L.A. TIMES DISCUSSES EXTRA WORK DURING TOUGH TIMES

The following article from the Los Angeles Times of April 5, 2009, offers an interesting perspective on the pros and cons of attempting to do extra (background) work, espcially for anyone who thinks it provides a “quick fix” for financial woes.  The article speaks for itself:

MOVIES: EXTRA EXTRAS

Background players are coming out of the woodwork, swelling the ranks of Hollywood hopefuls as tough times put on the squeeze.

By JODIE BURKE

Nathan Johnson has landed in one of the longest unemployment lines in Los Angeles. Just another face in the crowd, Johnson is here because he’s hoping to get a job as, yes, just another face in the crowd. But the crowd keeps getting bigger every day.

The lobby at Central Casting is so packed it seems impossible that one more person could squeeze through the door. Johnson, 30, handsome and elegant in a crisp, white shirt, has been waiting to sign up for an hour. “It feels like two hours,” he says, eyeing the registration desk. It’s only a few feet away, but it will take a lot of patience to reach it. “I’m an EMT,” he says, gazing around the congested room with the sort of dignity that Will Smith might envy. Utter cool in a crisis. “If someone goes into cardiac arrest, I’m there.”

Johnson has been out of work for two years. He injured his shoulder, which made it impossible for him to do the heavy lifting required in his medical tech job, and he’s seen the toll of the recession all around him. “All my friends who owned houses are out of them now,” he says. He grew up in Venice, but when the housing boom hit, his old beachside neighborhood became gentrified almost overnight. “The past five years was kind of a greed session, and now everybody’s got a hangover.”

Background artists, also known as “atmosphere” or extras, are the folks whose mere presence on the set makes the land of make-believe seem real. They are the entertainment industry’s most reliable temporary workers and, since 1926, Central Casting has been supplying the creators of feature films, TV shows and commercials with most of them. Three days a week, for one hour, Central registers anyone 18 or over with a spare 25 bucks (cash only) and the documentation to prove they’re legal to work in the United States to be a nonunion extra with the company.

There’s no interview to sweat. No psychological tests to take. No experience required. Nonunion extras make a humble $64 a day and must follow strict orders: Never look at the camera. Never speak to principal actors or the director. Stay out of the way. Basically, keep your head down and your mouth shut.

Clutching their identification cards as tightly as their dreams, people have always flooded into Central Casting looking for work, taking that first step to become a star. Brad Pitt was discovered here. So were Eva Longoria Parker, Kelly Clarkson, Ronald Reagan and Ava Gardner. But more people are signing up to be extras than ever before — and becoming famous, or even an actor, isn’t the reason why.

“Whenever there’s a downturn in the economy, we see an increase in the number of people applying for background work,” says Allen Kennamer, vice president of Central Casting. “The line started getting longer right after the first of the year,” he says. “It started to double in size.” Lately Central’s been registering more and more people, about 300 a week, a total of 50,000, for noticeably fewer jobs.

This warehouse building on an industrial, dead-end street in Burbank is an interesting window into the recession in Southern California: It’s where anxious folks from all walks of life, not only the entertainment industry, come seeking a big break.

Brian Estwick, 42, is a chess teacher. Until last December, he taught at an after-school program in Pacific Palisades but lost his job when the funding was cut. Estwick has never done professional acting, but his family’s been encouraging him to try. “My brother’s been pushing me to come in because I’ve got a different look,” he says. When asked to describe it, he laughs, an earthquake rumbling through 320 pounds of muscle. “The guy from ‘The Green Mile’: an athletic, big black guy.”

If he does land background work, it seems unlikely that he’ll stay there long. Estwick hasn’t even registered and already his overall shorts, black clogs and smart-as-an-owl glasses are attracting a lot of attention. “I got lucky today,” he says. “As soon as I walked in, a casting director came out from the back, told me I had a good look and took my name.”

“Casting extras is like painting with people,” notes David Feige, co-creator and supervising producer of TNT’s legal show “Raising the Bar.” The show, which is shot in Los Angeles, is based on Feige’s real-life experience as a public defender in the Bronx, N.Y. Feige didn’t know much about Hollywood when he arrived and was fascinated by the process. “The extras casting really made an impression on me,” Feige says.

