Why Your Agent isn't Fighting For You to Get Auditions 1. You're not getting good feedback from Casting Directors on the auditions that your agents w

Why Your Agent isn't Fighting For You to Get Auditions

1. You're not getting good feedback from Casting Directors on the auditions that your agents work so hard to get for you

2. Casting Directors aren't eager to give you an audition because your last one wasn't great which means agents have to bend over backwards to convince a casting director to give you another chance

3. You're not getting pinned for auditions (essentially put on hold for a role) or getting called back for a producer session or screen test

4. Casting Directors don't request to see you for roles, but only see you when your agent submits you and then follows up with a phone call.

In short, agents only make money if you make money...so if they've got to work twice as hard just to get a client an audition that doesn't turn into a real money-making job, then you're not a good investment of their time and energy.

So, how do we turn this around?

You need to learn how to audition well for the camera. From a seasoned actor/coach who books work and has a technique that will help move this process along.

Remember, your competition, those Yale, Juilliard, NYU grads have been in school for 3-4 years training.

Have you?

Then don't get mad when they "take your jobs"...(yeah, I said it).

They're doing their work and you can too...and you don't need to get a million dollar education to do it, but you do need to train, rehearse and learn a technique.

And that's what today's newsletter is all about.

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april yvette thompson 2 088 hair dye 8x10

April Yvette Thompson is a Tony-winning producer/actor/writer & coach

The number one reason why your on camera auditions are not kicking ass & how to fix it

Do you go into on camera auditions convinced:
- you're off book,
- you know the character,
- you know what your actions are
- and how to play your beats?

Then you get in the room, do the audition and you feel like nothing is happening?

That's called playing the ending.

OR

*Trying to MAKE moments instead of letting moments come out of truly LISTENING AND RESPONDING.

Who is this newsletter for?

I'm primarily talking to actors with great training,

particularly theatre actors who have lots of theatre credits and who are trying to break into film and tv and keep finding themselves stuck.
WHO already have agents and feel like they're beating their heads up against a wall.

Your agents are totally frustrated because they know you're talented and you're not getting on camera callbacks, pins, screen tests or bookings.

All an agent needs is to get super positive feed back to stay engaged in the battle to get you more auditions.

So, let's talk about why this is happening.

On Camera Acting & Theatre Acting Are Two Different Beasts & Being Bigger or Smaller is an Amateur Way of Looking at the Difference

Theatre acting is about the language.

On Camera acting is about the psychology of the character.

Writing for the theatre is about great lyrical language. The playwright is the poet of the theatre and theatre storytelling is driven by the weight of the playwright's language.

So essentially, if you follow the technical rules of that playwright's language (rhythm, poetry, lifted inflection, where the breath or ideas fall), the language will sing.

All you have to do is study the technical demands of the language and then follow the playwright's intent. And the work will sing. That's the way it's constructed.

Now, TV/Film writing is totally different.

It has nothing to do with size.

Let me say that again.

It has nothing to do with the size of the acting. Act bigger or Act smaller are not techniques, they're bullshit shortcuts to good training that don't work. And were the things I was told over and over again by folks who knew nothing about on-camera acting and assumed that plain old theatre training would be enough to get me through.

That's like asking a dentist to do an appendectomy because it's surgery just like a root canal. Never mind, he's never operated on anything but someone's mouth, it's all medicine, right...

Good god, I hope not, for the sake of your appendicitis....lol....

Rehearsing on camera text like a theatre audition is a recipe for disaster because the art forms are completely different and require different techniques.

On camera writing is about understanding the psychology of the character.

The language is less important than that of the character's thought process.

So, if you have never done character work based on understanding the psychology of a character, then you're missing the single most important thing about film/tv writing:

what you need to know is not on the page, it's in the character's psychological make-up.

Once you understand what drives the character, what his fears are, how he gets what he wants in the world and what his/her running inner monologue is, then you can actually analyze a scene and the words are irrelevant because the camera is paying attention to the character's thought process.

