Audition for Your Career, Not the Job
Mastering the On-camera Audition
Tim Phillips
With Stephanie Gunning
Published by Tim Phillips Studio at Smashwords
Los Angeles, California
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PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
"Those who read this book will find that there is much to learn from Tim Phillips. Read it. Digest it. You'll be very well informed and find yourself a better student of the subject at the end."
—Robert Duvall, Academy Award-winning actor, Tender Mercies, Emmy Award-winning actor, Broken Trail, writer, director, and producer
"An instructive, no nonsense, passionate cry to the actor: Bring your intelligence and humanity to the audition not your desperation."
—Larry Moss, author of The Intent to Live
"Read this book. Study it. Read it again. If you want tools that help you take command of your craft under pressure, under duress, under any set of circumstances, whether nurturing or maddening, then read this book. Tim provides a boot camp for actors that retrains us, redirects us to become hunters for truth in our work. The end result is that you remember that the result is irrelevant and immaterial as it relates to getting a job or mastering a take. You remember that living truthfully in the world of the script is everything and is always achievable. And when that is achieved, the rest will take care of itself. Always."
—Richard Schiff, Emmy Award-winning actor, The West Wing
"Audition for Your Career, Not the Job has the power to shift your way of being to one that's curious, open to love, intuitively confident, and, ultimately, human. Imagine facing your next audition with a 'Put me in Coach—I've got this!' feeling. That is the gift of this book."
—Kim Hudson, script consultant and author of The Virgin's Promise
"Tim Phillips' style of teaching fosters great respect for the work and for each other."
—Wendie Malick, Emmy Award-nominated actress, Just Shoot Me!
"I've come to think of Tim Phillips as 'The Wizard.' I've worked for several years with Tim as my coach and teacher. His deep instinct to follow clues of language, emotion, and tone invariably leads actors into a place they're not aware they know about. Yet, by session's end, they are certain they not only know it, but are at home in this place: the soul of the character. Tim Phillips is a master for anyone working on stage or in television and film."
—Robert Wisdom, actor The Wire, Burn Notice, Prison Break, and Happy Town
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Sherlock Holmesing the Text® is a trademarked process.
Copyright © 2011 by Tim Phillips. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
2124
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Angeles, CA. 90016
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For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tim Phillips Studio at (310) 772-8262 or assistant@timphillipsstudio.com.
Cover design by Emily Furlani
Interior design by Shaila Abdullah
ISBN: 978-0-615-32846-1
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To Elssa and Sara
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Contents
Part One Sherlock Holmesing the Text®
Chapter 1 What's the Project Called?
Chapter 4 What Has Happened Already?
Chapter 5 When Is This Taking Place?
Chapter 7 What Do I Want this Person to Understand about Me?
Chapter 8 What's at Stake If I Don't Get What I Want?
Part Two Crafting Your Butt Off
Chapter 10 Find Reasons to Feel
Chapter 11 Define Your Social Dictate
Chapter 12 Physical and Vocal Adjustments
Chapter 14 Talking and Listening
Chapter 15 Grabbing Your Lines and Other Fundamentals
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Introduction
The phone rings, an email arrives, your smart phone vibrates. It's your agent. A project is being cast and there's a part in it that might be right for you. They're expecting you at the casting office tomorrow. You don't have a whole lot of time, but that's okay. Opportunity has just come knocking at your front door and you know you have the chops to open it. After all, that's what you do… you're an actor. This is your chance to act.
Perhaps you intend to self-submit a video of yourself doing an audition for a role you saw posted online. This happens more and more often these days. You are taking control of your destiny as an artist.
In any case, the "sides" either arrive or you download them. Now you've got a few pages of script in hand along with a short description of the character and the scene: a name, a place, and a few other pertinent facts. It's time to put your training and talent and energy to good use. Your task is to transform those words on the page into a memorable living and breathing human being.
What's the first thought that goes through your mind? Is it negative or positive?
"Boy, I really want to book this one. I could use the money from this job."
"I wonder who I'm up against. I hope they like me. I thought my last audition was solid; but I never heard anything… I don't want that to happen again."
