Archive for Business of Acting
The Casting Process – Part 2 Your Child Actor Gets a Call for a Commercial Audition
Posted by: | CommentsWhen your child has been chosen for an audition, it is essential that you respond as soon as possible. The more efficient everyone is at responding, the more efficient the audition can go.
Even if you haven’t done this before, you’ve likely seen the long lines of contestants at Open Calls for reality show auditions like American or Australian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, America/ Britain / Australia’s Got Talent and more. Some auditions will be this big and chaotic, but many are tightly scheduled so you need to respond in a timely manner.
With your Audition Confirmation, you will get information on the shooting schedule. If you are not available on the shoot days, you are better off not confirming the audition than taking up the Casting Director and the Client’s time by taking the audition for a part you won’t be able to take.
The entertainment industry is a really small world. We all have scheduling conflicts, but you don’t want to gain the reputation of being unreliable. In one of those freaky laws of nature – as soon as you schedule something “hoping” it won’t conflict – it does. If you stick with acting for long enough, you will start seeing castings from the same Casting Directors over and over again. You’ll likely never know if your child is missing out on auditions because they aren’t right or because you are being avoided.
You Got the Audition!!! What now?
There is no typical casting, though theatrical and commercial castings generally have a different look and feel.
We’ll concentrate on Commercial Casting for this article. Like above, there is no “typical” commercial casting, though many may look and feel similar. Castings all have their own nuances of which we may not be aware.
The clients may be very specific about their needs and unforgiving of those who don’t give them exactly what they want.
Some clients may have only a vague notion of what they really want and depend on the casting director to magically understand what they need and provide it.
Some clients have a very specific vision, then decide on a totally different direction as the casting process is underway.
Others have a specific vision, but what they want doesn’t exist or isn’t available. Casting agents in this situation have to sell their vision to the client as if it was the clients’ idea. They need to know that the artists they are recommending can deliver the goods.
Your best bet is to prepare your child actor to look and feel like the character in the brief. For a “typical kid,” have them be bright, happy, and fun. Wear bright colors without busy patterns or logos. Learn the lines or actions specified in the brief.
For a specific type of character, sport player, emotional type, nerd, jock, emo, surfer, student, etc, do your best to “look” the type. A Casting Director can better see your child as a “little professor” if he’s wearing at least a collared shirt and long pants than if he’s wearing basketball clothes. You get the idea.
Do your best, but we advise against buying particular “costumes” to achieve certain looks just for an audition, unless of course, your child will wear those clothes again. If your little angel has to look like an equestrian, but doesn’t ride on a regular basis, don’t buy a whole outfit, dress her in light colored pants and boots and maybe carry a strap to look like a rider’s crop.
Remember, Casting Director’s are your friend in this process. The easier you make it for them to see your child as the character in the brief, the closer you are to booking an acting job.
10 Tips for Good Headshots for Acting Kids
Posted by: | CommentsA headshot is an industry standard to get acting auditions and acting jobs. It is exactly what the name says – a photo of head (face) and maybe shoulders. It is sort of like school photos only a hundred times more attractive.
Headshot by Kelsey Edwards
A good headshot can help get your child in the door to major castings. (Of course they’ll need more than just a good photo if you get into a casting, but more on that later.)
Professional headshots for kids are crisp, clean with no visible make-up and minimal styling to show off the best you. In a winning headshot, there is nothing to distract the viewer from your eyes and face.
Ideally, your child’s headshot will be of their face, smiling, looking directly at the camera – not profile. No hands at the face or hair covering one or both eyes or peeking around something or flowers or busy background to detract from your child being the focus.
☺That being said, after looking at all of your available shots, if the best one, that gives the best indication of your child’s character has a plant or flower or hands or background, but your child is still the focus, use it. Here are ten things to keep in mind for headshots: 1. Make sure the photo actually looks like your CHILD. 
2. Make sure your full face and eyes can be seen – go ahead and play with cropping, but don’t cut off an eye or nose. 3. Make eye contact with the camera. 4. Use indirect and natural light. Shadows and artificial colored lights are not often your friend in headshots. 5. Make sure your CHILD is the focus of the photo – not the background, hands, the stair railing, the sculpture. 6. Have a plain background. 7. No visible make-up. Children need to look like children – not mini adults. 8. Wear clothes that flatter your child without taking attention away from the face. 9. Don’t get artsy – soft focus, glamour photos, theme or busy backgrounds, peeking over, under or around other objects that obstruct the face. 10. Stay away from props, hats, hands by your face, under your chin, draped on your head.
