Aaron Marcus shares four ways actors and models can help their agents book them more work: respond quickly to submissions, use a headshot that sells you, label audition files exactly as requested, and don't call asking for updates. He also mentions a discreet follow-up tactic of asking about auditions while discussing something else.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus and welcome to my YouTube channel and now becoming part of my acting and modeling family. Uh, I've been a full-time actor for over 30 years. Uh, perhaps you've seen my work on House of Cards. I had a recurring role, been on Mr. Robot, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, Law and Order: Criminal Intent. And, uh, for commercial print work, done everything from Molson Beer to AT&T, done tons of radio and TV commercials. And I just had a really interesting experience. I want to share it with you. These are 4 things that you can do to help your agent get you more work. I had someone contact me recently and they were looking for actors for, uh, some in-house industrial training films. And they asked me if I could help them find some people who I thought would be perfect for it. So here are 4 things that you can do to help your agent get you more work. Number 1, always respond to your agent as quickly as possible. There were a couple of people who responded to me a couple days after I reached out to them. Job was already booked, so they didn't even have a shot at it. 2, make sure your headshot is effective. And what I mean by that is it really shows who you are. It clearly sells you well. There were people I knew they could do the job. I sent in their headshots. Clients just didn't like the headshots. They weren't even considered. 3, make sure you label your auditions properly. If you were shooting auditions from home, which some of these people had to do, the client specifically requested how they wanted each audition labeled. Sometimes it can be, you know, first name underscore last name underscore role underscore agency. There can be a million different ways they want it done. There were some people, they liked the auditions, but they were so bothered by the fact that the people didn't follow directions, they They weren't being considered. And number 4, don't call your agent after the audition and say, hey, did I get the job? If you got the job, they would let you know. I had a number of people do that with me, and this was just a handful of people, and I was just imagining what it would be like for an agent who maybe submitted, you know, 15 people and they're constantly getting phone calls or emails. Hey, did I book the job? On a little bit of a side note, and hopefully agents aren't going to get upset by me telling you about this, here is something that I have done. Typically, I don't contact the agent, but if it's something I really want and I'm thinking about and I just want to know, can I, you know, just let it go? Sometimes I will call, you know, the agent or send an email and ask them about something else. And then, oh, hey, by the way, just wanted to find out, do you know, did they make decisions on that audition? That's just kind of a little bit of a sly way that I do get in there, but I do that rarely. So anyhow, those are 4 things that you can do to help your agent get you more work. Really quickly, you should definitely subscribe to this channel, and that way every time I create something new, you're going to get information. There's a notification button that you can click on as well, and that way you won't miss any new videos that I, that I place here. And to get more acting and modeling information, you can always go to my website, howtoactandmodel.com, as well as my Facebook page, facebook.com/howtomodel. It's a great way for us to communicate. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to try to answer them for you. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I hope this was helpful to you.