So, when you take a piece of TV/Film writing and try to beat it out and hit words to make your point or sculpt moments, the camera registers that as you 'acting badly.'

And the camera hates 'acting.'

That kind of work is for theatre writing and has to do with dealing with the outside tools (the language) instead of the inner work, the psychology of the character.

On camera text exists so we can see the character work out his unspoken subtext.

So, if all this sounds like Greek to you, it probably means that's the exact problem with your on camera auditions.

You don't have enough training or real-rehearsal time with a coach who can teach this to you.

You're trying to use the text to make something happen, when in reality, it's the character's inner psychology, needs, drives and fears that make the moments.

SOLUTION

1. Learn how to really listen and respond moment to moment instead of learning how to act like you're listening and responding. lol

2. Memorize by rote. No one knows how to do this. First year Meisner training, we had to memorize 10 page scenes in 24 hours without attaching any acting moments to the text.

What I've learned in actor coaching is that all actors memorize lines with acting intentions attached to the lines.

The problem here is that you go into an on camera audition trying to make the actions you mapped out work instead of really listening and responding in the moment.

So when a casting director gives you an adjustment, you do the scene exactly the same way because you won't remember the lines if you try to use a different set of actions. And actors are not even aware of this.

I learned it by being on set, being given new lines for a scene, without rehearsal and then told to do the scene with the new lines with about 45 seconds of prep time.

That happens all the time on set. The lines can be anything, the contact with my acting object is what matters.

So my actions, and responses will change based on what the acting object is giving me...which is why being memorized by rote is so incredibly important and it is an invaluable skill.

The Magic Secret: How to Memorize by Rote

Test it Out.

1. Pick a scene from a show running on TV right now.
2. Take your characters lines and write them out as a monologue.

This is super important:

DO NOT READ THE OTHER CHARACTERS LINES.

You should never hear those lines until you're actually in the audition so you don't have to 'act' like you're hearing them for the first time because you actually ARE hearing them for the first time.

THE CAMERA WANTS TO SEE YOU HEARING THOSE LINES, TAKING IT IN AND THOSE WORDS AFFECTING YOU IN THE MOMENT, NOT THE MOMENT YOU'VE PREPARED.

1. You now have exactly 30 minutes to memorize that monologue.
2. And here's how you do it: repeat each line 9 times fast (clearly), but fast with no acting, just repeat.
3. After you repeat one line 9 times fast, then add the second line, then repeat both lines 9 times fast. Then add the 3rd line and proceed accordingly.

How to Test if You're Really Memorized by Rote.

You should be able to say all of your lines like a monologue in about half the time it takes to do the scene.

Most on camera scenes are about 60 to 120 seconds. So you should be able to repeat all of your lines like a monologue in 30 seconds without stopping while washing dishes or taking out the trash.

If you stumble over lines, forget, drop lines, then you're trying to remember the lines by making sense of them instead of by rote and you're not really memorized.

What will happen in the audition room, is that because you're not memorized by rote, the camera will catch you trying to remember lines instead of really listening and truthfully responding to the other actor in the scene.

One more time for the road since this seems to be such an difficult idea for actors to get ahold of until they really commit to memorizing by rote:

If you are not memorized by rote, then the camera will catch you acting and the work will suck.

The. End.

So, I want you to spend the next week memorizing lines by rote, not reading the other person's lines and then coaching those scenes and see what happens.

The psychology of the character automatically kicks in if you're really listening moment to moment instead of memorizing lines...

This is all so much simpler than you're making it....TRUST.

Try this technique and then let me know how it goes.

That's all I got...

Love, Light & Power,

April Yvette Thompson &
6 Week Star-Maker Challenge Team

P.S. If you can do this process on your own, have at it. But if you think you'd like a little help.

P.S.S. Stay tuned for a special announcement about a freebie pop-up class about ["How to Get an Agent in three months or Less"]

(http://www.thedreamunlocked.com?link_list=1242831)
Consider the How to Get an Agent" Workshop coming up on June 28th. You can attend the live class in NYC or dial in from anywhere in the world.

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