These 3 Mistakes Might Be Ruining Your Chances of Getting Cast

August 29, 2020 By Marci Liroff Leave a Comment

These 3 Mistakes Might Be Ruining Your Chances of Getting Cast

By Marci Liroff

This is the last week of special reduced pricing. Grab your discount now by purchasing one of the steeply discounted packages or single coaching sessions and use it before the end of 2020. Check out the info here.

There are countless career land mines begging to be stepped on by an acting newbie—but that’s where people like me come in. If I can stop you from making these three mistakes below, my job here is done.

You’ve got an audition. How do you prepare? You should read through the script a couple of times or, if you just have the sides, read them through several times. Learn your lines, make distinct choices, and be ready to read for the casting director.

I can immediately tell in an audition when you’ve never rehearsed the scene with another human. I understand that everyone has a different process for preparing, and no one practice is right for everyone. That said, you cannot have a natural conversational rhythm unless you have practiced with another person. That can be done by phone or in person—however your go-to scene partner is ready. Email your sides to your father, girlfriend, whoever; just make sure you’re not reading your lines for the first time in front of the casting director at your audition. And, no, reading to yourself in the mirror doesn’t count.

Another thing I strongly suggest is to learn a scene every day, even if you don’t have an audition coming up. When an actor comes in to audition for me and says, “Hey, I just got this last night, so I’m not quite off-book yet,” I immediately tell them, “So did everyone else.” I’m not saying this to call them out or to be nasty, but to give some perspective to rejigger their thought process. Casting directors love to give you as much time as possible with the material, but sometimes we don’t get the material from the writers until the day before it shoots, leading to a rushed session. Learning a scene every day will keep your memory muscles fresh and get you in the habit of learning something on a quick turnaround.

And you won’t just need this skill for auditioning; it’ll save your ass on set, too. You’ve probably noticed on previous projects that scripts are constantly shifting and changing. Sometimes, you can spend the entire night learning your lines before a shoot, only to arrive on set the next morning and have the first assistant director hand you a set of sides with full rewrites.

If your brain isn’t already in the habit of learning lines quickly, your head will explode.

And, finally, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an amazing audition, at the end of which the actor says, “Ugh! That was terrible. I’m so sorry! Can I please do it again?” Stop talking us out of liking your performance. Admittedly, we all have bad days, and actors can turn in bad performances; if you feel you’re not in the zone at the top of the scene, by all means, stop and tell us you’re going to start over. No excuses, no apologies. Just say, “I’m going to start over,” and do it. Learn to trust yourself and have confidence in your performance. So often, I see actors make great choices and bring authenticity to an audition, just to then show us that they don’t believe in themselves by expressing how much they think they sucked. Sometimes, being vulnerable and showing us your interpretation of a flawed and complex character can leave you feeling uncomfortable. I suggest you try to work through that uncomfortable feeling by embracing it as a natural human reaction to showing us your true heart; don’t apologize for it.

Make sure to check out my online course “How To Audition For Film and Television: Audition Bootcamp”. You can view it on your laptop or your mobile device and your subscription gives you lifetime viewing privileges for this course. I’ll be adding lectures throughout the year.

Warning: I grant permission to share my blog as written with no additions or deletions. Posting my blog is in no way an endorsement of another site unless you obtain my written consent.

Filed Under: acting, actor, actress, audition, auditioning, casting, casting director, diary, excitement, exercise, Hollywood, memorize, off book, perspective, preparation, television Tagged With: casting director, Hollywood, Marci Liroff

August 22, 2020 By Marci Liroff 1 Comment

A Step-by-Step Guide on How Your Favorite TV Series Get Cast

By Marci Liroff

In light of the pandemic, I am offering special pricing for my private coaching (remotely of course!) You can buy a steeply reduced package now and use it later (must be used before the end of 2020) Check out the info here.

Have you ever wondered how a TV series gets cast? Well, I’m here to give you the 411. This is a long one so grab your favorite beverage and buckle up buttercup!

The casting department is usually one of a small handful of department heads who are hired right after a project is green-lit and goes into pre-production. A huge difference between casting for film and TV is the pacing. Casting a TV pilot and series is like jumping on a moving train and praying it doesn’t run you over. At its very best, between scheduling, writing, scouting, and more, casting for TV is a constantly moving puzzle that runs like a well-oiled machine.

On TV projects, there are many cooks in the kitchen. We have the studio that is producing the project and the network that will air it. Each has a group of executives that weighs in and add to the number of hoops an actor has to jump through to get the coveted role. That means when my deal on a new TV project has just been closed and my butt has barely hit my office chair, it won’t be long before I receive a call from my casting executive at the studio asking me for lists. Lists are the casting director’s preliminary suggestions for the series regulars, along with the availability of the actors.

