role in the production process.
Like I’ve said repeatedly, it goes way beyond your character’s backstory.
A key thing that successful actors, the ones that make it to the top levels of the industry, are great at is working with director’s collaboratively.
It’s one thing to take direction well, it’s entirely another thing to partner with the director to ensure the production ends up being the best it can possibly be.
Don’t be afraid to speak up and share your ideas, as long as they come from a place of genuine interest in delivering a standout performance that maintains its intensity through the editing process.
See, just like you need to work collaboratively and in partnership with directors on set, you need to do the same thing for Casting Directors.
The environment is different, but the goal is the same.
You want to make the CD’s job as easy as possible and work with them to make yourself the obvious choice. When you make things easy on them, CDs will call on you over and over again.
Casting Directors are people too and they don’t want to sort through hundreds of submissions to find the right actor for the job. In fact, most CDs I speak to go to great lengths to fill a cast while minimizing the number of actors they have to see.
Most of them make it difficult on CD because, when going into an audition, most actors have the wrong goal in mind: they simply want to book the part.
In reality you should go in with the goal of building a relationship with the CD and getting on their radar for the long term. Ideally, you would book the part you went in to read for as well, but your main goal is the relationship.
That means you have to put the CDs mind at ease and communicate to them that you are a true professional.
They have to know that you will deliver a phenomenal performance, conduct yourself professionally on set, and know that you have big goals that you are working towards.
That’s a lot for them to discern when meeting you for the first time, and that’s why it’s so important to have your industry reputation precede you.
If it’s not in line with their expectations, they may not take you seriously as a professional, regardless of how good your audition may have been.
So if you are not booking as many jobs as you should be, here is a great place to start.
The coming weeks will bring a flurry of activity to the industry and I’ll be bringing you more of what you need to do to make big career moves.
However, none of that will matter, if you don’t have the foundational pieces in place.
Take your phone off airplane mode and get started on this now so you can hit the ground running with everything else. It could be the difference between whether your career progress stalls or whether I...
See you at the top,
Scott