For the pilot, he helped select people to fill in the jury and crowd the hallways and courtroom. “I remember vividly sitting down and they pulled out an ocean of pictures. It was crazy,” he says. “The possibilities are so vast. You really are creating this universe, and you can populate it with almost anyone. ‘What we need is an old guy with a walker.’ ‘OK, here’s 50.’ Of course the process of choosing is oddly dehumanizing, precisely because you’ve never spoken a word to any of these people and ultimately you’re evaluating them as textures rather than individuals. Like pointillism, it’s only when you step back and your eye scans over the whole group that you get the effect of the individual choices.”

Christina Tucker, 45, is hoping to get temporary work as an extra after being laid off from a 27-year career as a postproduction audio technician. She’s worked on big hits: “Law & Order,” “Ghost Whisperer” and “House.” “Scooby Doo,” her most recent employer, dogged her with a pink slip last April. “Warner Bros. cut the whole animation department in January 2008. They cut it [by a] third,” she says, emphasizing that fraction. “Now I’m just trying to find a chair.” That’s what the sound techies call it when you’re looking for your next big job.

The Central Casting line moves forward and the blond, suburban soccer mom inches along. “My son did this seven years ago,” she says. “He got bumped up on two commercials and wound up making $50,000.” The number causes a few nearby heads to turn. The money helped the family get through a difficult economic time before. Tucker’s hoping she’ll have similar luck now. “At least it’s worth a try,” she says. “I’ve had ups and downs in the industry before, but I didn’t really think it was going to last this long.”

–

Opportunity wanes

As the recession deepens across California, Hollywood’s extra casting reflects a Catch-22: The labor pool is growing at a time when film studios are shedding staff and dropping projects, independent filmmakers are finding it harder to raise financing, and television studios are making more reality TV shows that don’t require atmosphere and far fewer dramas and comedies that do.

“There’s a lot less work to go around,” says Kevin Goldson, a casting associate with Idell James Castingin Pacific Palisades, a company that competes with Central Casting but focuses strictly on advertising. That industry experienced sharp declines in 2008 when advertisers, particularly the automotive industry, which favored Los Angeles as a location for many of its car commercials, cut back on spending.

According to FilmL.A., the nonprofit organization that hands out permits for the city and keeps track of local filming, on-location commercial production days was down 17.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter of 2007. It suffered a loss of 10.9% for the year. “It’s very slow and a lot of people are worried, because a lot of people did extra work for a living,” Goldson says. “When the budgets are cut, where they cut is the background because it’s cheaper to shoot with less people.”

The picture doesn’t get any sunnier for feature films: 2008 was the worst year for local feature production since FilmL.A. began tracking it in 1993. The major studios are making fewer movies, and they’re not shooting many of them in California anymore. Feature production in Los Angeles has been down 10 of the last 12 years. The number of production days FilmL.A. logged for 2008 is half of what it was during its most recent peak in 1996 and is a record low.

Television production, often called the bread and butter of the industry, remains the one bright spot on the local production landscape, but that is mostly because of reality programming. Production days in reality TV rose 19% in 2008. Sometimes talk shows and game shows will hire extras to fill out their audiences, but scripted television provides most of the background jobs, and those numbers tell a much different story.

Sitcom production days fell 25.3% from 2007. Dramas fared better, taking on a modest gain of 6.9%. But pilot production dropped 40.8%, partly because of the WGA strike. And this year, of the 39 hourlong pilots ordered by the major networks, at least 20 are scheduled to shoot out of town, according to Variety. That leaves only about 20 pilots to be shot locally. “Normally, it’s three times that,” Kennamer says.

While the unemployment rate for Los Angeles County rose to 10.9% in February, trying to pinpoint an unemployment rate for the entertainment industry makes even the economists’ heads spin. It turns out there is no number. But there have been job cuts at studios across town as parent companies try to control costs.

Show runners and producers are feeling the pinch, and many anticipate further cutbacks. With more and more laid-off people turning to background work to make ends meet, will there actually be much call for them?

CBS’ “Without a Trace” had its budget sealed in May 2008, before the economy fell apart, and the show is not cutting back on extras. “We tend to hold onto the bigger scenes because they add more production value,” says executive producer Greg Walker. “The bigger the scope, it has a wider cinematic feel, so the show doesn’t feel closed in.”