Early in the process, casting meets with the creatives—usually the showrunner and executive producer who has, in most cases, created the show, along with various other producers. This is a creative meeting to go over the script and assess our needs. Some of my frequent questions are: Do we need a “name” actor for this role? Do we need to do a worldwide search? Should we hold open calls? I also emphasize the need to cast inclusively and with diversity in mind to make sure we are including everyone in our continued search.

After meeting with the showrunner and other creatives to assess the series’ needs, we release our breakdown of characters needed and brace ourselves for impact. My office becomes inundated with calls and emails from agents and managers pitching their clients. As we gather actors who pique our interest, casting becomes the first stop on the auditions trail. During pilot season, the casting time frame is accelerated because of the amount of talent to be seen, but also because every casting director is trying to get “Joe Star-of-the-Week” into their offices first. We’re all competing against one another for the same talent pool. During this time, we move swiftly to gather our ideas and set up auditions for “producer sessions” where the producer(s) and director sit in on the auditions or watch them on our site, where we’ve uploaded the audition clips.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky: If we see someone we kind of like, we immediately have to get a test deal going on them. By closing a test deal for the actor, we have the right to “hold” them for five to seven business days after the network test until we decide whether we will cast them. This keeps them from testing on other projects; we effectively take them off the market for conflicting projects. The reason it’s tricky is that we are usually testing actors way before we have seen all of our choices, so it’s very hard to make decisions. With this process, it’s a miracle that you ever get a cast like those on “Friends” or “Will & Grace” that are so dependent on the chemistry between the cast members.

If the actor makes it through the first testing process at the studio, we’ll then take them to the network to test. This is adding yet another group of executives into the decision-making stew.

Testing has changed so much over the years. On some shows, we test the actor live in the room in front of a small audience of executives and creatives for the show. It’s usually a small screening room or a large conference room that is often very cold and uninviting. The casting director usually reads with the actor, unless it’s a chemistry test audition, where we’re looking to see how the testing actor lines up with an actor we’ve already cast. The tension is thick in the air, and it’s usually a very nerve-racking experience for the auditioning actor.

Actors are left in a waiting room with two other actors faced with the prospect of signing a contract to cover the next seven years of your life. We call you in one by one and you audition, then go out into the waiting room with your remaining competition. Sometimes, I stick my head out of the room to say, “You guys can leave, but we’d like Tim to come back in and do it again.” This is where things get even trickier. Just because I’ve told you to leave and asked Tim to come back in doesn’t mean you didn’t get the part. You may have done very well, and we don’t need to see you read again, but we want Tim to do it with a different pace to the scene. Your goal is not to overthink this disparity in treatment.

Lately, more shows are doing a “work session,” wherein we work on the scene together (casting director, director, producer, and actor) and videotape it. This work session becomes your “test,” and we show that to the studio and network executives instead of hosting a live audition. I prefer this way because we’re finally comparing apples to apples. We’re casting for television; it makes sense to be seeing someone on tape rather than seeing them live and imagining what they’ll look like on a screen. We can also do the scene multiple times until we get it right and then present that at the test.

Another difference in casting a TV series rather than film is that for the series regulars, we have to think of long-term relationships and how they might play out over the years. We’re looking to hire actors who can grow through the coming seasons. We need smart, articulate, hardworking talent who can withstand the grind of a TV filming schedule week in, week out. I said before that casting for TV is like managing a moving train and you don’t want to get run over—but that’s essential to the process. It must run like a train schedule or it’ll fall off the rails; we need multi-taskers across all departments because we are simultaneously in pre-production, production, and post-production every day.

Once casting and creative have made a decision on an actor, we have the pleasure of informing them that they’ve got the role!

Calling their agent or manager and then getting the actor on the phone to tell them they’re joining our project is the best part of my job.

Then—oh, you thought we were done?—there’s one last hoop to jump through in casting the pilot: The table read. The table read is where we get all the actors we’ve cast together to read through the script while all the creatives and studio and network executives watch. We use this time to see how our full cast looks and feels together. Unfortunately, some actors don’t make it past the table read and can get replaced on the spot. Here’s a cautionary tale of a table read I did for a feature film I cast.

It’s an exhilarating process when we finally get the whole cast in place and start shooting. Then, we wait to see if it gets picked up!

During network pilot season, there can be as many as 100 pilots produced. After that, the advertisers and networks decide which shows will go to series. Casting is always anxiously awaiting the upfronts (where the advertisers and showrunners announce their yearly pick-ups) to see if their shows will go to series and they’ll have a coveted weekly job. It’s at this point that we see if our entire cast will be going forward. A show can get picked up to series, but the network can ask for recasting. In this situation, the casting director comes back to work before the series casting begins and brings in actors to replace the actor who’s being recast. Sometimes we have an obvious second choice and sometimes we start auditions all over again.

