Advice
From Your Agent and/or Manager
Your agent and/or your manager is your ally, a friend.
Probably not your best friend, but someone you should
listen to and follow any advice passed on. He or she has an
interest in you...and that is to help you get seen by
casting directors. Your agent and/or manager
wants you to
get as many auditions as possible. They also want you to
book jobs. That is how they make money and keep their
business going. The advice, suggestions, and sometimes,
demands they toss your way are for the actor's benefit,
which in turn, may eventually benefit the agent or manager
financially.
If you choose to ignore their requests for
new pictures, or added pictures, or posting pictures on
another casting site, or the all important task of keeping
resumes and skill sheets up to date online, or taking a
class or two, or confirming audition notices, or letting
them know when you are not available............then,
you should probably rethink being in this business. Because
the odds are, if you do not want to participate in your own
career (however incidental or part time it may be), an
agent or manager will lose interest. They have no incentive
to work for an actor who is not doing the things that may
help everyone make a few dollars down the road. Simple as
that.
So, in addition to the above, what else can the actor do to
help his or her chances for getting auditions and/or
booking jobs? Here's a short list:
1. First and most importantly, recognize that this industry
is fully committed to the on-line casting process. The
'old' days of just using 8x10 black and white photos with
resumes attached is long over. Almost everything is done
on-line these days. That means that the actor must be tech
savy enough to respond to emails and text messages, confirm
auditions, download scripts and update photos, resumes and
skills.
2. Participate in student films out of USC, UCLA, AFI
(American Film Institute). Great experience, on-camera
training, builds the resume and sometimes you wind up with
some nice footage of yourself to put on a reel.
3. Local theatre......improves acting skills in front of
live audience, adds more respect to your resume. Only do
roles that have some 'meat' to them though. Don't bother
with plays that run for 2 hrs and you only have two lines
as the town baker.
4. Show your skills.......video tape any and all sports,
music, dance, etc that you are really good at and have it
attached to your online profiles so that when your photo is
submitted, the reel goes along with it. If casting is
looking for someone who is very good at skateboarding or
horseback riding or playing guitar, then show them. The
other option is to have a web site link showing those
skills (such as YouTube).
5. Stay involved in acting and commercial classes. Improve
your audition skills. Having really good acting skills is
one thing. Being able to perform at an audition is another.
Work on your talent every day. If not, you won't be ready
when the auditions come in.
6. If you are an adult, get into a recognized, quality
improv group like the Groundlings, Second City or UCB
(Upright Citizens Brigade). Casting responds very favorably
to talent who take top of the line improv classes. For kids
and teens, there are numerous acting classes which offer
different forms of improvisation.
Agents and managers have no way of predicting exactly how
busy the industry will be over a particular time span. Only
educated guesses. They also have no way of predicting how
busy an individual actor will be. There are too many
variables involved in the casting process to make that
prediction. What an agent or manager can do is offer advice
regarding the things they know will help. As far as I
know, I don't think anyone has come up with a 'magic'
success path in show business yet. It is an on going
process for each person. Your agent and/or manager is there
to help you along that road.