Aaron Marcus breaks down the two essentials before an audition: for TV, watch the show and match its tone; for film, study the director's previous work on IMDb and YouTube. He shares landing a callback with M. Night Shyamalan by understanding the director's subtle, internal style.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and here is your Acting and Modeling Weekly Letter. So here are the 2 probably— I don't know if I would say the most important, but really important things that you need to do whenever you get a phone call about auditioning for a film or a TV project. So let's start with TV. If you're auditioning for a show that's currently on TV, You've got to watch the show. You've got to be really familiar with the show. You need to know the characters of the show. You need to know the style of the show, the pacing of the show. And what I mean by that is there are some television shows where people talk very softly, very slowly. It's very deliberate. And there are some shows where people talk very, very quickly and it's rapid-paced and people are talking back and forth like this all the time. And you need to have that information because when you go in to do the audition, if you're reading it in an incorrect style, you're not going to be considered for the part. And if you are auditioning for a feature film, one of the questions that you have to ask your agent is, who is the director? And the reason why you need to know who the director is, is so that you can read, read about the director. You can also find out what films the director has directed. So you get a better sense of the type of film that person likes to work in. And what you can do is go to IMDb.com, Internet Movie Database, and just type in the director's name. And you will see a list of movies this person has been attached to. And just go to, you know, YouTube. You don't have to go out and rent every movie this person has done. You just go to YouTube, see clips, just so you get a sense. A really good example of this is— and this is a number of years ago— when I auditioned for a film that was directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan, who did The Sixth Sense and many other films. And I was very familiar with that style. And so when I did go in to read, I knew that everything was really very internal, nothing big, nothing over the top, very secretive. That was the style. And as it turns out, I did get a callback. And I had a chance to read with M. Night Shyamalan, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I didn't get the part, but that's what you want to do. So the 2 most important things: if it's a TV show, be very familiar with the show, watch a lot of episodes. And if it's a feature film, make sure you're familiar with the director's work. If you have any questions at all, please visit my facebook.com/howtomodel page. Post questions there. I'm building a great community of people throughout the world who are sharing information about the industry with each other. You can also go to howtomodel.com, and if you have more of a personal kind of question, simply email me at aaron@howtomodel.com. Have a safe and really fun 4th of July, and I look forward to talking with you again next week. I'm Aaron Marcus. Thank you, Aaron.