Once we’re officially back to work on the series, we meet with the creative team to talk about the show “bible,” which outlines the storylines for the show and each character. We talk about new recurring characters being introduced and the needs for each, along with the upcoming shooting schedule. The schedule is key, because it lets us know when we have to have actors in place for those roles. TV is more of a producers’ game than film, and the director is usually the guest for each episode.

Each week, we meet with the team to talk about the upcoming episode and brainstorm about casting. Casting will pre-read roughly 30-50 actors for each role (depending on the size) and usually bring the producers and director up to seven options. Then we discuss our top picks and come to a decision on who we’d like to cast. Casting receives the pages as they are written—sometimes up to the last minute.

Then, we run these choices up the flagpole at the studio first with the casting executive, then at the network. We even have to get network and studio approval on actors who only have one line. At first, I thought the level of studio and network oversight was a bit much, but I soon realized that these executives are casting about 30 shows each season and they have hired several thousand actors each year. They have a bird’s-eye view of actors who are doing great work and actors who gave them trouble on set or didn’t quite perform as expected. They also can see if a particular actor is getting a little over saturated within their network. I have come to depend on their advice and guidance.

Then we go back to our line producer and get their sign-off on the schedule and the days each actor will work. We negotiate the deal with the actor’s agent and get their paperwork underway. Once the deal is closed, we pass off the actor’s info to the wardrobe department, and they take it from there.

Once we’re cast, we go to the weekly table read for each episode. Again, it is here that an actor can be replaced, we have to recast, and the whole thing goes around and around again. Lather, rinse, repeat!

Warning: I grant permission to share my blog as written with no additions or deletions. Posting my blog is in no way an endorsement of another site unless you obtain my written consent.

Filed Under: acting, actor, actress, audition, auditioning, auditions, casting director, filmmaker, Hollywood, network, perfection, perspective, pilot, preparation, television, test, tv Tagged With: casting director, Hollyood, Marci Liroff, pilot, television

August 16, 2020 By Marci Liroff Leave a Comment

How to Become an Actor Later in Life

By Marci Liroff

Reaching out to my Twitter followers to find out what they want to know is one of the best ways to connect to my community. This week’s column answers two great questions I received recently:

1. What is the best way to get back into the industry later in life?
Surprisingly, it is very similar to when you were first starting out, except that you already have the basic foundational acting skills and you probably have a lot of old connections. Now is the time for a refresher course. You wouldn’t run a marathon after having hung up your sneakers 20 years ago, would you? Get yourself back to a weekly acting class and warm up those old muscles. While in class, you can network with the students to see if they can refer you to their agent or manager.

If you have good relationships with your old representatives, reach out to them to make them aware you’re in the game again and see if they want to jump back into business with you. Get all of your materials up to date. You’ll need to update your headshot and résumé and upload your reel and clips online in order to subscribe to submission platforms like Actor’s Access and Backstage. As you build new credits, switch them in for your reel’s older footage, which may no longer be relevant.

Then, register with film schools in your area so that when they are casting student projects, they will call you in to audition. Join a theater group.

Reach out to the casting directors who used to hire you to alert them to your re-entry into the biz.

It may feel overwhelming sometimes, but taking it step by step will make it easier.

2. Where do you find new actors, and how do they stay on your radar?
I think about the good old days when I would pore over the Academy Players Directory looking for new faces, and it makes me laugh. Times have changed! I still miss those giant books, but I wouldn’t go back.

Most people I know in the casting field will say they are working all the time. A good CD always has her eyes and ears peeled to discover new talent who can move us with a great performance. When I’m watching television, for instance, I always look up actors I see who are new and interesting and immediately add them to my database. When reading a magazine or newspaper, if an article on a new actor pops up, I rip it out and put it in my “to file” pile. I’m constantly going to theater, screenings, and film festivals; I visit acting classes; I scour YouTube and Instagram. Agents and managers constantly call me to take general meetings with their new clients.

In terms of staying on my radar, if you’re going to send out postcards or email blasts, make sure you have something to say. Don’t just send out a notice with your picture and contact info. It should include your latest work and an action item, such as “Watch me on the latest episode of [fill in the blank] on Tuesday at 9 p.m.” or “Come see me in ‘Man of La Mancha’ at San Diego’s famous Old Globe Theatre.”

Warning: I grant permission to share my blog as written with no additions or deletions. Posting my blog is in no way an endorsement of another site unless you obtain my written consent.

Filed Under: actor, Actors Access, actress, audition, auditioning, auditions, Back Stage Magazine, casting, casting director Tagged With: actor, Actors Access, audition, Backstage Magazine, casting, Marci Liroff

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