The Casting Process – Part 1 Where Commercial Acting Jobs are Born
Posted by: | CommentsWhether casting an ad, a TV series or a feature film, casting agents work under time and budget constraints placed on them by the client (producer, advertiser, director). The person charged with finding the right actors is a Casting Director or Casting Agent. We’ll use them interchangeably so we don’t want to insult anyone by calling them the wrong title.
Gian Carlo - Our friend booked a Nickelodeon Commercial
Let’s look at advertising. In general, an advertiser knows they need a campaign for a specific time of year, promotion or sale, whatever. They work backwards from that setting a timeline, final edit, delivery to media, shooting, casting, to the beginning and creating the concept. Major department and specialty shops know they have spring, summer, fall and winter lines to promote and holiday specific sales etc.
In a perfect world, they have five or six months lead time. In reality, there may be five or six weeks or even five or six days to complete the process. The shorter the time, the more pressure on the Casting Director to get the right cast, NOW. That is why it is essential for them to find the right people quickly and for your child to be that person if they can.
Some Ad Agencies have in-house casting departments, but usually, a Casting Director or company is hired on a job-by-job to find the right people to fulfill the Client’s (Art Director/Writer/Ad Executive/Business Owner’s) Vision. The Casting Director is given a brief which can be anything from notes scribbled on a napkin, to a full-blown ad campaign brief with back story, character descriptions, scripts even test photos or videos. From this, the Casting Director sets about the task of finding the right actors.
Busy Casting Directors can have several projects going simultaneously, and may have just days, even hours to get a roster of potential candidates in front of the client for approval. With on-line casting services, Casting Directors can look at pages and pages of thumbnail size headshots in minutes. Hard Copy, 8×10 or A5 size headshots generally don’t make it to this part of the process. You have a split second for your tiny photo to catch their eye as potentially being “the one” to fulfill the vision.
The Casting Assistant then contacts all of the potential candidates to come audition either on tape or live in front of the client. With on-line casting, this is usually takes just a few clicks to get you a spot on the schedule and an email and/or text message to alert you of the audition.
Otherwise, the Casting Assistant sets up the schedule and calls you (or your agent) directly. It is important that you keep your contact information updated on all on-line casting services (details later). Generally, you will have less than a day before the audition. Therefore, you’ll have only a short time to confirm whether you will be able to attend. If you are a busy Showbiz Parent, you will want to check your texts and emails on a regular basis throughout the day.
Coming up – You Got the Audition, Now What?
Acting Kids Tips – 9 Key Tasks for Kids Who Act
Posted by: | Comments1. “Listen”
A lot of people are going to tell you what to do, where to go, how to act, where to stand, where not to stand. Many people will be used to working with kids, and some may not, but none of them wants to tell you the same thing over and over and over again. If you are on a set, find out which Production Assistant or Assistant Director handles the kids. If you are in an audition, listen to the Casting Assistant in the waiting room and the Casting Director or Producer in the audition. If you are in class, listen to the teacher.
2. “Learn”
Take classes to learn what is expected of you in an audition, on-set, how to prepare for an audition, how to act out different characters or situations, how to hit your mark and say lines while looking “natural” and just as important, how NOT to act. Also, learn about all of the other people and things that go into making films, TV and Stage Productions.
3. “Be Teachable”
You can take all of the classes you want, but if you act like you already know everything, you won’t learn. You may have done a lot of acting or very little, either way, people are expecting certain things of you which may not match the way you saw the character or practiced the scene. Listen to your teachers, coaches, directors and be teachable so you can learn and ultimately so you can get the job.
4. “Be Directable”
A huge part of getting an acting job is whether the Director thinks they can work with you. If they ask you to do a line a certain way, or stand a certain way or jump or sit or say the line with a marble in your mouth, as long as it isn’t dangerous – DO IT. DON’T ARGUE, don’t try to convince them of your view, do the scene the way you are asked.
5. “Be Flexible”
Like being directable, being flexible is a key. Some scenes are very carefully planned out and rehearsed, then don’t look right in front of the camera. Some directors have a grand plan, but haven’t shared it with you. Some like to see what comes to them on set when they see the scene for real. Time schedules change, set pieces change, actors change, costumes change – you need to be able to change direction quickly too.
6. “Prepare”
You wouldn’t want to take a school test without preparing. You won’t want to enter an audition without preparation either. Read the brief. Get a feel for the type of character, their attitude, how they dress. Prepare your mind with meditations, affirmations or music that gets you psyched. If there are sides (lines to learn) memorized them as best you can. The more time you have from the time you get the lines, until the time of the audition, the more you are expected to know the lines by heart. Dress the part as much as you can. If the character is a geek, dress geeky no matter how cool you are in real life.
