I have been reading your column solidly for the past week — ever since I discovered it. It’s fabulous! I just wish I had known about it long ago. I am now caught up to date and I feel like there is so much I have learned about the business from you. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Just to give you a little background about me, so that you know where I am coming from: I’m not really that new to the business, but I have finally gotten serious about my acting career after getting stalled for a few years. I have been slowly plugging away for the past nine years, but I got a cushy stand-in job on a sitcom that allowed me to let my career take a back seat.
During the eight-year run of the show, I had the best experience possible. I was able to learn from, arguably, the best director in television and some of the most talented actors in the business. Every week on the show was an audition; we would play all of the parts — large and small — until the “actors” were brought in. The most fun was playing against type; an opportunity actors rarely get (especially when you are a young white woman playing an 80 year old Asian man or some part like that).
Fortunately, I was able to snag the parts for myself several times when I actually fit the roles. So between the gainful employment, resumé-building, and the amazing learning experience, this show was a good fit for me. However, it did allow me to become complacent and now, having been forced out into the real world, I am ready to get serious.
So, after reading and following a lot of your advice (I have joined IMDbPro, ActorsAccess, NowCasting, SAGFoundation, etc.), I have a few questions. But, I’ll only ask you my most pressing one.
As a casting director, how do you feel about completely blind submissions? By that, I mean: I subscribe to Showfax and enjoy reading the sides when the new ones are posted. What is the etiquette on sending out a headshot and resumé to the CD when you fit the part in the sides? I know that the usual protocol is to send through a breakdown service, but most of these parts are not available in the breakdowns for actors without agents.
Thank you in advance for your reply. I know how busy you are and I really appreciate all that you have already done for working actors out there.
First, thank you! I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying getting caught up on my column. About once a week, I’ll get an email from an actor who didn’t know my column existed and then stumbled upon it somehow. I’m always curious as to how actors find the column… and I love knowing that you try to go back and read all of the archived articles. That rocks! Anyway, thank you for the kind note. I’m glad my words have been helpful to you as an actor.
Next, I included your introduction because I found your description of life as a long-term stand-in fascinating and thought my readers might too! What fun to get to “try on” so many different roles AND have such job security! Very cool stuff. Of course, the drawback to a job like that is the whole “golden handcuffs” thing: If your survival job is wonderful, you lose the drive to go out and get your “real” career going. The fact that you see your acting career as having “stalled” during the run of your show tells me you’ll probably get what I’m saying, here. When I came to Hollywood the FIRST time, I temped for a very high-end management firm in the music industry. Eventually, they hired me permanently, and, although they said I could leave anytime for an audition, eventually I never did. I was loving my amazingly trendy, high-paying job and acting just sort of fell away until the Northridge Earthquake hit and I packed it up and “moved home” until I could figure out what the heck I was going to do with my life.
It’s very easy to get lulled into a nice groove and not miss the dream that lured you out here to begin with. The fact that you continued to do some work as an actor as a part of your stand-in gig is very cool! You’ve probably kept your craft in shape and built on some wonderful relationships that will serve you as you pursue acting in a more focused way. (And the fact that you’ve been reading this column, getting all set with memberships at the SAG Foundation and Actors Access, etc., and reaching out with this question shows me you’re definitely ready to shift gears and start strong.)
Now, on to your question about doing blind submissions based on the sides posted at Showfax. By the time sides are up at Showfax, decisions as to which actors are going to be seen at auditions have already likely been made. Appointment calls roll out almost simultaneously with those uploads. So, while I think that perusing the sides in order to spot trends in casting (which offices cast which types of roles in which projects, for example) is very smart, I think in many cases a submission BASED on these sides may be too late. However, I know plenty of actors who do it anyway. They figure getting their face in front of a CD on an actively-casting project is never a bad idea, so they just do the submission and move on, unconcerned with the immediate results.
Actors who tend to do the best with this sort of approach actually do drop-offs to the casting offices on the day they see the material go out. They basically create “rounds” for themselves (or they team up with other actors to do this sort of thing every few days or so) and hit the offices that have drop-boxes for exactly this purpose, hoping their headshots will cross the right desk at the right time (exactly when the CD needs that actor’s type).
Of course, these actors are also very smart about knowing how to determine the size of each role they’re seeing in the sides, which offices are most drop-off-friendly, and what the timeline for casting various roles might be. It takes a lot of time, research, and trial-and-error to keep up with these elements, but it can make a big difference on the level of success you find in doing these types of submissions. In fact, here’s a thread over at the Showfax message board in which working actors talk about using “nontraditional” ways of finding out what’s casting and hustling to get in front of the decision-makers.
A final thought on the whole “How do CDs feel about blind submissions” thing is this: Every CD knows to expect unsolicited material. So, you’re not going to offend anyone by submitting on something you “weren’t supposed to know about.” If the role were so top secret that the CD didn’t want ANY actor beyond the handful auditioning to discover it existed, sides wouldn’t be posted online. They’d be faxed directly to the actors themselves upon appointment (or held for release AT the appointment itself). So, submit when the role is right for you and then go on with your day. As long as you don’t expect any major rate of return on blind submissions, they’re certainly fine for you to do!
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000429.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.