"Wahoo! It's playtime. I can't wait! Who do I get to be?"
"Let's get down to business."
You've got a big audition lined up for a role in a film or on a television series. What do you do now? This book covers steps you can take and specific skills you can put to use right away so that you will feel more confident about your performance in your next audition and make a great and lasting impression on casting directors and producers. If your work is consistently first-rate and memorable, every on-camera audition like this one becomes an opportunity to advance your acting career.
Most actors are theatre-trained and love the whole process of performing on stage. Believe me, I appreciate the lure. That's my background, too. Before becoming a master teacher, I was a theatre actor for years. Even after having shot films with great actors like Robert Duvall and Meryl Streep (okay, that scene ended up on the cutting room floor), I never loved it as much as I have loved being on stage. Do you feel the same way?
Of course, there's a catch. As a theatre actor, I mostly earned my living from tending bar. The plain truth was then, and is more so now, that doing theatre is not as lucrative for actors as doing film and television. So here's the deal, first you learn how to make a living by auditioning well for film and television. Make money. Then you can afford to do what you want to do in theatre. And if you love doing film and television, that's great!
While we know that you would like to book the job you're auditioning for (both for the money, and for the chance to act and do what you love), if you're like many actors, you could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what the producers, casting directors, and writers want for the part and ways you could be more pleasing. You could easily get distracted. In a high-pressure situation like this, it's most important to be prepared, relax, and concentrate on the one thing that's under your control: you and your performance.
If you do everything in your power to ensure that you do your best work, afterwards you can step out of the audition room, pat yourself on the back for a job well done, leave the day's audition behind you, and move on to prepare for the next audition. You might get brought back for this role… or not. You might get feedback… or not. Many factors go into the selection of an actor for a specific role, and you may never know how the decision for any given project was made. That's why, for actors, it's crucial to stay ready for the next call. You have to be able to raise your spirits and then focus like a laser in the moment with no barriers against expressing your humanity.
Let the deciders decide. That's their function, not yours. You're here to act. Why? Because you love it. And, yes to make money—but there are easier ways to do that. I think you and I could agree that you do this out of love for the craft.
I suggest you adopt a long-term view. Adopt the attitude of "Next!" Make it your philosophy to audition for your career, not the job. Have fun. Enjoy your moments to shine. Be intent on crafting the best performance you can with the few pages of the script you've been provided, and let your high-quality auditions serve as your calling card. Even if you do not get the job you audition for today, you can still prove to the people who make the casting decisions that you'd be a valuable asset tomorrow.
One day, you'll book a role. You'll deliver on your promise. A paycheck will come. Then, go back and do theatre if you still want to do it. You'll decide what's next!
Be Professional, Be Yourself
The quality of your work is the only thing under your control, and it's important to approach your work in a way that feels fun and rewarding. If you learn the habits described in this book, the possibility of not being chosen literally won't be able to shake your confidence before, during, or after an audition; and you won't suffer over time from burnout or begin feeling miserable and rejected. As Michael Chiklis, lead actor from The Shield and No Ordinary Family, says of the casting process, "It's not rejection. It's selection."ref_1
The idea is to set your own performance goals and determine for yourself whether or not you have met them. Then ghosts of "might have been," "could have been," "If only I had…," or "Damn it, I sounded better in the car… in the shower… when I was reading with my friend" won't haunt you. Your focus instead will be on perfecting the elements of your craft. Remember, an acting career is a marathon, not a sprint. Next!
Creative teams that produce and cast film and TV productions want to work with actors they can trust to get the job done. Professionalism as an actor means showing up prepared to deliver the goods on the spur of the moment and under great pressure. That includes being on time for your audition and every subsequent engagement. They need to know that you care enough to take your work seriously. A lot of money is on the line whenever shooting is taking place—and they are always mindful of it. Your audition is a chance to show them that you are capable both of crafting an interesting human being and of discovering and developing the life of this character from the screenplay. They want to see how you would handle the role if it were yours today.
