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Fun Female Breakdowns

6 Jun

Last year I wrote a post on some of the ridiculous character descriptions for females on the casting websites. It’s old news that there is an alarming lack of kickass female roles, especially leading roles, in film and TV. Well, nothing makes this more clear than the actor breakdowns I sift through each morning. Sometimes, I can’t help but laugh:

FINANCIAL ADVISOR Lead / Female / All Ethnicities /18 – 32
the spot has a spin. it’s a corner on a street, hot girl, you, on corner, clearly a wearing a scantily clad outfit, we make her out to be a prostitute. a guy drives, walks to car. you see they are having a conversation, and here random parts of the conversation “how much”, etc. cut to inside of car, the middle age guy is asking girl for stock/investment advice, because she is the financial guru. and the girl is played as smart, not super dumb….but smoking hot.

(that’s not a “spin” that’s actually quite normal- every young female character is supposed to be “smoking hot” these days)

HEATHER Lead / Female / All Ethnicities /25 – 35 / Sexual Situations
Must appear in bra

(literally, that’s all it said)

CINDY Supporting / Female / All Ethnicities /24 – 28 
A hot whore, one of the skimpy chicks that Jose has around his house. She occasionally gives him back massages, but gives him attitude about it.

(well at least she’s got a little character development- she gives back massages but has attitude)

And these are just a few of many that I see daily. Fortunately, little by little there are people breaking molds and rejecting stereotypes and there are audiences who pay to see their films and shows. I would like to acknowledge some of those awesome shows & movies:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer- probably my favorite TV show of ALL time. Everyone in our house knew that Thursdays at 7 was QUIET time. I would not talk to you if you talked to me while the show was on, you had to wait til commercial break. And you better not be cooking or talking on the phone or anything else that will make noise while the show was on or I would be one upset teenager.

Clarissa Explains it All- probably influenced me more than I realized at the ripe ol age of 7 when the show first came out. I thought Clarissa was the coolest- how she rocked headbands and bike shorts, had a pet alligator named Elvis, and not to mention, was the first Nickelodeon series to feature a female lead!

Hanna- This just came out and I was pretty excited to see it and even more stoked after the fact. Hanna is not only a kickass female character but she literally kicked ass and never once was it about short skirts and cleavage. Okay, so she’s a little young, but that doesn’t stop Hollywood from sexualizing their female leads (even Kickass the movie had pre pubescent Hit Girl in a very suggestive school girl outfit not to mention other issues that I wont get into here).

Mad Men- This show just has it right all around. Every character, no matter the sex, is so layered and complicated. And though it has “Men” in the title, so much of the show deals with the burgeoning women’s movement. It reminds us how, in some ways, far we’ve come.

Bridesmaids- I know this film has been talked a lot in recent months in relation to women in entertainment. Scary to think that so many female’s screenwriting careers depended on the success of this film. Nonetheless, I’m glad it’s bringing attention to the issue. Not to mention it’s hilarious and all the women in it are pretty talented.

Monday Night ForePlays- And speaking of comedy, I can’t finish this post without mentioning my own theater company PianoFight’s female-driven sketch comedy group. All original material written and produced by very talented women, performed in front of consistent full-houses. Enough said.

No Excuses: How Your Acting Career Can Be In Your Control

23 May

No Excuses: How Your Acting Career Can Be In Your ControlFirst of all there are a SHIT TON of things NOT in your control. So let’s just get that out of the way right now. No use spending your time stressing about things like, did the casting director like my audition? Dude could’ve been having a bad day, the part could’ve already been cast but they need to see others for back up, the part ended up getting cut for budgetary reasons so your role doesn’t even exist anymore, etc. Not in your control.

But the good news is, there are things that are!

Last month I did a little experiment of diligently recording the number of auditions I submit for versus the number of auditions I get called in for to show how a lot of this really is a numbers game. Every day, multiple times a day, I scrolled thru the “notices fit for me” on LA Casting and Actors Access. This yielded a good handful of auditions, which led to me driving all across town (ok, fine, mainly Hollywood, but, still) taking an hour of my day for what usually is 2 to 3 minutes of actually auditioning. 4 weeks and 19 auditions later…. I haven’t submit for a single thing.

Why? Well, that’s a good question. I told myself a number of reasons: “It’s too much gas.” “It’s too exhausting.” “I’m not going to get anything from them anyway.” Basically, a lot of excuses. You might wonder, gee, if this girl starts complaining over a mere 4 weeks of submitting & auditioning (which is only a fraction of what pursuing this career is about anyway) then how the hell is she going to make it in this business?!? You’re absolutely right. These are all excuses. But, at least I know that is all they are. They are not legitimate reasons. And I do believe it is healthy and maybe even necessary to vent every once in a while. Because traipsing across town IS tiring. Gas IS expensive. And your “next gig” isn’t necessarily going to come from a blind submission, it can come from anywhere.

However, submitting and auditioning is one of the things that IS in your control. So easy. You click. You get called. You go. You kick ass. You’re done. And you never know where it can lead you.  You are at least doing one thing towards your career.

