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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 …
Early in a career you take small roles for little money, and that is not settling. Compromise is different. Decide now what you will and won’t do on camera, keep training past the roles you’re taking, and know when free work has taught you everything it can.
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