Off to LA? God bless you.

No matter how much I reason with young, aspiring actors they insist they need to go to LA to become a film actor.  Somehow they can't seem to grasp the unique world that film acting really is and they think that all they  need to do is to show up and film makers will be clammoring to cast them in their latest blockbuster epics.

You wouldn't imagin  yourself just showing up at the local hospital and announcing that you are here and ready to perform the next brain surgery even though you do not have any experience or training in brain surgery. No, that would be really dumb. Well, to show up at a film producer's office and announce that you are there and ready to play the lead in his next film is just as dumb. Unless you are fully prepared.

To become a film actor you need three qualities above talent, looks, charm and desire.  You have to be prepared through training, you have to be known through experience, and you have to have something special to offer. There are good acting schools everywhere. Most large cities have them.  Many universities have good BFA Acting programs. These schools will give teh aspiring actor the training he or she needs. Acting schools also can lead you to theatre and film productions in which to take part.  These will give you the experience you need and if you are a skilled networker, they can give you the recognition you need. The really best reason to do to LA is that you have a contract to work there,  Finally, you have to be special.

IT is important that you have a voice quality, a look, or a deportment that is uniquely yours.  Examine the films of half a century ago.  The stars had easily recognizable voices, they carried themselves with a special posture and moved with a special walk.  If you are just another one of the crowd and not indistinguishable by a special quality of voice, look or deportment, it is most likely that  you will be lost in the crowd like most of the others.

You also need to arrive in LA with credentials.  A strong resume, an outstanding show reel, and your SAG/AFTRA card.  There are plenty of cities in which major films are made. IF you have what it takes you can get started there in small roles that will earn you union membership.  With these things in hand, you at least are no problem to be used in a film.

Everyone else in LA who wants to be a successful film actor probably has their union card.  And they have great talent as well.  You will be surprised when you attend an acting class in LA with the high level of talent there. But even  so, that talent will not necessarily succeed.

One thing will surely happen if you go to LA to become an actor.  You will quickly find out if you are lacking any of the necessary qualities to succeed at it.  I wish you well. I wish all the headstrong youngsters well. Nothing is so rewarding as to be a professinal actor. God bless your efforts, Doc

The Very Latest Key to Success

All the aspiring actors are searching for it--the one thing that will put them over the top and into the winners' circle.  As our digital age speeds new information faster and faster to us, new ideas of what to do to prepare for success change and change rapidly.  This is the one I found yesterday in an interview between a talk show host and an actor's manager/agent.  It is not new, but it has a new twist.

I'm talking here about an actor's demo reel, that little compact disc of scenes that you submit for consideration for roles in upcoming films and series.  My attitude toward demo reels has changed greatly over the past year. I think we all know that one is needed by all serious actors--at least until they are household names.

Well, here's the new twist. Until lately, no one said much about a show reel except you need one and it needs to show you at your best as an actor. But now that everyone has a show reel, yours has to be special.  It has to be better than the others.  The same thing happened to head shots a couple of years ago.  It went from "you need a head shot that looks like you will look when you show up to audition," to "you need a dynamite head shot that will lift you over the crowd and demonstrate that you have that something special that all the others do not have. Now we are hearing the exact same thing about demo reels.  Yours has to be that dynamite show reel that catches and rivets the CD's attention and holds it over and above all the other submissions for the role.

So how to  you get such a show reel?   First of all, you find just he perfect material for you-- a couple of short monologues and perhaps a scene or two. Then you take this well prepared material performed from several points of view to a really good professional studio that specializes in making first-rate show reels and get their help in producing it on their sound stage with professional filming, lighting, sound recording and so on. This is so the final product will be outstanding.  There is no longer and room for the home made show reel shot in the actor's bed room with poor lighting, sound and camera quality. just as there is no room for a third rate head shot. 

A head shot and a show reel (or demo reel) as it may be called, are competing with those that other actors have spent hundreds and perhaps thousands of dollars for.  As the business gets more sophisticated technically, the cost of entering the business rises.  Today's aspiring actor had better earn and stash away several thousand dollars just to get his "fishing gear" (those things he or she must have to use to try to get auditions) together.  Sorry, it is a business and the salesmen with the best advertisements will get the call backs.

It used to be otherwise.  The world used to be a simpler place. But today's world is complex and expensive.  The first thing an aspiring actor needs in order to try to become an actor is a good sized nest egg to invest in his business. He still needs the talent, the charm the special personality to demonstrate in his show reel, but that show reel had better be dynamite, so don't get chintzy, get the best you can afford.