What would you bring to this role that no one else could or did bring? Ideally, that's what your audition reveals. Tall, short, dark-skinned, light-skinned, young or old, high-pitched voice, low-pitched voice—some aspects of being are beyond transformation. But what's interesting about you on film is not just your appearance; it's also the information that your life has written into your body, which emerges from your crafting while you're performing. Audiences like to watch the combination of you and your crafting.
My definition of acting is being human in a human circumstance. When you begin to implement the techniques you'll read about in this book, you'll actually relax, be natural, and discover more interesting human behavior in front of the camera. After all, you are a human being already. You don't have far to go! You're halfway to getting this job already. You just have to build an imaginative bridge between your own life and the life of the character you're being asked to portray.
If you haven't studied acting yet, it is essential to find a teacher who can introduce you to the basic tools of acting. There are many methods and teachers to choose from; some are similar, some are not, but all lead to being capable on command of doing what an ordinary child of four instinctually does all day long, which is to play, daydream, and express what it would be like to be this or that person (or tree, dog, cloud, banana, chimpanzee, extra-terrestrial… and so on). For twenty years, I lived in New York and taught auditioning based upon The Meisner Technique, as a means for actors to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Following a move to Los Angeles, I developed the advanced approach to on-camera auditioning you are holding in your hands right now.
This book does not offer basic instruction in acting. It is geared towards aspiring professional actors who have studied and are ready to audition because they feel prepared to deliver the goods on a film set or television sound stage. That being said, I believe in actors receiving training no matter how talented they are. If they want to compete, they must attend technique and scene study classes in order to hone and refresh their skills. For the same reason, even longtime professionals seek advice from coaches. Needing expert coaching is as true for actors as it is for athletes and businesspeople. Even after actors finish their initial training, they need to continuously practice and refine their skills; anything they can do to stand out as special helps them.
If you keep working on your craft persistently, you will be in the position to out-craft the best buddy of the director or the producer's girlfriend when your shot at a role comes. You'll also be ready to out-craft well-known, highly-skilled performers. For certain, you'll be able to level the playing field. That's the real point of all this.
The Camera Knows
Acting for the camera is different than stage acting. For one thing, it is much more intimate, which means the size of a performance has to be scaled for a narrower perspective. The frame of a camera in an audition setting is a picture frame that captures your head, arms, and upper torso. There is no need to shout or gesture broadly to be seen or heard by someone sitting yards away, as they would be seated in the back of a theatre. Furthermore, the camera is a neutral observer. It records everything it sees and censors nothing. It reveals knowledge. If you are ambivalent or uncertain about the meaning of a line you're saying, or if you haven't made clear decisions about what you want, the stakes and urgency, and your relationship with the person you're speaking to, the camera shows it. It's an X-ray, if you will, that reveals only what is there.
In an on-camera audition, the text an actor works with is the script of a short scene (usually only a few pages long), which is drawn from the screenplay and commonly referred to as the sides. Sometimes you get multiple scenes. The actor's first task before every performance—and an audition should definitely be viewed as a performance—is finding the human being, and the circumstance that the human being finds him or herself in, within the text.
An actor's second task before a performance is to do everything possible to fuse him or herself and the character, so the performance is the actor living the life of the character truthfully. (For our purposes here, the word "actor" refers to males and females alike.)
Working in film or television is a lot like auditioning in that you sit around on the set or in your trailer for hours and then, suddenly, they want you now! At that moment, you're expected to be ready to work. No one cares how late you were out the night before. No one cares if you're concerned about something going on at home. You've got to come out and do your two or more takes, possibly from various angles. You must be ready the minute the camera turns on. And if the director or a leading actor wants to do twenty takes of the same scene, you have to be able to deliver essentially the same performance consistently twenty times. You have to be prepared.
My goal is to help you develop your audition skills to the highest possible level by giving you all the tools you need for crafting successfully, pulling massive amounts of information from the sides very quickly, and delivering a performance even under pressure.
