How to Find Auditions Near You
The four kinds of audition and where each one actually lives, what to do whether you have an agent or not, whether you still have to move to L.A. or New York, and the part nobody wants to hear.
Dearing Acting Studio
Blog Page 13
Casting Calls Can Be Scary: How to Get Over a Bad Audition
Leeann’s first television casting call: a trophy-wife role, a gray business suit, an entrance in character, and a mime. Why the bad audition became the best teacher she ever had, and five steps for the car ride home.
Do You Need a Demo Reel? What It Is and How to Make One
You don’t need a demo reel to get started. You need one to be considered for the best job there is, the direct booking. What a reel is, why it matters, and how to make one in three steps, even with no footage.
How to Take Your Little One to an Audition
The technique Matthew and Leeann use as coaches and as parents: for young kids the word audition does not exist, it’s always a booking; money never comes up; and when it bombs, because sometimes it will, you let it go. From the year Jack became a booking monster.
Dressing the Part: The Commercial Mom
Never dress as the role; suggest it. How Leeann has been styled for mom roles for PetSmart, Safeguard and Target, what to wear and what to leave home, and the makeup that reads as a mom and not a magazine.
How to Start a Career in Commercial Acting
Train on camera, get a headshot that looks like you, get on the sites casting directors use, audition for everything. What a commercial pays, and how a theater actress who thought she lacked the look booked national spots from Arizona.
It’s All About Relationships: Why the Audience Only Cares About People
Strip the spaceships and the plot twists off any story and what’s left is people and how they treat each other. Why ‘Luke, I am your father’ is the line everyone remembers, and what that means for the way you prepare a role.
Don’t Badmouth Any Acting Job. Ever.
You will work on projects you don’t believe in, with people who didn’t know what they were doing. Stay quiet about it, forever. Why it’s bad business in a small industry, why it insults the people who loved the thing, and what to say instead.
Thought-Based Acting: Give Your Character a Thought Life
Real people think about fifty thousand thoughts a day, and characters written to be real should too. How to build a thought life for a role, why it only works once the lines are cold, and what it does to your face when the camera is on.
Space Work: Building an Environment Out of Nothing
Space work is how an improviser makes a kitchen appear on an empty stage, and it’s the same skill a film actor needs in front of a green screen. Why the audience only believes the room as much as you do, and how to practice it at home.
Memorize, Memorize, Memorize!
Unless you are fully memorized (in actor speak: off book) you cannot be fully in character. If you are not fully in character, you are doing yourself, your audience, the writers and the directors, and your fellow actors a disservice. Harsh, but true. Now, some are blessed with photographic memories or information retention that makes …