“Right now we’re down on the back lot of Warner Bros. and have dressed it as Chinatown and I didn’t cut back one extra,” says Scott White, “Without a Trace’s” co-executive producer. “That’s what gives the scene life. Right now we’re not forced to make those decisions.” But if the show gets picked up for its eighth season, Walker and White might be forced to make a different decision.

“The studio and network are going to be downsizing their budget, cutting back 10%,” says White. “Creatively, taking extras out of a show is a bad move, but in expectation of budget cuts we will cut back on our general allowance for atmosphere.” With regard to the unemployed people lined up at Central Casting eager to land background work, White adds, “I feel for those folks over there.”

–

Making a success of it

Jian Najac, 36, is one of the lucky ones. He’s built a career others dream about, turning random, unstable background work into a steady, well-paying job.

His advice? “Buy a couple of good suits and figure out what type of person you are. I know this well: I went from a homeless guy to a G-man overnight.”

With long hair that fell past his butt, Najac started as a nonunion extra with Central in 2003. He booked a few jobs as a prison inmate or street thug, but crime wasn’t paying. “One day I cut my hair and almost overnight I was allowed to join the union,” Najac says, speaking from the set of “Without a Trace” where, with a clean-shaven jaw and close-cropped hair, he plays one of the show’s regular FBI agents. He also carries a badge on “The Mentalist,” all three “CSIs” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

It takes three Screen Actors Guild vouchers to move from nonunion to the higher-paying, health insurance-providing union jobs. But acquiring those vouchers is tricky, a matter of hustle and luck. Najac says that befriending the first assistant director can be a good strategy, but sometimes it just comes down to a union extra failing to show up. “By contract, the productions are required to hire a certain number of SAG extras,” he explains, “So say you have one arm, and they need a one-armed guy — you get the voucher that day.”

Najac won his first SAG voucher when he booked an extra gig on “The West Wing.” “Me and another guy were dressed up as SWAT officers. We were in Griffith Park on one side of a ravine and they wanted us to run through the woods, over a lot of fallen trees and sharp brush. So the first A.D. says, ‘Is that OK?’ And I looked at him and said, ‘I might be a little underpaid for this.’

“I went for it and got it,” Najac says.

Kevin Jessup, 54, wanted to get into acting in the 1980s but then he got married, had four kids and decided it would be a better idea to install water heaters for Sears. He did that for 13 years, then owned a couple of pizza places in San Jacinto — until Wal-Mart opened a store nearby and drove him out of business. When his wife died, Jessup, who sports a gray mustache and rides a 6-foot-tall unicycle, decided it was time to give his old dream a shot again. The kids were grown. He had his wife’s Social Security to count on.

“I’ve got a good work ethic. I’m well-mannered. That goes a long way in this particular job,” he says, sinking into a folding chair by the window, waiting for his son to register with Central Casting. Jessup signed up last June and inspired all four of his kids and his 82-year-old mother to become extras. He works a couple of times a week and is now SAG eligible but hasn’t paid the $2,335 initiation fee to join the union.

“It’s kind of tough in this economy,” Jessup says. “We live in Hemet, which is quite a drive. Over the summer when gas prices shot way up, I was spending $45 to make $65.” Still, his eyes twinkle at the thought of it. “You can’t look back on your life and say you didn’t try.”

Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif.
Subjects:     Recessions
Author:     Jodie Burke
Date:     Apr 5, 2009
Start Page:     D.1
Section:     Sunday Calendar; Part D; Calendar Desk

CASTING DIRECTOR TERRY BERLAND “SHARES”

Clio Awards – www.clioawards.com - don’t come easily. They honor the best work in the field of commercials, similar to Emmys and Oscars, and we’d bet dollars to doughnuts that most of you reading this never heard of them. Well, now you have.

Terry Berland, longtime commercial casting director and owner of Terry Berland Casting in Los Angeles, is a Clio Award winner and rightly so. She possesses a great eye for talent and the attention to detail that has assured her a top spot on producers’ wish lists of “casting directors I’d love to hire”.

