Here’s something that we used in a workshop that I taught last week to make those first few seconds “pop”:

• Choose at least three descriptive words for your character that fit the story and the style of the show.
• Pick one of those descriptive words that is most alive and interesting for you personally.
• Find something from your imagination or experience that really brings that descriptive word to life and gets it into your body.
• Roll the camera.
• Improvise for 15-30 seconds before you start the scene, anything at all to get the feeling and the character into your body.
• Cut out the improv before you send the tape, so the first few seconds of the scene are alive, interesting, and full of character and story.

I highly recommend trying this with your next self-tape audition!

All the best,

Michael Bean
Acting Teacher
@confidenceoncamera

The post Why the first five seconds of your self tape matters so much first appeared on Biz Studio | Vancouver Film + TV Acting School for Kids and Teens.

BUT. It is not necessary to *feel* confident at all times in order to work professionally.

Acting is a career with a huge amount of uncertainty. You’re being asked to be an artist, to use your own inner life to take words off a page and portray real living breathing people that audiences believe and care about. Art is uncertain. Real people are uncertain. That’s what makes them unpredictable and interesting and alive, and acting has to have that.

So you can’t avoid *feeling* uncertain, or you can’t do your best work. And you can’t broadcast your uncertainty to decision makers, or you aren’t likely to get work.

How do actors navigate this contradiction? Some of them puff up. They “perform” the behaviours of confidence, they swagger and brag, or pretend that they know everything and everything is fine, and even if it fools people they feel hollow. Some of them hustle for approval. They become insane perfectionists, constantly trying to get their acting “right” and blaming themselves for every job that doesn’t go their way until they burn out. And some collapse. They give up before they’ve even started, deciding that because they don’t feel confident all the time that means they’re not “cut out” for work as a professional actor.

Terrible options, right?

I think that it is possible for actors to thread the needle, and embrace the vulnerability that is a necessary part of being an artist. The only way out is through, and it requires awareness, acceptance, and authenticity.

Awareness: Can you notice what’s happening in your body, in your voice, and in your internal life? What are the feelings? What are the sensations? What are the stories that you’re making out of the experience?

Acceptance: Once you’ve noticed what’s happening, can you allow everything that is present to be there, without making a story that there’s something wrong with it, without fighting it, hiding it, or tensing up about it? Acceptance brings ease into your body and voice, and makes you more expressive.

Authenticity: Once there’s a foundation of awareness and acceptance, it’s possible to be completely honest and still be experienced as very confident. An authentic actor can say “I feel nervous” or “I’m not sure” with ease, without puffing up, hustling for approval, or collapsing.

That’s what real confidence looks like.

And to get there takes a supportive environment, and practice, practice, practice. It’s not always going to feel good, and it’s not going to be perfect, but if you stick with it then you get to feel more authentic, and do some great acting in the process.

Michael Bean
@confidenceoncamera

The post Confidence on Camera first appeared on Biz Studio | Vancouver Film + TV Acting School for Kids and Teens.

Here’s my best guess, combining auditions for all professional projects, including film, television and commercials:

<12 Auditions Per Year - <1/month: Low
13-50 Auditions Per Year – 1-4/month: Medium
50+ Auditions Per Year – 1+/week: High

Casting directors only choose actors to see for auditions who they think might be “marketable,” i.e. might be a good option for that role that they can send to the producers, who make the final decisions about which actor to cast. So if an actor is being chosen for audition regularly, it means that casting thinks that the folks in charge might want to hire them.

An important piece of information to take into account is that casting directors almost never have the time and resources to see all of the actors who are submitted for an audition. For a commercial audition casting may get 800-1200 requests from talent agents (i.e. “submissions”) and choose up to 100-200 to see. For a film and television audition there are typically 200-600 submissions, and 20-40 actors chosen to audition. So that means casting is auditioning 10-20% of the actors available to them for each role.

Commercials: Yes to 100 potentially qualified actors; No to 700 potentially qualified actors.

Film+TV: Yes to 20 potentially qualified actors; No to 180 potentially qualified actors.

All of those actors, the “yes’s” *and* the “no’s”, have professional marketing materials and a professional talent agent.

How casting decides who to see for an audition depends on the type of project, where in the world it’s casting and shooting, and the personality and preferences of each casting director. It also depends on perceptions of how “in demand” actors with certain looks are, and those actors skills, abilities and professional experience. And with the relationships casting has with individual actors and talent agents. Again: no simple answers.