You Just Need the Right Tools
I now live and run an acting studio in Los Angeles and teach in New York one weekend each month. Several years ago, when I was still based in New York City full time, I owned a cabin in the woods. One weekend, a friend came up to visit. We were hanging out fishing and drinking beers for a while. Then I took him to the backyard to show him my new tool shed. By that point, I needed two sheds to hold my tools for gardening and fixing things around the place. When the first shed got full, I went out and bought the second one. I thought it was cool. My friend was duly impressed. "Holy cow, Tim, you sure have a lot of tools!" he exclaimed. But then he shook his head from side to side in dismay and told me, "You know, I don't buy tools. It's kind of a principle with me."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, if you buy tools, you have to use them," he said, laughing.
The reason I'm telling you this story is not to point out that my friend was lazy (although he might have been). He just didn't share my passion for puttering. He wasn't interested in planting a garden and he didn't have a leaky roof to repair. He had no ambitions that would require him to own tools, and he liked it that way.
The fact that you are reading this book tells me two things about you that would distinguish you from my friend. First, you have an ambition of some kind… as an actor. Second, you're not yet getting the results you want from your auditions and you are seeking guidance. It's possible that you're being seen, but not being called back. Or you're being called back, but you're not getting cast. It's clear you take your career seriously because you're actively looking for tools, inspiration, and guidance that can change your results and help you live out your dreams of being a professional actor.
In Audition for Your Career, Not the Job, I am offering you the equivalent of a full shed of tools for acting on camera. But it is important for you to understand that these tools won't work for you—they simply won't help you to achieve your desired results—unless you "buy" into these ideas and then use them. If you are willing to apply these tools to the craft of acting and practice them regularly (meaning on a near-daily basis), you'll soon get so good at integrating them into your audition performances that not only will the quality of your work improve, you will also be able to apply them and adjust your performance quickly and effectively on the spot or when you're under pressure. This will become so ingrained in you that it will feel like second nature.
Once you can produce high-quality acting on the spur of the moment (as is always necessary in an audition setting) you can be confident that you will capture the attention of casting directors, directors, and producers. You may not get every job you go after, but you'll get some jobs. When the right part for you comes along, the people who have seen your work will give you a shot at winning the role. That's why I encourage you to shift the focus away from getting a job to inhabiting the character, this human being, as fully as possible. Do it for yourself. Aim for producing superb performances over and over again. It's important to recognize that this will require patience and practice.
According to social commentator Malcolm Gladwell, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."ref_2 In his book The Tipping Point (Back Bay Books, 2002), he explains how "contagiousness" occurs among groups of people. You want your career to be like an epidemic, for it to hit a tipping point where suddenly you're the commodity in high demand and you are prepared to capitalize on the moment of opportunity. That can occur by showing up and doing good work every time. Even if you don't get the first, second, or third job you audition for, be consistent and solid. The quality of your work will be influential in bringing you back to the casting directors' attention. Casting directors understand quality when they see it. And their role in the production process is to bring the right actors to the attention of producers and directors.
Always give "good audition."
Little things make a big difference is the message of Gladwell's book, and I've found that principle to be true for auditions. Making clear and specific choices on every single line of a scene about every little thing underlying your character's human behavior adds up. Five minutes of quality work in an audition setting can lead to a lifetime of opportunity for a professional film, television, and stage actor.
How this Book Is Organized
Over the years, I invented a way of reading sides from a screenplay or play (dialogue from your potential role) that enables you to suck up all the information you need in order to craft an audition performance in one reading. So you can do it quickly. If you have four pages of dialogue and only fifteen minutes to prepare your role, with these techniques you could spend a minute per page sucking up information, and then spend the other ten minutes crafting the piece so that you would become the character inside the scene instead of remaining a member of the audience. It is essential that you inhabit the human being you're portraying during the audition as fully as possible. For after all, this is a clear indication of what you would be like to work with on a set.
Among other things, being fully prepared means you have the ability to respond to a director's adjustments on the spur of the moment in an audition without losing your way through the material. You have legs to stand on, which gives you freedom to be human. I've seen unknown actors cast if a director fought for them to get the job. It happens.
audition for Your Career, Not the Job is organized in two main parts. Part One, "Sherlock Holmesing the Text®," teaches my process for how to quickly grab information from the sides. This is something that can only be done with a script in hand. To be a successful actor, you must be a good detective. There are three essential tools that a good detective has, which a good actor also possesses: curiosity, intuition, and deductive reasoning. In the chapters of Part One, we'll consider how these three tools can help you be successful in various phases of the process of rapid script analysis.