Terry began her casting career in New York, working her way up the ladder in casting offices at Madison Avenue advertising agencies, ultimately becoming Head of Casting at BBDO (at the time, the third largest ad agency in the world). She then decided to start her own independent casting company and opened an office in L.A. in 1991.

In addition to her hectic casting schedule, Terry has taught commercial acting techniques to literally hundreds of actors in cities throughout the United States. Her interest in actors inspired her to co-author the “how to” industry book, “Breaking Into Commercials”, now in its second printing. Over the years, Terry has observed many actors at various acting and modeling conventions and workshops, as they grow and develop their skills to the point where they are able to make the move successfully from regional areas to New York and Hollywood. She has also seen plenty of actors who decide that the larger markets really weren’t for them after all.

Terry shares some of her hard-earned wisdom:

“Actors need to know that casting directors are always on the look-out for good, solid, well-trained actors. An actor also needs to understand how he or she fits into the process of casting. In the commercial industry, there are eight people who decide which actor is going to be booked – the ad agency producer, art director, writer, account supervisor, creative supervisor, account executive, production company director, plus final client approval – and the casting director is not one of those people. The casting director is the first person to bring the actor in to audition, because he believes that the actor is right for the part and will do a good job auditioning. Once she presents the various actors to the producers and director, it’s up to them to make the final casting decision.”

When asked what mistakes she sees actors making in her casting office, she offered this:

“The competition in Hollywood and New York is much fiercer than in the regional areas or in the college classroom environment. Acting is a growth process, so naturally, the more you train, the longer you’re in it, the better you’re going to be.

“You want to get to the point that as soon as you step on the mark you are given to work on, you know how to create an environment where you reveal your personality and appear very connected to whatever you’re doing.

“Always have your 8X10 (with the resume attached) with you (there is no excuse for not having one in-hand when you enter a casting office).

“Never wear perfume or cologne.

“Always be on time. If you see that you’re going to be unavoidably delayed, have your agent call the casting person and warn them. And if you cannot make it at all, let your agent know that, too. Another actor will then have the opportunity to fill that coveted audition slot.

“The most impressive actors are the ones who are well-trained, really feel happy to be at the audition, and are open and ready to take direction and do their best work. Most actors have very good dispositions. They are patient, used to waiting, do their job (their audition) and then leave, happy campers, on to their next thing. There is no feeling (from the actor) of wanting, or worse yet, needing the booking.”

In Terry’s opinion, actors need to choose their teachers and classes carefully. “Actors need to make decisions that don’t waste a lot of their time and money. In Hollywood, there is a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. Gather advice from well-respected people. Since good acting is your strong foundation, I would certainly say get into a good acting class. Find a coach whose technique and manner you are comfortable with and along with that, take a commercial workshop. That is a technique unto itself – TV, film and commercials each have their own different techniques, by the way.

“Commercial acting classes are not on-going like other acting classes. You can learn the commercial technique in a workshop (such as mine) in five or six weeks. A good commercial class can even trigger major breakthroughs in your regular acting class. I’ve been told that I give the same notes or adjustments to talent that they are getting in the acting class – we simply push through faster, due to the nature of everything about commercials being quicker.

“That brings me to another important class everyone should take and that is improv. In improv, you learn how to think and create quickly, on your feet. That is the foundation for commercials and anything with comedy or humor.

“It gives a real sense of community to know that the actors we audition are well-trained and waiting for their auditions, so they can get to us (sometimes) at a moment’s notice. These actors make our jobs successful.

“The breakdowns for commercials come quickly and the actors we bring in for auditions are part of our team. They might not always get booked for that particular job, but a knowledgeable actor understands that casting directors, producers and directors remember good people for future jobs.

“An actor who lives in a regional market who asks a commercial casting director in L.A. to call him and have him fly in for an audition, obviously cannot understand how fast the process is – or he wouldn’t ask. It isn’t cost-effective or time-efficient for an actor to fly to an audition, be in the room for five minutes and then fly home again. Under those circumstances, the audition itself becomes far too important. Then factor in the callbacks, which may not happen for a couple of days. Is he going to hop on another plane for that?!

“I believe an actor should work and take advantage of everything available in his or her own region before moving to a larger market. They should only move if it makes them happy and they can afford it. Success is different things to different people. Acting should nurture the soul, wherever that may be.”

