7 Unbelievably Easy Ways to Prepare Before Your Next Audition For Powerful Results

In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you 7 unbelievably easy ways to prepare for your next audition for powerful results. When you finish watching this video, you are going to have a real game plan on knowing what to do before your next audition. And stick around to the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. It's about don't fall into this audition trap. And I know you're going to enjoy it. Okay, let's get started. Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus. As you can see, I'm not in my home office. I'm traveling right now, but I wanted to get this video to you. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget, click on the subscribe button, the notification bell. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up. That's really helpful. And what I do in all of my quick tip videos is share with you information that I've learned as a full-time actor for over 37 years. Also, I forgot I wanted to welcome you to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. Okay, so what we're going to be talking about today, there are going to be 7 tips. I'm going to be checking out my notes just to make sure I don't leave any out, but these tips are going to really help you in preparing for your next audition. So let me take a look here. Very first thing, if you are auditioning for a television show, make sure you watch the show. You've got to be really familiar with it. Is it a comedy? Is it a dramedy? Is it serious? Is it based in a certain time period? That will give you really helpful information as to ways to prepare. By the way, all this stuff, this is before you actually, you know, read the entire script. Number 2, hey, if you are auditioning for a feature film, well, you can't watch the film to get a better idea of, you know, the pacing of the show and things like that. But here is— here's something you can do. Find out the name of the director, and you can go to imdb.com, and I'll list it for you below, Internet Movie Database. And look up the director. And once you do that, you will see films that the director has directed. And you can go to YouTube and just find clips of these films. You will get a much better sense of their style. Once again, I always like to give out real examples. Many, many years ago, I had auditioned for an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Actually, it was I think it was called The Village. Gosh, it was so many years ago. And I was very familiar with his work, but knowing that everything was very still, nothing certainly is over the top, very internal, always having surprises, that gave me incredible information for my audition. And I did have a callback, read with M. Night Shyamalan there. Didn't get the role, but it was— That's great. Pretty cool, and I knew I did some right things in there. So watch the films so you can get a much better sense of the style of the director. Number 3, now is when you're going to start reading the script. You've got to read it a lot of times. Now typically, you know, if you are auditioning for a smaller role, supporting role in a film, you're working as a day player, they're not going to send you the entire script. But with the sides that you— and by the way, if by some chance you do get the entire script, make sure you read it as many times as possible. Oh, hey, by the way, I want to give you a heads up. You might be hearing some birds screaming in the background. There's a— I guess they're building a nest right outside my son's home office. And we're also taking care of their 2 pups along, and we brought our puppy along. So at some point, because they're very vocal, At some point you might hear a lot of screaming. They are— they like to watch the streets, and anytime somebody walks up and down the street, they go crazy. Or not my dog, but the other 2 do. Okay, I just wanted to give you a little bit of a heads up there. But you're going to read the script a lot of times. Don't just read your lines. Make sure you understand what is going on, because what I find is that quite often, especially for the smaller roles, my lines are not nearly as important as the other person's lines, the person I'm speaking to, because typically the other person has a much bigger role in this, and I learn so much more about my character by reading the other person's line. So don't be one of those actors who just reads their lines and that's it. Okay, number 4. Always think about— oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm getting this wrong. Hold on. Don't ever think— oh, got it. Okay, I couldn't read my own handwriting. So hey, don't make this mistake either. I work with lots of actors with mentoring. I do a lot of private mentoring, and sometimes, you know, they'll start off You know, I'm not really sure what the casting director is looking for. You know, I'm thinking about it a lot. I want to give them, you know, what, you know, I think they, they really want to see in this character. Get rid of that idea! It doesn't make any difference what they are thinking, what they are wanting. Look, this is your audition. This gives you the opportunity to play. This gives you the opportunity to be creative. To try out ideas. And the fact of the matter is, we will never know what they are thinking of. Sometimes they're not even thinking. Sometimes they just want to be hit with something that makes them go, oh, that's interesting. And look, here's the reality, because I've booked nearly 1,300 jobs so far, and so I've had a lot of experience with this stuff. And If you physically look right for the part, then you're in there. Then at least you know you are going to be considered. And then once you've passed that— and by the way, look, movie stars, nah, they don't necessarily have