What we *can* say is that taken all together, if an actor is being chosen to audition regularly, then casting thinks that there’s a chance for them to work professionally *right now*.

If an actor is *not* being chosen to audition regularly, it could be about acting skills, marketing materials, camera technique, or just that there’s not a lot of perceived demand for actors with that look right now. There’s no real way to know for sure, although everyone you ask will have an opinion about it.

So what can you do, if you want to get more auditions than you’re getting right now?

Acting

Continue to develop your acting abilities, so that when you’re chosen to audition you give a performance that casting sees as a marketable option to send to producers. Actors who consistently deliver marketable performances will be chosen to audition more regularly. This is especially important for film and television, where a skilled and believable performance makes a bigger difference in casting decisions. You can take a ​weekly acting class​, get private coaching, read scripts, do acting ​workshops​, practice ​monologues, do movement and voice classes, and work on your emotional range.

Marketing

Update your marketing materials and especially your headshots so that you look “marketable” at thumbnail size, which is how casting views submissions when choosing which actors to audition. This is especially important for commercials, which are primarily about whether you look like the kind of marketable they want. For film and television, you can audition for ​student films and independent films​ to get more credits on your resume, to help casting see that you are already marketable and working. Ask your talent agent if they have any advice for how to make your marketing materials more effective in convincing casting directors to choose you to audition for them.

Camera Technique
Practice on camera. Watch your own self-tapes, watch self-tapes from other actors online, and get feedback on your self-tapes from professionals so that you can be confident that your work meets a consistent professional standard. Watch ​videos​ about self tape technique, and do self-tape auditions for student films and independent films. Record yourself at home practicing your monologues, or working on scenes with friends. Almost all professional auditions are self-tape auditions, and it’s important for actors to be able to consistently produce a professional looking self-tape at home.

If you’re looking at this thinking, “But Michael Bean, I’m already doing those things!” then that’s great! You’re doing all that you can, and even the most skilled and dedicated actors will have times in their life where for inexplicable reasons they are not “in demand.” Keep doing the acting that matters to you, get support from other actors who are navigating this strange uncertain industry, and let me reassure you that in my experience an actor who keeps their passion for doing good work alive has the very best chance to make good on the opportunities that come their way.

If you’re looking at all this and thinking, “That’s great, there’s some things in here I haven’t been doing, I wonder if one of them will help me get more auditions?” then that’s great! That’s just what I was hoping for.

All the best,

Michael Bean
Acting Teacher
@confidenceoncamera

—

p.s. I’ve contacted some talent agents to fact-check my percentages, and in my next email I’ll include any corrections or additional information. Talent agents have the most experience with this, because they are the ones engaging diverse actors over time, and hustling to try and get their actors as many auditions as possible.

The post How many auditions is “normal”? first appeared on Biz Studio | Vancouver Film + TV Acting School for Kids and Teens.

The language comes from the literature on emotional labour, which talks about the difference between making the face (surface acting) and doing whatever it takes to actually feel the feeling (deep acting).

The concept is incredibly relevant to film and television actors.

Surface acting can be useful. Sometimes a commercial or a comedy will require a young actor to instantly “turn on” a feeling for effect or to get a laugh, and it’s good to have access to an expressive face and voice for those moments.

Deep acting, on the other hand, is required for most film and television, where the camera is seeing the actor at very close range and the audience is watching carefully for the small cues in the actor’s face, voice and body language that tell you what the actor is “really” feeling.

Deep acting is much more difficult to do, and requires a complex blend of imagination, self-awareness and creativity. It also tends to be a more meaningful and rewarding experience for both the actor and the audience.

You can find more articles and resources at www.bizstudio.ca/free

—
Michael Bean
Owner+Head Coach, Biz Studio

The post Deep Acting vs. Surface Acting first appeared on Biz Studio | Vancouver Film + TV Acting School for Kids and Teens.

Here’s what I see happen with actors all the time: there’s a result the actor wants, they try to achieve that result in a mechanical way by controlling their facial expression, and the outcome is acting that feels forced, false and stiff.

In this case the girl was very excited to be on camera, smiling uncontrollably, and trying to tell a story where she was scared. Most of her attention was on struggling to suppress a smile and knit her eyebrows into something resembling fear or worry. It was comical, and she was having a great time, but the story was definitely not coming through.