To gain more insight and knowledge about how to be successful in commercials, as well as how you fit into the commercial process, you can read Terry’ book, “Breaking Into Commercials”. It can be found online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Samuel French Bookstore, as well as most major bookstores.

Further information about Terry Berland can be found on her website, www.berlandcasting.com. And here’s some fun for you: Join Terry’s MySpace for actors only under Myspace.com/berlandcasting.

THE ACTOR’S PASSPORT TO HOLLYWOOD

As everyone knows, before you can enter a new country, a passport is required. The passport itself does not provide transportation, nor maps to places you’ve never been, nor lodging, food or clothing. No education; no financial aid; no new friends. The passport merely allows you to cross over into new territory and back again.

To most non-Angelenos, Hollywood might just as well be a “foreign country”. Even people who move here from, say, Bakersfield or San Diego (only a couple of hours away) find it a maze of unknowns, often difficult to navigate, both literally and figuratively. For most actors, however, Hollywood is not thought of as foreign; it’s “the promised land”, the place they strive to reach by hook or by crook.

This site, which you so cleverly discovered, is meant to serve as your passport to the actor’s life in Hollywood. Before you delve any further into it, we would like to make our “mission” clear. No need wasting anyone’s time – this may very well NOT be what you were searching for. That being said…

- IF you are an actor living somewhere other than Hollywood…

- IF you have ever dreamed of pursuing an acting career, but didn’t have a clue how to begin…

- IF you are scared to death of scams and/or the myriad ways in which strangers seem to want to relieve you of your cash…

- IF you think you are ready, yet are totally unprepared (two different things!) to make the move to Hollywood…

- IF you are already living in Hollywood, but feel like a fish out of water, because no one ever bothered to tell you how things really work here…

…then this may very well be the place for you.

We have over 20 years experience as Hollywood talent agents. We are sick and tired of seeing Hollywood “hopefuls” being stripped of both their hard-earned cash and their dignity, due almost exclusively to a lack of knowledge about how show business really works.

Ignorance may be bliss, but not for very long. A person cannot know what he does not know. In other words, you may not know what questions to ask and therefore, the answers to those very important questions will remain a mystery for far too long, costing you both time and money. This site is designed to provide you with both the pertinent questions and their answers.

Because we want nothing from you and because we have no interest in representing you (whoever you may be), we have constructed this site anonymously. The only thing you will have to invest here is your trust that we are, indeed, very knowledgeable about the actor’s life in Hollywood. Most of the information we intend to impart can be easily checked for its accuracy by you. We have absolutely nothing to gain by sharing misinformation, so why would we bother?

Our opinions, on the other hand, are just that: Opinions. But bear in mind that they are opinions that have been developed over many years of observing the good, the bad, and the just plain stupid behavior of literally thousands of actors. If we can prevent just one person reading this from losing his or her shirt (or even fifty bucks!), it’ll be worth all the time and effort we are putting into this site. If we can help even one truly talented person attain his or her goals as an actor, all the better.

We are in this business because we happen to adore actors. Yes, they can and often do drive us nuts, yet they are still the most alive, creative, quirky and interesting people we have ever encountered. That shouldn’t come as any surprise to you, since you, yourself (if you’ve gotten this far on this page) are either an aspiring actor, an accomplished actor, a concerned relative, or merely someone who finds actors to be as fascinating as we do!

So…if you are in need of demystification and clarification of the acting field in Hollywood (some of what you learn here can also be applied to New York and Chicago, etc., but it will almost always refer specifically to Hollywood), then please consider this ever-evolving site as your passport to a better, more informed career in Tinseltown. If nothing else…

Your dreams are welcome here!

WHERE SHOULD YOU LIVE?

Even if you live as close by as Orange County or Central California, if you intend to be a Hollywood actor, you will most definitely need to move to L.A. There is no good way to establish a career long-distance; it simply doesn’t work for a novice.

No matter where you live, be it the Mid-West or the North-East, or even if you’re in a foreign country, the logistics of making this move will be the same.