Part Two, "Crafting Your Butt Off," teaches you how to draw forth a character from your own limitless imagination. Some of the work of crafting can only be done with particular sides in hand. Some really should be done on a daily basis, because it will benefit you in more than one audition. Being fully prepared to audition to please yourself is not something that most actors are capable of doing, or comfortable doing, on the spur of the moment. The acting skills most actors need can only be developed through years of ongoing self-exploration and play, through repetition, relaxation, and reflection.
In order to be well prepared for an audition, having the ability both to deductively reason your way through the script and to craft your role from the sides is necessary.
Have I Piqued Your Interest Yet?
During the past twenty-five-plus years, I have personally coached over thirty-five thousand auditions. Approximately 70 percent of my current students book the auditions that they bring into my classes to prepare at the Tim Phillips Studios (visit us on the Web at TimPhillipsStudio.com) in Los Angeles and New York City. You could say, therefore, that the steps described in this book produce reliable results. It has been the experience of the thousands of students and actors I coach individually that their careers begin to heat up or explode after they begin working in the manner I teach. Casting directors start bringing these actors in for more auditions, they are called back more frequently for second- and third-round auditions, and producers and directors begin to hire them regularly. The level of their achievement skyrockets.
The same can happen for you.
So, my promise to you is this: If you follow my advice in this book, as it is written—including practicing the exercises—this book will positively change your on-camera auditions by teaching you skills that improve your ability to read and interpret the sides quickly, helping you to trust your instincts and make strong, bold, specific acting choices, and setting you up for an active and profitable career.
Does that sound like something that would interest you?
If so, read on. Let's explore how you can audition for your career, not the job.
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Sherlock Holmesing the Text®
Sanford Meisner's definition of acting on stage:
"Living truthfully within a given set of imaginary circumstances."
Tim Phillip's definition of acting for the camera:
"Being human in human circumstances."
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One of the reasons this book exists is to make auditioning fun. It is possible to maintain or regain the enthusiasm that inspired you to act and drew you into the profession in the first place. The methods in this book are for professional actors who are dedicated to enjoying their work, even if that work is five minutes that occur during an audition.
As an actor, you rely upon producers of films and television programs for your livelihood. There's a definite sense that they have power and you do not. But if you get caught up in this kind of thinking and the politics of the profession, if you perceive yourself as an outsider trying to break in, this can make you feel tense and resentful, and interfere with your self-expression. It's necessary to understand the traps of certain mindsets, and take control of your life by being in charge of your thought processes.
So part of your task as an actor is making your job fun. After all, isn't that the real reason you started acting in the first place? Not because you thought you would make money at it, not for retirement benefits, not for job security? If those things were more important to you than the creative exploration of your psychological makeup and telling stories that have the power to move people to laughter and tears, it's likely you would go and get a steady job (a "real" job?) in a different profession. Having fun as an actor means you impact people's lives in a meaningful way, starting with your own.
This book is not really for beginning actors, except perhaps in an aspirational way, because if you're a complete novice then you still need to go out and learn foundational skills, such as The Meisner Technique, in order for the advice in this book to be truly useful to you. I'm not going to stop and teach you how to generate a feeling, do inner parallels, or break scenes into actionable beats. All I'm going to do is tell you when these things are needed. It's your job to bring your skills and imagination to the work.
Everything begins with how you approach your work. This book teaches an approach to preparing for auditions on camera, which are different than auditions for the stage. For one thing, on stage you have to be bigger than life so that your thoughts and feelings can be read by individuals who are seated far away in the back of the room. On stage people are watching actions. On camera they're watching thoughts. Yes, thoughts and behavior need to be authentic on stage, however there are specific techniques for vocal projection and movement through the three-dimensional space of a theatre that are distinct. Film acting is more intimate. It can be like standing in a phone booth with your scene partner pressed against you while having a camera shoved up your nose. You don't have to project your voice because the microphone can hear a whisper. And every subtle, fleeting thought you have that flickers behind your eyes is captured precisely.