7. “Adjust”
The better you know the character and the lines, the easier it is for you to adjust your performance. The better you know what’s expected of you in school, the easier it is for you to adjust your studies around your audition schedule. The better prepared you are with healthy snacks, the easier it is to adjust your meal schedule around your auditions. Be prepared, then be prepared to adjust.
8. “Organize”
Have your schoolwork ready so you can get it done in the car between auditions. If you get a job, you’ll need some work to bring with you. It’s usually best if you have work you can do even if it is noisy or if you have to start and stop then figure out where you were to start again. Help your mom with preparing snacks and drinks and other distractions. Charge your gameboy, iPOD or other electronics you can play quietly while you wait, and make sure you bring them so your Mom doesn’t have to.
9. “Have Fun”
ShowBiz is serious business, but you wanted to act because it looked like fun. So make sure to have some fun in the process.
Acting Kids – 9 Key Tasks for Parents
Posted by: | Comments1. “Drive” Taxi Driver
Drop everything and DRIVE. It is the truth to almost every parent’s existence – drive to school, drive to auditions, drive to jobs, drive to sports, drive to acting class, drive-thru food, drive for your life. Until you can afford to pay a chauffer, be prepared to drive.
2. “Pay”
Pay for classes, pay for headshots, pay for dinner, pay for clothes, pay for gas, pay for more classes, pay for demoreel, pay for more headshots, pay, pay, pay.
3. “Organize to Be Flexible”
Review your schedule when you start your day and by noon, it has all changed. This can reek havoc on your nerves. The more organized your tools are, the easier it is to be flexible. Keep your headshots, resumes, work permit, key contact numbers, in a handy notebook, and keep it with your calender/datebook/PDA at all times. It’s also important to keep mapbook/GPS, healthy snacks, water, and a set of non-logo, age-appropriate change of clothes in the car or ready to go at all times.
4. “Train”
You wouldn’t drop your six year old into the deep end of a pool or put them in the cockpit of an aircraft or sit them at your receptionist’s desk without at least a lesson or two. Why would you send them into the professional world of acting with out a lesson or two? Showbiz is a Business. Most people train for years to get into any other profession, but somehow feel they can just give acting “a go”. (If lessons are out of your budget, consider starting with extra work to get some on-the-job training before paying for classes.)
5. “Prepare”
Like organizing, being prepared for auditions is key. If you get sides in advance, review and practice them with your actor. If the job is “big”, schedule a session with your favorite coach. If you don’t have sides, review the brief and show up with your actor prepared to “be” who the brief asks for – goth, emo, jock, nerd, surfer dude, uptight over-achiever, normal kid. It helps if the actor looks the part (within reason). Use common sense. If the brief calls for goth, wear black – not pink. If it calls for a sporty type, don’t wear a suit. If it calls for a nerd, don’t wear basketball shorts. You get the picture. So make sure your actor presents the correct picture for the Casting Director. And don’t under-estimate the value of mental preparation.
6. “Cheer”
Whether our children are actors, athletes, scholars or even all of the above, so often as parents our best role is Cheerleader. Knowing someone believes in you builds self-esteem. As a parent, the best reward (sometimes the only reward) is the furtive look to make sure you noticed.
7. “Love”
Showbiz is full of negative influences, rejection, slights, barbs, and outright nasty behavior (and that’s just from the other parents). If you and your child are determined to be in Entertainment long term, your child needs to know you love them no matter what anyone else says, does, looks at them or mistakes they make. Tensions run high, money low, tempers flair, sometimes the only thing that keeps us all going is knowing that somebody loves us.
8. “Be Patient”
I have never been involved in any activity where patience was more valuable than being the parent of actors. In this business you will race to auditions, photo shoots, to be on set on time just so you can wait. Hurry up and wait. While it is tempting to be “fashionably late”, if YOU are late it’s just plain bad. If everyone else is late, that’s just the way it is, so be patient.
9. “Invisibility”
As a parent of an actor, you are expected to do all of the things above, but you are expected to be invisible. You know the old adage “to be seen, but not heard.” Parents with kids who act need to be available to do everything without voicing your opinion about ANYTHING to those hiring your little angel. You have no creative input, no control over wardrobe, hair, make-up, no opinion about the script, sets, props or other actors. But be sure, if your little angel acts up, starts to cry (unless called for in the script), gets cranky, hungry, tired or anything that takes away from the scene being portrayed, you will be expected to jump in and DEAL with your child so the business of showbiz can continue uninterrupted.