The Voiceover Actor Road Map The Working Actor Road Map Classes and Coaching Resources Free Masterclass Podcast Peter's Story Login Sign up for our Mailing List

The Acting Business Boot Camp Podcast

Episode 122: Interview w/ CD Mary Egan-Callahan

business tips Apr 14, 2021

How does a casting director get hired?

By reputation. Selling themselves and working with them and getting rehired.

How does the process work?

Ad agency hires the director

They will send scripts, usage, when it’s shooting, the boards, and conflicts, character breakdowns.

 

CD sends them out to agents-- to their favorite agents (about 10).

Agents send a list with pictures and CDs send back a list of who they want to see/ self-tape.

CDs send the auditions to the ad agency and the director.

Ad agency and directors send back a list of callbacks.

The client decides who gets the role.


Commercials are 50% unions 50% nonunion

Qualities of actors you love to have in the room:

  • Show up on time
  • Have other lives outside of acting
  • Put the work in to get to know you as well

Mistakes actors make in callbacks: They go into the callback putting too much pressure on themselves.

“You don’t go in asking for the job, you go in the room doing the job.”

Go in knowing...

Listen Now

Episode 121: Life Coaching for the Actor

core work Apr 07, 2021

Sign up for the Free Webinar, The Three Pillars to a Successful Acting Career, also known as, How to Become a Working Actor Without Breaking Your Bank and Wasting Your Time, HERE

What is Life Coaching?

  • One on One Support System
  • Accountability
  • NOT Therapy
  • Help you move your life closer to the version you want to be
  • Goal Setting

What are your ultimate goals?

Then we start to work on the action steps?

When they don’t get done, what is getting in your way?

“Don’t ever underestimate how good you have to be.”

The Importance of Core Work

"For Coaching work to be successful, it has to be nuanced."

Goals: What are you doing to achieve this goal?

“Anxiety and fear come into the room because they are there to serve us and protect us.”

“Choose your hard.”

Choose the hard that serves you and your end goals.

Tool: Ask yourself, “What’s happening now?”

Fight, flight, or fawn— Show up in auditions

Know yourself and...

Listen Now

Episode 120: Limiting Beliefs and Empowering Questions

core work Mar 31, 2021

We are each the product of our own belief system

Carl Jung, “Man is so imprisoned in his type of thinking that he is simply incapable of fully understanding another standpoint.”

Warranty, “if you don’t like the one you have, you can return it for one that is more preferable.”

You can change the beliefs that created your reality.

Limiting Belief: Something you accept about life, about yourself, about your world and the people in it that limits you in some way.

Curt Carlson, “Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take your eye off the target.”

The thing that gets in the way: all the bullshit in the industry that has actors going in too many directions.

Big T Truth vs little t truth:

  • The Bit T Truth: Who you really are, all the best aspects of you.
  • The little t truth: the truth you think you are, or ego’s truth.

Write down 3 Limiting Beliefs about you or your acting career.

Ask yourself these Empowering Questions:

  1. ...
Listen Now

Episode 119: Intimacy on the Set w/ Amy Northup

core work Mar 24, 2021

Get the FREE PDF of 8 Questions To Ask Before Doing an Intimate Scene by clicking HERE!

Intimacy Coordinators:

  • Act as an advocate and a liaison between actors and other parties, directors producers.
  • Help co create choreography within the boundaries of all parties involved in a scene
  • Is safe and repeatable.

Actors are trained to say yes, and consent is not engrained. Our job is to be a cocreator, a colleague and peer.

Clarification is not accusation.

The mitigation of power dynamics.

  • what makes it hard to ask clarifying questions?
  • Regulating the nervous system
  • Intimacy Coordinators take the pressure off the actor by being their advocate

Somatic Regulation: How your nervous system talks to you. How we regulate or disregulate and how we engage in behaviors, reactions, responses based on past traumas, overwhelm, stress, or sleep.

The reactions are often from a disregulated nervous system and coming back into regulation and body can be very powerful.

How Amy helps get actors...

Listen Now

Episode 118: Keep Yourself Sharp! Interview with Katie Flahive

acting training Mar 17, 2021

About Katie:

Katie matriculated from the Theater School at DePaul University with a BFA in Acting. She has lived and worked in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. She is an accomplished actor and singer working in theater TV, film, animation, audio books and commercials. Katie is also a company member of The Actors Center in NYC https://theactorscenter.org.

Katie recurs on the Hulu series The Looming Tower and the upcoming seventh season of Venture Brothers on Adult Swim. Her other recurring and guest role appearances include Law & Order: SVU, Chicago P.D, Glow, The Affair, Nurse Jackie Feed the Beast and Blue Bloods.

