Aaron Marcus, a veteran actor with over 40 years in the business, examines whether tracking audition-to-booking ratios actually helps actors. He argues the numbers can mislead because many factors beyond your performance determine whether you book a role.
I used to hear actors talk about this before auditioning in a casting director's office and even sometimes on sets, and they would be discussing their audition-to-booking ratio. How many auditions would they actually book? And some actors would talk about, oh, I book 1 out of 10 auditions, or this month I'm really hot, I'm booking at a 50% clip. I have to say I've always had real doubts when I would hear about this, but I understand why some actors find it really helpful to keep track of this. I just have a very different perspective. So in this week's quick tip video, I'm going to be sharing with you both perspectives. And watch it to the end so that way you will get a chance to hear both sides. And make a really intelligent decision for yourself as to whether you should be keeping statistics or if it's just meaningless. Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I've been a full-time actor for over 40 years. And, you know, the actors that I talk to who keep statistics, they say it gives them a little bit more control of their career. They feel like they have a better understanding of where they're at, and Here's my perspective. Now let me just, for full disclosure here, I've never been good with numbers. Math has never been my strong point, and I'm sure all of my math teachers will attest to that. But here's the thing, as I've been working in the industry for many, many years, I've learned that the numbers themselves Are just unreliable. And, and the reason why I say that is, let's say your agent, you know, submits a number of people for a specific role, and then maybe your agent decides that they want to submit you. You're not really right for this part, but you know what, it's different. You have a different kind of look. The agent thinks you're going to have a different take on this, and he or she just wants to add you to that just to give another perspective to the casting director. So you do the audition, and, you know, there's a very, very, very good chance you're not right for it and you're not going to be considered. So all of a sudden, now your numbers are really skewed. And the other thing too is Sometimes people make this connection with the auditioning not being good, that's why they didn't book the job, which is not a good place to be because there's so many factors that go into booking or not booking the job. Maybe your audition was phenomenal, they liked you a lot, but you're too tall or you're too short or you're not pretty enough or you're too handsome, your body is in too good a shape, it's not in good enough shape, who Who knows what the rationale is? And so what can also happen, you start having these self-doubts about your ability to act. So here's just an idea that I have. Look, if you want to keep track, try it for a little while, but I can tell you that the numbers can really be meaningless. And I've read articles and seen interviews with very, very successful successful actors who talk about their first 100 auditions, they booked nothing. And so if you're really taking those statistics to heart, you might give up. You might start thinking, well, apparently nobody thinks I'm any good. You know, the numbers just are horrible. I can't get any callbacks. So yeah, if it's going to make you feel better, keep statistics and just understand that it's not necessarily any statement at all about your abilities, about what you might be able to do in this industry. And so anyway, I hope that is helpful. The other thing too is, look, if you keep statistics for, you know, your audition to booking ratios, please Share it with us. Let us know. Hey, you can let us know the numbers. Do you find it really helpful? Are you finding that it's starting to make you feel worse about your abilities as an actor? Whatever it is, share it below so that way we can learn from you as well. I also just wanted to let you know, if you haven't done this yet, don't forget, if you find this helpful, subscribe, click the notification bell, give it a thumbs up. And also, uh, you can get onto my email list by going to my website, howtoactandmodel.com, and just scroll to the bottom, fill out the form. You'll be on my list, and I'm going to send you a great bonus video. It's the 6 Secrets to Mastering Home Auditions. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
