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MAKE SURE YOU STAY POSITIVE
Your audition starts before you walk into the casting director’s office and ends after you get back on the street. If the casting director asks how you are, you’re great. It doesn’t matter if your husband just ran away with his secretary or your cat just died; you’re great. You can cry about your divorce later. You can mourn your cat another day. You have three to five minutes to get them to like you enough to call you back. Don’t blow it by indulging in the melodrama of your life.
MAKE SURE YOU STAY IN RELATIONSHIP
Make sure you have done as much of the homework as you can before you get in front of the camera. Once you’re in front of the camera, your major task is to stay in relationship—with the person you’re slating to, with the person you’ve put in the camera to deliver the dialogue to, with your audition partner(s), with the product, and with whatever events and situations are mentioned in the copy.
Never forget, the camera knows what you’re thinking, so the more engaged you are in your relationships the better the storytelling will be.
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MAKE SURE YOUR BODY GOES TO THE AUDITION WITH YOU
Learning the mechanics of a new technique can be a very cerebral experience. This technique is no exception. Actors, when learning new concepts, get stuck in their heads trying to remember everything that’s coming at them and their bodies get left behind.
There are three things you can do to make sure your body shows up at the audition along with your mind. This is true whether you are auditioning at a casting director’s office or you are self-taping.
The first is to jump up and down.
Really? Jump up and down?
An interesting thing happens when our feet leave the ground: the masks that we hide behind come off. You want those masks off; you want to make sure the real you is the one that shows up.
Next is to laugh. If you’re laughing, you’re breathing. There is nothing more frightening than to watch an actor who isn’t breathing. The people watching your playback become concerned in all the ways you don’t want them to be concerned if you aren’t breathing. So, don’t be afraid to laugh. By laughing it doesn’t mean that something is funny; it is merely a way to engage your body, a way to ensure that you are present. However, if you do laugh and it produces a smile, that’s not such a bad thing. We are talking about commercials.
I suggest you do one or the other or both of these first two things— jumping and laughing—before you slate. If you don’t get the chance to do either before the camera is turned on then laugh and/or jump anyway. Don’t be concerned that the people watching the playback of your audition will think you’re weird because you’re jumping and laughing. Better they think that and then see you have a great audition than for them to think you’re dead inside and not connected to your body.
Actors (and athletes) do this all the time. Before the cameras roll or when they’re standing backstage waiting to make their entrance, they’re moving their bodies, swinging their arms, jumping up and down.
Why?
Because they want to get the energy flowing, they want to be 100 percent engaged!
The third way to make sure you’re connected to your body is to use a yoga exercise called mula bandha. Ladies, think Kegel muscles. Men, think the muscle under your testicles. It may sound strange but it works. In fact, it may become your favorite new tool. Squeezing those muscles sends a bolt of energy up through the body that puts a sparkle in your eye. And that sparkle says, “I’m here,” and it makes you a lot more interesting than actors who don’t have the sparkle.
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The eyes are the avenues to the soul and one of the messages you want to send, whether you’re working or auditioning is, “I am here. I am present. My mind, body and soul are activated and I’m ready to work.” Engaging those muscles will make that happen.
MAKE STRONG CHOICES
Find a way to keep the stakes high. If you don’t it will seem as if you don’t care and indifference, as I have said before, is not only hard to play, it’s boring to watch. Your job as a commercial actor is to solve someone else’s problem. If you make the problem important, it’ll be easier to solve.
Commercials are by their very nature artificial. Nobody talks that way in real life, but when you’re auditioning for a commercial, whatever you’re saying needs to be said with complete sincerity.
DON’T MEMORIZE—NOT YET
One way actors shoot themselves in the foot is by trying to memorize the script . . . too early. By doing the other work first, by breaking it down as described in this book, you turn the script into a story in which things happen in a logical sequence. One line automatically leads you to the next and this makes memorizing easier.
If you spend all your time trying to memorize the words, you may not fully comprehend the “story” of the commercial or the best way to tell it. Get to your audition early, break down the script and, once you know what the story is, you can start memorizing your lines. If you do make a mistake, it’s better to screw up a couple of words than to screw up the story idea.
Remember, the story, especially at the initial audition, is more important than the words.
If you get jammed at the audition—if you’re late, or if they call you in early and you don’t have a lot of time—do as much of the work as you can and then memorize the first line and the last line. That way, you can deliver those lines with confidence directly to the person you’ve placed in the camera.
If they have a cue card (a board) with the script written on it, don’t be afraid to use it. The trick is to not get stuck reading the words off the board. Remember, you want to be in relationship with the person you put in the camera, not glued to the board. Learn to look at the board and pick up phrases instead of individual words. The best way to do this is to look at the board and pick up a phrase, then look back at the camera, and reconnect to the person you were talking to. Then, once you have reconnected, deliver the line to the person in the camera. This is a skill you can learn but, like anything else, it takes practice.
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SPEED IS YOUR ENEMY
Going too fast lets everyone know you’re nervous. Nobody wants a nervous actor on set. Good actors know it takes time to create relationships. Good actors know their purpose is to tell a story. Good actors know to create subtext for their lines. And good actors know to listen to the other characters. All of this takes time. Slow down and be a good actor.
You don’t get a prize for telling a thirty-second story in ten seconds.
ASK FOR A REHEARSAL
Actors will often go on a commercial audition, a job that could pay their rent for the next three years, and don’t ask for a rehearsal. They expect somehow, magically, the gods will smile on them and they’ll be perfect. And then when they aren’t, they blow the whole thing off, saying, “Commercials—I don’t know why I bother to go. I never book.” No kidding!