to look the part because people know that there are going to be lots of audience members who will fill theaters and watch the movies on streaming services Just because of their name. But for, you know, regular humans like us, you've got to physically fit the part. I know this might surprise you, but I have never been cast as the head of a motorcycle gang. I know that surprises a lot of people because I do have that pretty tough guy look. So the fact is, yes, there are some exceptions to the rule where there have been a couple of times where I've booked things against type, but there were also very specific reasons for that. And I'll save that for another video. But anyhow, you physically look right for the part, even if you give a read and even if they happen to have some concepts of the character, even if you take it in the wrong direction, in a direction that they're not thinking of, if you physically look right for the part and your audition is interesting, that should at least give you the opportunity to get a callback. And then they will give you more details and they can give you some notes as to perhaps what they are looking for more, and then you will have the opportunity to play again. So forget about trying to figure out what they are looking for. Have fun with it. You make decisions on your own. Okay, uh, number 5. Hey, let me just turn this thing down. I apologize. Oh, that's horrible. Okay, think about what does your character Want in this scene? What are you trying to get out of this scene? The other thing to think about is, is there somebody else in this scene that is preventing you or making it more difficult for you to obtain your goals? And that's something else to think about because look, here's the thing, when you're auditioning, they want to see, you know, whether it's the casting director or the director, they want to see actors who are thinking. They want to see actors who are making choices, who are making Interesting decisions might not be the one that they are necessarily going after, but as long as it's interesting and you do it in a convincing way, that should at least get you the callback. So I— and I know I've said this, you know, 30 times already— forget about what they're thinking. This is your time to enjoy yourself. You have absolutely no control. You know, we actors, we have no control over who gets booked for the role. We have full control over our audition. As a matter of fact, here, I'll just give you an example. I just auditioned for a congressman 10 minutes ago, and this congressman was questioning somebody, and I decided— there were many different ways of doing it. I decided that for my character, I don't believe this guy. I'm angry with this guy, and I wasn't like screaming at him, but I showed very clearly that I was not believing anything that he said. To me, he seemed like he was a liar, and in a pretty straightforward way, I'd let him know that. Now, is that what they look— looking for? I don't know, but it was fun. It was interesting. I enjoyed it, and I thought it made sense to me. Okay, let's go to number 6. Oh, actually, number 6 was what is preventing you from making this thing happen, whatever you're trying to do. And this, the 7th thing, and I've mentioned this a couple of times as well, look, just play with it. Have fun. Look, you know, it might be a Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock and you are getting a chance to play. It's enjoyable. It's fun. You're in character for a couple of minutes here. And that's, you know, to me, that's what the whole enjoyment of auditioning is all about. I have full control. I can do anything that I want. And look, when I say you can do anything you want, certainly you're not going to do something that is just crazy, that doesn't make any sense for this character. So it has to fit the character in some way, but you don't have to play it the way that it looks. Just like, for instance, sometimes you will see grammatical notations written into the sides. Maybe there's a question mark, maybe there's an exclamation point, maybe there's a little side note that says He's unhappy about this, or he's thrilled about that. Personally, I don't take those things very seriously. Those are writer's notes. That's what they are thinking. If it makes sense to me, sure, I'll do it. But quite often there might be something that ends with a question mark. I don't say it as a question. I make it as a statement because that's what feels right to me. So So those are the 7 things that you can do to help prepare and make your audition a powerful one. Just remember, have fun with it and enjoy it. And if you have any preparation suggestions, please leave it in the comment below so we can all learn from each other. And that's the whole point of having this channel. Actors helping each other, sharing information. We're not being competitive with anybody. There is no competition. I truly— and I truly believe that if the role is right for me, I'll get it. If the role is not right for me, I'm not getting it. So please don't, don't, don't compare yourself to other people, compete, hold information inside because you're afraid somebody Might do a better audition than you because you gave them different— so please leave a comment, share audition preparation tips that you find helpful. That would be wonderful. Once again, if you haven't done this yet, click the subscribe button, the notification bell, so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. And if you, if you do like it, please give it a thumbs up. That's very helpful. And most importantly, Share this link with all of your, uh, acting friends so we can build a bigger community of people helping each other. To watch that bonus video of audition traps to avoid, just use the link above. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.