If you possibly can, you should try to make a short trip to L.A. – maybe only a week or two – to get the lay of the land and start mapping out the areas of town that appeal to you as a potential new home. For most out-of-towners, the vastness of Los Angeles is a bit unexpected, no matter how much you’ve heard and read about it. (It reminds us of our first trip to Rome. Nothing and no one had ever prepared us for the enormity of the Vatican. It was beyond imagining!)

So! Get yourself a map. No, not the kind you find online and no, not even a Thomas Guide. A good, reliable, unfold-it-and-lay-it-out-on-a-table map. No matter where you live, you can easily obtain one of these. Spend some time “navigating” this city and learning the names of the various little “towns” that all merge into one, great big region. The San Fernando Valley, for example, includes Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Van Nuys, Encino, Tarzana, North Hollywood, Valley Village, West Hills, North Hills, Sylmar, Panorama City, Pacoima, Northridge, Canoga Park (shall we stop now?), etc. Yes! Etcetera! Even though there is absolutely no physical separation between all of those places (from an airplane, you can’t tell where one begins and the other lets off), there is definitely a difference in, shall we say, style from one part of The Valley to another.

For purposes of being centrally located for your work as an actor, The Valley is a pretty good place to start your search for a place to live. On your lovely map, locate the Ventura freeway (that’s the 101 to you). Then locate the San Diego (405) and Hollywood (170) freeways, which run into the 101. We’d say that if you can stick to within 2-3 miles of those freeways, you’ll be able to easily access all of the casting houses and studios within The Valley and Hollywood.

Here’s a practical idea for you:  The Oakwood Apartments are located near Universal City, which in turn is located near the branching off of the Hollywood and Ventura Freeways.  VERY convenient.  They offer short-term stays in fully furnished apartments and have been a haven for out-of-town actors for decades.  It’s a great place to use as a home base, while looking for a more permanent arrangement.  Check it out at www.oakwoodtoluca.com.

Another big destination for actors will be Culver City – not necessarily to live, but it’s home to a number of studios and many casting directors. It is not near The Valley, but it is near the 405 freeway. That same freeway will lead you fairly close to Santa Monica – not the beach – the city, where many casting companies (particularly for commercials, for some reason) are located.

Now, we know that most people from out-of-state think that living near the beach would be a dream come true. Well, maybe if you’re independently wealthy and don’t mind having your limo driver take an extra 30 minutes to drive you to your auditions. Nice as it may be, the closer you get to the ocean, the costlier everything becomes and the less convenient to get to and from. We’d suggest that you wait until your first million dollar check arrives before attempting to live there. But then, that’s just our opinion.
On a side note: Public transportation is definitely not L.A.’s strong suit. We sincerely hope you don’t intend to use it to get to auditions, because you may as well leave home 3 or 4 hours early (and have very good walking shoes) in order to reach your destination on time. It’s really imperative that you have a car.

Once you’ve gotten the lay of the land from your map, start googling information about the places that seem right for you. Remember – you’re doing all of the pre-move research work from home. It’s costing you next to nothing, but it may ultimately save you a lot of money and wasted time, simply because you will come to Hollywood prepared for action and that’s going to be a great feeling!

MORE HOMEWORK – THE FUN KIND!

Go to the movies. As often as you can. And puh-leeze don’t limit yourself to one genre of film (action, dumb buddy, horror, romance, whatever). Expand your horizons with a variety of types of films, even if you can’t stand some of them. You will be absorbing and thus learning (we hope) different styles of acting, all of which obviously landed the actors involved on the big screen.

Watch television and we don’t mean reality shows. If you wanted to be part of that nonsense, you wouldn’t need to devote yourself to learning how to act, now would you?! We mean primetime dramas, comedies, old films, Movies Of The Week (MOWs), ANYTHING created for HBO or Showtime. Observe the various acting techniques and absorb.

(All actors in Hollywood are instructed by their agents – at least the smart, caring ones – to watch at least one episode of every new show that airs on TV, every season. Why? Because each and every show has its own particular style and mood and if you call yourself an actor, you’d better damned well know the difference between the various programs. If, for example, you think that the acting styles of “Boston Legal” are the same as those of “Law & Order”, you’re going to be in big trouble when you have to audition for one or the other of them.)

Read. Anything and everything you can get your hands on. An informed actor is an interesting actor. And read out loud every day, even if it’s the ads from Sport Illustrated while you’re sitting on the john. It will improve your cold reading skills.