You need to rehearse, in the room. I’ve been perfect on every audition I’ve been on . . . IN THE LOBBY. There’s no pressure—IN THE LOBBY. You’re sitting in a corner by yourself mumbling your lines at half volume. Then suddenly you’re in the audition room staring at a one-eyed, three-legged monster and 95 percent of the work you were doing IN THE LOBBY has flown out the window.
Asking for a rehearsal takes courage. As actors we don’t want to come off as being difficult. I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting you take care of yourself. You got dressed, put on your make-up, drove or took the subway to the audition, did your prep work; for what? To do a bad job? If that’s the case, stay home. Save everyone, including yourself, a lot of time and effort.
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A rehearsal is a vital piece of the audition process. By asking for a rehearsal you’ll have a chance to say the words out loud in the room. Hopefully you’ll get some feedback and pick up some information you didn’t have before. If you don’t ask for a rehearsal the people who watch your playback are judging you on your first take. Good job, bad job—you’ve made an impression.
If it’s a bad impression, it will be hard for them to get over it. And if it is really bad, they’ll fast-forward to the next person. Even if you do an outstanding job on your second take, chances are they won’t see it.
Remember why you’re there: you’re there to book a job. And know this, a lot of people are rooting for you. Your agent is rooting for you; the casting director is rooting for you; the ad agency people are rooting for you; the client is rooting for you; the roommate you owe money to is rooting for you.
They all want you to do a great job. If you do a great job their problem is solved.
It is very possible that at some point during the day the casting director will fall behind schedule. If you were on time and you’ve done everything you were supposed to do, don’t let their time problem become your problem. You don’t have to be a jerk about it; you want to be as diplomatic as you can be, and you want to make sure you do everything you can to get a rehearsal.
Everybody is rooting for you.
If they’re hesitant, say, “I know you want me to do the best job I can, and if you would let me have a rehearsal, I could do that.” That’s exactly what they want: they want you to do a wonderful job. By asking for a rehearsal in this manner, it takes the onus off you. You’re merely reminding them of why they asked you to audition in the first place.
For the most part, casting directors are decent, hard-working people. Casting a commercial isn’t easy and casting directors often face an arduous task. They have to take the “not-as-yet-completely-realized” idea that the ad agency is trying to convey and find the talent that will bring full expression to that idea. This is hard. Show them how professional you are by doing your job well and they’ll be more inclined to give you a rehearsal when you ask for one.
The best time to ask for a rehearsal is when you first get into the room, before your slate. However, if you’ve already slated and the camera is rolling, you can still ask for a rehearsal. Sometimes the casting director will hit the pause button but even if the camera continues to roll, because you asked for a rehearsal, you’ve already set it up in the minds of the people watching the playback that the next thing they’re going to see is a rehearsal, not a performance. This is an important distinction.
Do everything in your power to incorporate the feedback you get. You asked for help. You got it. Now use it.
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KNOW YOUR FRAME
It’s also important to ask for your frame. You need to know how much of you the camera is seeing. If you’re planning to use a prop, you need to know if that prop is going to be in the frame. There’s no sense in holding a box of Cheerios in front of your stomach if they’re shooting a close-up of your face. You need to know what part of your body is working, what exactly the camera is seeing.
The tighter the frame, the less you’ll need to do to get your point across. Think about it this way: how expressive would you need to be to communicate an idea to someone standing twenty feet away, and how expressive would you need to be to convey that same information if the person was just two feet away? What is going on inside you is the same it’s just that your outward expression of it is less.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT IMPROV
In the past, actors would occasionally be asked to improvise during commercial auditions. And actors, being the obliging people we are, would do it. Then somewhere in the process, an improvisation created by an actor during the audition would show up in the commercial, but not necessarily by the actor who created it. Another actor would be hired and directed to “use this bit” (usually a piece of business but occasionally a line of dialogue), and the actor who created the “bit” not only didn’t get the job, he/she wasn’t compensated for the contribution either. This behavior was reported to the Screen Actors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild passed a rule that actors could no longer be asked to “improv” at auditions.
If the casting director gives you a rehearsal, be respectful.
Nowadays casting directors may ask you to “loosen it up” a little at your audition. This is another way of asking you to improvise without actually saying the word. Either way, it puts you between a rock and a hard place, and you have to decide: “To improv or not to improv?” If you don’t, you may come across as being uncooperative; if you do, you run the risk of having your creativity “borrowed.” Unfortunately, this is a line you have to draw for yourself.
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Non-union actors face an even more precarious position when it comes to improvising at auditions because they don’t have a powerful union watching their backs.
EXERCISE
Make sure your body shows up with you.
Practice laughing and jumping. Sounds weird I know. But if you have a camera you’ll see what I’m talking about. First slate without laughing or jumping and then, after you’ve done your impression of a hysterical kangaroo, slate again. You will see a huge difference.
The initial results may be too “big” to use for your slate, but you will see a sparkle in your eye that wasn’t there before. Once you have the sparkle it is very easy to modify the amount of laughing and jumping you’ll need to do to make your slates stand out.
And don’t forget mula bandha. This, too, will put a twinkle in your eye.
Use the boards.
Write out a series of commercials. Use poster-size paper (butcher paper will do). Use commercial copy you haven’t worked with before. Write it and tape it next to the camera. Practice looking from the board to the camera. Work on picking up phrases and whole sentences instead of just “grabbing” one word at a time.
Slow down.
Using the same pieces of copy, write out the banter and then make sure you hear it before going on to the next line. This is easier when you’re doing double or multiple-person copy because, except for the moment before, the other character’s lines are your banter.