More About Success

Recently, one of my advisees career as an actor just took off.  He has currently been in three productions simultaneously and is continuing to get invitations to audition for other shows. He is a very fortunate fellow whose mother has worked as hard for his acting success as he has.  It often takes a family member to support and motivate one's career.  This is the email I received from her today:

11:33am Apr 21

"I love the networking. His co-star in 39 steps is a director, she is also starring in Roebling with him. Her boyfriend was the lead in Scarlet Pimpernel we all saw last Friday. He knows some of the cast of Julius Caesar and told his girlfriend of another director who is looking for someone like Andrew for another play he's casting (Don't know what yet) One of his co-stars in Moon over Buffalo knows and went to college with his friend from his teenage Shakespeare days. The dialect coach for S.P was one of his McCarter theatre teachers/directors. Oh and he found himself auditioning at J.C with his drama teacher from Mercer County college. Small world. I think you should talk about this topic with would be actors on your blog. Talent and education only work so far but networking- hey once someone likes you they want to share you with the whole acting world. He's very happy and I'm proud of him. He's getting a little bit less shy of talking to people."

The engine behind this actor's success is not just his mother, but what she is doing. She is working for his future success by making contacts with the people with whom he is working.  She is making sure that they will remember her son and be willing to contact him for future roles. And it is paying off. He is very busy and he is learning how to network himself which is what all aspiring actors need to be able to do.

 

Often the difference between getting cast and not getting cast is not your talent.  You can have all the talent in the world, but the director will be more comfortable working with someone with whom he is familiar.  Your ability to network properly is the biggest asset  you can have as an actor.  Work on it.

It is the Key to Success.

Hints for success

Aspiring actors are always eager to know what the secret is for becoming a successful actor. There is not just one thing  that an actor can be or do that will make him a success. There are lots of factors that individually or incombination with other factors that can make an actor a success in the profession.  These factors are not always what the aspiring actor assumes them to be.

One thing that aspring actos often believe is a factor to becoming a successful movie actor is to be in LA.  In fact, being in LA might be more of a hinderance to one's career than helpful for it.
Aspiring actors have no idea what the competition is like in LA. There are not just a few very talented actors there. There are thousands and thousands of them.  Acting classes in LA a filled with extrenely talented actors.  Some one who is new to LA has to be prepared to compete with them. Such preparation includes being equally talented and experience  as actors as the LA actors are. It means that the new to LA actor also has to be at least SAG/AFTRA eligible or better yet be a memeber.  Anothe thing the aspiring actor has to compete with is the  physical attributes of the LA actors.  LA actors are extraordinarily handsome, well built as well as extraordinarily talented.  If the aspirant looks like anybody you might meet on the street, they will get lost in the sea of attractive LA actors.  But there is one thing the aspirant can do to get noticed.

I have more and more become convinced that one key to success is to be unique in your physical appearance or in your voice, or in your abilities.  When we remember the great stars of all time, we remember that they had  unique qualities.  Bogart and Cagney, Widmark and Palance had special looks and special voices that we have heard imitated many times.  So did John Wayne and Bette Davis, Joan Caufield and Jimmy Stewart. The list goes on and on. A unique physical attribute or vocal timbre set these actors apart and helped to make them stars.  An actor aspiring to great success needs to develop such a unique quality in order to get noticed in LA.

Then, there is the matter of experience.  An aspiring actor cannot assume that being in a couple of college plays will qualify them for professional work.  It is important to created an impressive resume of the acting they have done to begin to match the experience of LA actors. I firmly believe that much of such experience should be on the stage.  Too many aspirants want to become film actors and ignore stage acting. They are making a big error. A professional actor is comfortable and equally effective on stage as before the camera.

Finally, there is training.  Too many actors ignore voice training.  A strong, flexible voice is a great asset.  Actors need to know the basics of acting in all media as well.  Film acting classes are sometime good sources of that information. Actors need to know how to audition, how to do cold readings, and how to navigate the profession. There are many schools that offer such training.

LA can be advantageous IF the actor is prepared. Some of the secrets of success are above. There are many more.  Be well prepared.  Make sure your preparation will help you in any circumstance.  Best wishes and God bless, Doc  

Acting without Technique (almost)

Young people and others new to acting are often overly impressed with the magic that applying certain acting techniques are supposed to do for their performance.  It was strongly believed in the mid 20th Century that Method Acting was the approach that actors must use to be true artists.  Even today, there are new acting techniques being created by acting teachers.  I, myself, am guilty of doing that.