Memorize. You must keep your brain in top shape for memorizing and doing it quickly. The easiest things to memorize are probably poems or the lyrics to songs. Try to memorize something new at least every week, if not more often. Once you get the hang of memorizing rhythmic, rhyming pieces, graduate to prose: Passages from books, magazines, newspapers – it really doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you can test yourself for accuracy (use a friend or a recording device to check yourself). If it in any way simulates the dialogue from a role you may one day perform, that’s what you want.
(Needless to say, the older you are, the more difficult memorization becomes, but hey! it’s good for you, so do it!)

Observe your fellow human beings. They will be your “role models” (pun intended) when you need to create new characters. Observe their facial expressions, their body language, their speech patterns. Trust us: This will make you a better, more versatile actor, even if you never consciously use any of it.

These are some basic things you can do both before and after your Hollywood life begins that can serve to better both your acting chops and your life in general.

SUBMITTING YOURSELF FROM HOME

If you are truly adventurous and able to afford a quick trip to Hollywood (frequent flyer miles, anyone?), you may occasionally want to submit yourself for some of the projects you find listed in Backstage. If you have the equipment and capability of taping an audition from home, there may be the rare casting director willing to go along with that idea. If you can up-load that audition to a website (even YouTube or MySpace can be used for this purpose), all the better.

When you make your submission (and it had better reach the casting office overnight!), be prepared for the remote possibility that they will call and tell you that you have an audition TOMORROW! It’s at this point that you must tell them you’re out of town “at the moment”, but could send them a taped (uploaded?) audition. Tell them that you’re available to come to the callbacks or, if they’re planning to book directly from your audition, OF COURSE you’re available for the job. (ONLY say that stuff if you mean it. Duh.)

But do not fool yourself into thinking that it will happen very often, if at all. It won’t. Casting directors don’t need to reach outside of Hollywood for more actors; they already have literally hundreds of choices for each role right here at their disposal and they will always prefer meeting and auditioning actors in person.

Bear this in mind, too: The vast majority of projects you will find in BSW are either non-paying or so low-paying as to be almost ridiculous. Would you really be willing to fly to L.A. and put yourself up in a motel just for the possible chance to work for free (or worse, after expenses, to be out-of-pocket)? In our opinion, you should only consider doing that if it would not be a financial hardship and if you can look at it as a mini-vacation/adventure/learning experience. Otherwise…fuggedaboutit!

*When we say “home”, we mean those of you living outside of L.A.

BACKSTAGE AT BACKSTAGE

One of the best things you can do for yourself before ever leaving home is to get a subscription to the weekly publication, BACKSTAGE WEST (BSW). It is considered the bible of actors in Hollywood and it can open up entirely new avenues of information for anyone, anywhere. Unlike Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter, which are geared more (though not exclusively) to other pros in our business, such as producers, agents, casting directors, etc., virtually everything you will read in BSW will be of interest to you, the actor.

Among the many regular departments you will find articles and lists such as…

- Audition notices for plays, student films, and other types of acting projects
- Photographers and acting teachers/coaches
- Acting schools
- Reviews of plays in Southern California (yes, you should read them, even if you aren’t living here yet)
- A great advice column
- During tax season, a tax advisor column specifically for actors
- Updates on the union activities and problems
- Agent and manager info

The more you read about the actor’s life in Hollywood, the more prepared you’ll be to either join it yourself or…not. They don’t sugar-coat the information they disseminate, so you’ll see a few horror stories intermingled with the general news every so often and that, in our opinion, is a good way to balance things.

We suggest you read the play reviews as a way to become familiar with the various theaters, of which we seem to have at least one on every corner. Seriously. Theater snobs from New York and Chicago would like you to believe that L.A. has little to offer in the way of live stage productions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Granted, as recently as the early ‘90s, our theaters were nothing to write home about, generally speaking, but that has really improved since then. Be prepared to attend lots of low-cost plays when you get here. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how good most of them are and the reviews will give you a good idea of the better theaters in town.

By the way, one of the choices for your subscription says that it includes Ross Reports. Don’t waste your money on that. You aren’t even close to needing it and it’ll be something new to “discover” later on.

www.backstage.com