The camera never flinches. It never lies. It reveals knowledge.
The reality of the on-camera audition room is that you won't be moving around much. You'll sit in a chair across from an off-screen reader (sometimes an actor, but just as often a casting director or an assistant) with a digital camera aimed at you. The camera operator will set the frame of the shot medium-close on your head and upper torso. If you're thinking, I hope I look good. Oh no, what's my next line? the camera will record those ideas, which relate to your circumstances, rather than the character's thoughts about the imaginary situation in which you're supposed to be immersed.
My goal is to teach you how to do homework on the meaning of the script so that you always have sufficient knowledge behind your eyes to be engaging on film and make a durable impression. We'll discuss how to become better at preparing a performance on the turn of a dime. This is a method that you can practice and, over time, master.
Make the Commitment to Master Your Craft
Remember, although acting is fun, rehearsing sometimes feels hard. Even so, you must rehearse if you want to move from the D-list to the C-list, from the C-list to the B-list, and possibly even make it to the A-list. For actors, talent is the ability to move into an imaginary world quickly and with relatively little effort. You are either born with this talent or you are not. Those of us who aren't as naturally gifted learn to craft our roles so we may compete with more talented actors. Talent of any degree can be enhanced with crafting. Crafting, which takes place during the rehearsal process, levels the playing field. Of course, crafting helps even the best actors make specific, appropriate choices.
Take a lesson from Larry Bird, the Hall of Fame basketball player for the Boston Celtics, who ESPN ranks as one of the fifty greatest athletes of the twentieth century. Bird was at the peak of his game in the '80s at the same time that Magic Johnson played for the Los Angeles Lakers. Johnson had a natural talent. Bird had to work for it. He would do free throws on his own for two hours before and after team practices. His commitment to developing his talent made him a competitor to be reckoned with. I want you to be as disciplined in practicing your skills so you're ready to play the game.
There isn't a miraculous potion you can take to be a good actor. It takes time and commitment to master the craft. But the tools do work if you practice them diligently. You may not want to believe it, but even the actors you most admire craft their butts off so that their talent will be there for them when they need it. They don't walk on set and wing it. Their crafting has to be there already. One of the best actors of our age, Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, Remains of the Day), for example, has an extremely thorough way of working. He reportedly reads the scripts of the films he does 250 times. During those readings, he finds the life in what he is saying and doing. He doesn't supply it; he discovers it in the script. Then, he crafts.
Before you can do what Hopkins does that gets him superb results, you will have to learn how to read a script properly.
"I know how to read!" you may protest.
No, you don't—at least not the way I'm talking about. You probably did as a child, but if you're like the thousands of film and television actors I've coached and taught over the years, you usually read for results rather than for the absorption of information. Few of us, as adults with busy lives, give ourselves permission and time to read, wonder, and daydream like little kids. Instead, we shoot for results and we're in a big hurry to attain those results immediately. Now I'm asking you to become more sponge like.
Pay attention. There is a risk in working the way I'm suggesting. To succeed as an actor in film and television, you have to be willing to risk being the world's most boring, do-nothing actor. The camera doesn't see "acting." It sees knowledge. You have to be willing to trust that the camera will see what you know after reading the script. And you have to read the script in a certain way if you want to know anything that's actable.
Becoming a Good Detective
Emmy Award-winning actor Richard Schiff, a former student of mine whom I have also coached on occasion, called me up about twelve years ago when he was working on a project with Al Pacino. This was before Richard was cast in The West Wing television series, in the role of Toby Ziegler for which he won his Emmy. After a table reading, he told me, "Now I understand what you meant! Pacino doesn't supply anything," meaning that Pacino did nothing on a line during that early group reading (except to say the words out loud) until he found a logical reason to do it. By the time that film was made, I'm sure Pacino had made plenty of super-specific choices. He just didn't push ahead of himself to get to some preconceived results. He was willing to thoroughly read and analyze the script before crafting his performance.