The Acting Business Boot Camp Podcast

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Malissa’s Motto, “One foot in front of the other.”

In this episode Malissa and I talk about:

Why you MUST invest in a self-tape setup.

What it means to be a bicoastal manager.

What she looks for when looking for new talent.

What a pitch deck is for actors looking for representation.

The importance of following up.

Your resume and skills should be honest.

Qualities of her favorite clients:

• Wow factor in self tapes
• Paying attention to instructions
• Positive energy
• Gratitude
• Follow directions

What Melissa wants actors to know but doesn’t have time to tell them:

• Know you as the actor has a business and work side to it
• Make the chart
• Know who you saw and what they called you in for
• Send thank you’s to casting directors after an audition
• Coaching and classes
• Keeping your instrument tuned

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The Language of the Agents and the Casting Director is spoken in: 

1. Your Resume
2. Your Pictures
   • Telling agents and Casting Directors you are not green.
3. Have a good follow-up, how, when and what you say in your follow-up.
4. Your Demo Reel, how it’s edited, where is shown, what you put on it. 
5. Website— always put your direct contact info, even if you have an agent.

The outline of a resume: If you put so much stuff on it that it’s hard to read, it’s going to get deleted or discarded and you don’t want that!

The Letterhead:

• Your name
• Your union affiliation
• Cell Phone
• Email
• Website
• Social Media Handles

Your stats:

• Hair and the eyes
• Your height and weight (or size)
• Vocal Range (if you are a singer)

The Film Section

• 3 columns only
• Any info you want me to know with an asterisk (ie: *scene with Tracy Morgan)
• The role you played
• Production Company
• Director’s name underneath that

Television/ New Media

• 3 Columns
• Nam
...

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 you got the call...

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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 know your triggers.

Rituals: What are the things that activat...

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. How True is that belief?
2. Where did y
...

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...

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 lecturer at Juilliard. Currently, sh...

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 use fear for unhealthy rea...

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 Ain’t We Got Fun! was released in 2012 on the LML music label.

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