Your Face

Here’s the thing: the human face is very complicated. There are more than two dozen muscles on each side of your face, plus soft tissue, and layers of fascia. Most of the expressive responses of those muscles are unconscious reactions, and many of them are microexpressions — brief, subtle, involuntary movements of facial muscles that last for less than half a second.

So: do you really think that you can consciously control more than forty tiny muscles, in less-than-half-a-second increments, in ways that come across on camera as completely believable?

Probably not. But most actors will try anyway, because it can seem quicker/simpler/easier to try and create the “result” in a mechanical way.

Alive + Interesting

But let’s accept for the moment that to do the most interesting, alive, honest acting that you’re capable of, you can’t approach it in a mechanical way. Even if you are *very* skilled at mechanical acting (and some actors really are), if you can access the work from the inside instead of from the outside you’ll get more depth, and as a result your work will be more compelling to watch. Even if you’re playing a very repressed character, or one with a limited range of expression, I think it’s the tiny, uncontrolled, barely perceptible microexpressions that make a character like that interesting to watch.

In genuine human emotional reactions, your face is adjusting moment by moment to everything that you’re seeing, hearing, thinking and doing. It’s an incredible system, and I want the actors that I work with to be curious about how to let go of “control” and activate their imaginations.

So how do you activate your imagination, and get your face to do “what it’s supposed to do” without your conscious control?

In this case it was enough to say to the young actor, “Control your imagination, not your face. Pay attention to the scary thing in your hands, what does it look like, feel like, sound like. If you can picture that, your face will do just what it’s supposed to do.” And this time it worked for her.

What Works For You

Figuring out what works for you is an ongoing process, and I think it requires being curious, and paying attention to your own inner life and what tools activate it most strongly in ways that support the story you’re trying to tell. Is it something a teacher or a coach says to you? Is it an image that you bring to mind? A sensation? A memory? A choice about the story or the character that has emotional charge for you? You may find one set of tools that works for you every time, or you may need to experiment with the tools you have each time to see what works best. You may have scenes where it “just works” and you don’t have to think about it, and you will also likely have scenes where nothing seems to work and you have to get creative and try new things.

I want my clients and students to have access to all of the tools they can, and to practice engaging deeply with them, while remembering that it’s an organic, creative, ever-changing process. We’re working with our imaginations and internal lives, and those never hold still for long. I think that’s one of the things that makes it so fascinating and engaging for me, and why I can still get so excited to explore with an actor, even after twenty-two years of teaching and private coaching.

—
Michael Bean
Owner+Head Coach, Biz Studio

The post Control Your Imagination, Not Your Face first appeared on Biz Studio | Vancouver Film + TV Acting School for Kids and Teens.

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Parent: My son is still somewhat borderline interestwise re acting classes. For sure tho he keeps getting auditions so definitely opportunity is knocking. He just loves to perform too and seems to have talent. However, my take is he simply sees work and not “I’m lucky to have this opportunity” / “I want to be the best I can be”. Any thoughts.. advice.. would be greatly appreciated.

Michael Bean (Biz Studio Head Coach):

My first thought is that right now if he’s seeing auditions and working on set as “work” and not something that he’s passionate about or driven to improve at, the conversation may be more about what his dreams for himself as an actor are. It’s possible that he’s been taking-what-comes and kind of “reactive” for so long that he just hasn’t thought through what *he* wants.

If what he wants is to book more substantial roles on film and television, or if there is a specific actor or actors whose careers he admires and would like to have, then maybe *that’s* the hook that might get him interested in practice (whatever that practice looks like). You could search out interviews with the actors whose work he admires, or if he’s made a good connection with a director or producer on some project in the last few years then he could arrange to have lunch with them and ask for their advice. It may be that if he hears how important practice is to achieving big goals from someone he looks up to then it will land in a new way, not just as a “chore” but as something to get excited about.

It may also be that he just wants to keep doing what he’s doing now, having fun, doing commercials and small roles that he can book without putting in any extra effort. If that’s the case, then it may take just waiting until he’s thirteen or fourteen and those roles dry up because the market has become more competitive. I know a few actors who didn’t find find their drive until the work wasn’t coming easily to them, *that’s* the thing that made them say “wait… this is something that I really want”.

If he’s going to reach his potential as a performer he’s going to have to choose it for himself. I’d love to hear what those conversations are like and what he chooses to pursue.

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