Another thing I’ll admit to have complained about- not having a theatrical agent. (“I don’t have enough credits” “My type is too hard to cast” “I’m not union”) Again, excuses. I should know better. I gotta switch gears and see what IS in my control:

- research smaller agencies who represent people who are doing the kind of work I would like to do

- find out if anyone in my circle has any sort of connection to any of these agencies

- reach out by sending a postcard, headshot, or phone call

- figure out how people see me, look at what type of roles in the past I usually get and see if there is a pattern, look up other actors similar to me and see what roles they usually get cast for

- save money to pay for my SAG card if that’s what I feel is holding me back (for the record, I don’t think it is right now– trying to hold on to my SAG -E for as long as I can)

This breakdown of steps can be done for a lot of  actor “problems” and then voila- you’ve got action items that are all bringing you one step closer to the acting career you want to have.

The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it, but I like to keep things positive!) is that there is always something you can be doing for your acting career. There are no excuses about why you aren’t making it or how it is hard profession. Guess what? EVERY professional career is hard, really hard, at the beginning. You have to put in those extra hours, blood, sweat and tears to get the promotion, the raise, the business deal. Same goes with acting. Now is the time to be putting in all the leg work and eventually it will pay off. I truly believe that.

It’s A Numbers Game

16 May

I conducted a little experiment the past month (something I probably should keep track of anyway) counting the number of submissions I make each day and the number of auditions I receive. And, hopefully, the number of parts I get. Kind of a big picture in this crazy mess of acting.With so much of this career, it really is a numbers game:

The more roles you submit for, the more likely you’ll get called in. The more auditions you go out for, the more likely you’ll get called back. And the more call backs you attend, the more likely you’ll get a part. And the more parts you accept, the more likely the project will actually happen. And the more projects you partake in, the more likely you’ll get scenes that wont get left on the cutting room for And the more opportunities you get to act in projects, the higher chance of having a project take off.  And the more scenes you can be seen in, the more likely someone else will notice you.

So, without further ado, here are my numbers:

week submissions auditions
1 32 1
2 32 3
3 49 9
4 19 6
TOTAL 132 19

That’s a 14% return.

From those auditions I got 2 callbacks, but no parts. So, if it took 132 submissions just to garner 19 auditions, which yielded 2 callbacks, I’d assume that it’s another 100 or so auditions (at least!) to garner a part… maybe. They were all from submissions on LA Casting & Actors Access, and most were for short films in addition to a few indie features, webisodes and plays.

After this month of diligent submitting and auditioning I got kind of tired and let my submitting taper off. Not good, but I’m only human.

Anyway. Moral of the story?

Always submit & audition as much as you can, BUT remember that

A. there’s much out of your control (like the staggering amount of competition, whether or not the casting director just received a shitty call right before you walked in, if the part you’re auditioning for is even going to make it into the final script, if they cast a brunette as the lead and now they want only blondes as her friend–and the list goes on!)

B. Self-submissions is just ONE way of many to get your next gig. Don’t be puttin’ all your eggs in one basket and become a lazy actor (or, in gentler terms, an actor paralyzed by fear:  fear of self-producing, fear of headshot drop-offs, fear of calling that friend of a friend of a friend who casts for ABC– and this list, too, goes on.) There are many baskets!

C. so much of it is just a numbers game– be it the number of projects you submit to, or the number of scripts you attempt to write, or the number of friends you attempt to collaborate with– one of these things will stick!

Treat All Auditions Equally

4 Apr

I recently got an audition for a feature film. I was happy to get the audition notice, as I’ve been having a sort of dry spell lately. When I received the sides, they were somewhat challenging out of context and my boyfriend suggested doing a little google search, because sometimes you can find the script online. Well after a few quick minutes of googling I found that not only was this a Fox feature film with a casting director who has many impressive credits, it was for a major motion picture sequel! (they used a code name in the initial breakdown– I did not know CDs do that). The second I realized the casting office and background of the CD, and finally, what this film actually was I became insanely nervous.

But am I this nervous when I’m auditioning for a student film? No. When I’m auditioning for community theater? Nope. For a friend’s project? Not at all. So why should I be nervous for this? If I could walk into that room with the same confidence and assuredness as I do when I walk into any other casting room, that’s half the battle. I must remind myself that I already beat out the odds when I was specifically chosen from the hundreds upon hundreds of submissions and chosen despite my lack of studio credits or a theatrical agent for that matter. I must remind myself:  it’s not a fluke. And most importantly, as the awesome Bonnie Gillespie says in her super kickass blog, I must remember to be “grateful for however far you get in the process, every single time. It’s a miracle anyone ever gets their “big break” in this town.”

Of course I prepared the shit out of those sides. Off book. Outfit carefully chosen. Scene rehearsed sitting, standing, walking around. Directions to the casting office triple checked. Headshot resumes perfectly cropped, stapled and ready to go in my acting folder. I was prepared. And this made me realize something else– the way I treated this audition, very seriously, is the way I should treat those others- the student films, the plays, the friend’s side projects. You have no idea what any one of these opportunities may lead, so you might as well make the most out of each and every one.

 

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