On stage, Flahive performed in Fidelis at the Public Theatre. She has also been seen on stage at Steppenwolf, Northlight Theater, Atlantic, Griffin Theater Company, Victory Gardens/Remy Bumpo and Theater on the Lake, among others.

As a teacher, Katie has taught at NYU (Atlantic Theater Company) (Stonestreet Studios) and guest...

Listen Now

Episode 117: I Am Fear

core work Mar 10, 2021

I AM FEAR by Lou Tice

I am Fear. I am the menace that lurks in the paths of 
Life, never visible to the eye but sharply felt in the heart. 
I am the father of despair, the brother of procrastination,
The enemy of progress, the tool of tyranny.

Born of ignorance and nursed in misguided thought,
I have darkened more hopes, stifled more ambitions, 
Shattered more ideals and prevented more 
Accomplishments than history could record.

Like the changing chameleon, I assume many disguises.
I masquerade as caution. I am sometimes known as
Doubt or worry. But whatever I am called, I am still 
Fear, the obstacle of achievement.

I know no master but one; is name is Understanding.
I have no power but what the human mind gives me,
And I vanish completely when the light of understanding
Reveals facts as they really are, for 
I am really nothing.

--------------------

Awareness, acceptance, and action.

Where do you feel fear?

When do I use fear for healthy reasons, and when do I...

Listen Now

Episode 116: An Interview with Robert Creighton

acting training Mar 03, 2021

 

About Robert:

Robert is currently starring as Weselton in Disney’s FROZEN. Other Broadway credits include: THE LION KING (Timon), THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (Durdles), ANYTHING GOES (Purser/Moonface), CHICAGO (Amos), THE LITTLE MERMAID (Chef Louis), CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, and JACKIE MASON’S LAUGHING ROOM ONLY.  He was co-author and star of the hit Off-Broadway musical CAGNEY which ran at the Westside Theatre, NYC for over 500 performances. For that role he won the Fred Astaire Award for Outstanding Male Dancer and was nominated for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best Lead Actor in a Musical.  Last season he was a recurring guest star on the CBS series The Good Fight. Other guest-starring roles include Elementary (CBS), Law & Order (NBC), The Family (ABC), and Life on Mars (ABC). For his cabaret “Ain’t We Got Fun!” he won NYC’s prestigious Bistro Award for Outstanding Entertainer. His debut album ...

Listen Now

Episode 115: The Notebook Every Working Actor Needs

business tips Feb 24, 2021

The Three Pillars

  1. The Core Work
  2. The Quality of your acting Training
  3. The Language of the Agents and the Casting Directors

Your Audition/ Meeting Notebook

Get a little notebook!

  • Date
  • What was the Audition/Meeting for?
  • What was the Type of Audition? (OC, Industrial, Print)
  • Who was the Casting Office? Specific Casting Director?
  • What Material did you do? (Script, take a picture)
  • What did you wear? Hair? Facial Hair? Make Up?
  • Where was I emotionally?
  • What did I do well?
  • What is my intention for my next audition?
  • Additional notes

Your follow up list

 

Listen Now

Episode 114: How to Get the Most out of Your Acting Class with Scott Freeman

acting training Feb 17, 2021

 About Scott:

For the past twenty-five years, Scott Freeman has taught at many of the nation's premiere actor training programs and is recognized as one of the leading acting teachers in the country. Mr. Freeman was a member of the founding faculty of The Actors Center in New York City, where he taught throughout the eleven years of its existence. 

In addition, he enjoyed a long association with The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco as a core faculty member of its MFA program and a member of its acting company. He also served as the founding Head of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program. He has also taught at Rutgers University, NYU, SUNY Purchase, The Atlantic Theatre Company, and The Stella Adler School of Acting.

As an actor, theatres he has worked at include The  American Conservatory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, New York Theatre Workshop, Mark Taper Forum, The Magic Theatre, San Francisco Shakespeare,...

Listen Now

Episode 113: Your Life's (and Career's) Potential

core work Feb 10, 2021

“How you do one thing, is how you do all things”

We want to start making the uncomfortable, comfortable.

The Three As

  • Awareness
  • Acceptance
  • Action

Used as a tool to change so you can fulfill your life’s and career’s potentials.

Awareness: In order to change we must become aware of what needs to be changed

Acceptance: Once we are aware, we need to accept where we are at with it.

Action: You can’t take action without the first two.

Definitions:

An intention: the message you give yourself about what you are planning on doing. It is how much and what type of energy you have to put towards it.

Consciousness: You awareness of who you really are as opposed to the “you” that you believe you are or were taught that you are

3 Circles Intersecting that make up your Consciousness

  1. Who you are—Your Awareness
  2. What you do— The Acceptance
  3. How you do it— The Action

How do you describe yourself?

How do you move beyond them?

Ask These...

Listen Now
Close