 

The problem with most techniques is that they force the aspiring actor to do a long period of exercises (perhaps for years---perhaps for the duration of one's career in acting) in order to prepare an actor to use the technique. Conversely, Tao acting simple asks the actor to just do it, without preparation,  without exercises, and without stressing over how to do it;

 

 Method Acting relies heavily on Stanislavsky's emotional recall (Affective Memory). The problem with using  emotional recall is that the actor has  to do the exercise of remembering before he or she can act the emotion. Tao acting says that if the actor is being the character in the scene and there are things that stimulate a reaction of sadness in the character, for example,  the actor will react with sadness.  Remember one cannot be sad.  The actor has to express sadness as a reaction, a physical response,  to what is going on in the scene. A famous acting teacher said, "Acting is being other people." Thus, instead of being a Method Actor searching his memory for the proper emotion, Tao acting says be the other person, concentrate on the scene, receive the stimuli and react. Just do that which you would do when motivated by that stimuli,  and you will be an effective actor.

 

The actor doesn't  worry about whether he or she  would do these things in your everyday life because that clutters your mind and interferes with receiving the stimuli and reacting without inhibitions. And that is what an actor needs to concentrate on: receiving the stimuli from the scene and responding to it emotionally and physically fully and without inhibitions. That creates an effective scene in which the actor is most vulnerable. It is difficult to do these things if you are worried about using some technique or other to do them.  But it is surprisingly easy to do them when you are relaxed and just go ahead and do them.

 

It is fun to openly express our emotions withing the confines of the scene. It is healthy and it is the best an actor can do.  Have fun and start "acting without acting," as Lao-Tse said the Tao requires..

 

 God bless, Doc

Dialog with an acting student.

 

 

What follows is a discussion I recently had with an acting student I am mentoring. We are discussing the training he is getting in a univeristy acting program. His comments are in normal face and mine are in bold face. We start by discussing that acting in doing and not talking, that plays are stories told in action and plays are not conversation.  (See also The Tao of Acting, my ebook that is on line).

 

 

 

They have stressed the importance that plays are not conversation quite heavily--I failed to mention that in the email. 'Glad to hear it.

We have been taught the importance of doing and what is happening in the scene. Exactly, the pantomimic dramatization of the scene is done by converting the dialogue into the action it represents.

According to my professor, the actor's job is to do something, and you want something and you want it badly right now, and what makes the action dynamic is the actor's energetic pursuit of the character's said goal in the scene's circumstances. OK. I won't argue the point. I would substitute that your job is to react physically because you have a strong emotional response to what has just occurred.

An example that my professor used was from Chekhov's Three Sisters show--how one of Masha's lines is, "I'm bored, bored, bored," and Masha saying that is to get un-bored by stimulating something desirable, in other words, to act upon her environment in order to change it. Great example. To act bored, the actor must react energetically to the stimuli that makes her so express herself. I don't agree about acting upon her environment, I would rather say react to her environment as a response to the stimuli. I think wanting to change the environment puts too many 'have to's' in the actor's head which should be clear and open to receiving stimuli so the actor can react.

We were also taught to always play the positive, no matter how bleak its outcome or situation is.Good. The negative goes nowhere and inhibits action. To play the positive is to have a strong emotional response that moves the scene onward, but the business of moving the scene onward is the natural result of the strong response of the actor and the actor does not have to be thinking about moving the scene or making a choice that is positive. If the actor has an uninhibited, strong emotional response the positive will happen.

But yes, in short, we have been taught the importance of action. IT is called ACTing after all.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Whew! These past two months have been a whirlwind of activity. I apologize fro the long break in posts. I hope that these two months have been busy for your career as well,  There is no reason why a good actor is not in a Christmas play of some kind.  Keep building that resume.  And remember that community theatre, even amateur community theatre, is a good source of experience and information.   Networking among cast and crew members of community theatres will send you straight to more auditions and other helpful events like workshops, etc.
Don't neglect them.

Two hints.  1 you have auditioned for a call back and are waiting to hear.   The proper way to handle this is to assume you have not got the part and to audition for something else as soon as possible.  2. "But they really liked me and told be how well I had auditioned and how talented I am."  They tell everyone that;  It is just how the pros operate. They make everyone feel good so there will be nothing but good reports about them.  The old adage is "Never believe your press releases."  Which means that you must take everything in this business with a grain of salt.  People do not lie necessarily, they just try to be encouraging and positive.  But it never means that you have the role

It is important that you keep working as an actor. You must keep acting.  Even though November and December are traditionally slow months for professionals, they are pretty good months for amateurs.  As long as you are not UNION--AEA, you can do amateur plays. And that is so even if your are SAG/AFTRA. At least it was so when I was acting.

Keep acting, keep acting, keep acting.  If you are an actor, that is what you do.  NO EXCUSES, just get out there and find a play or indie to be in.

I wish you the very best for you and your career and I hope Santa brings you your union card, God bless and MERRY CHRISTMAS!