Actor Aaron Marcus explains why not booking an audition is still valuable. Each audition is a deposit with a casting director that pays off later: he got a TV role recommended by a director who'd seen him repeatedly for smaller parts. Treat auditions as long-term relationship building, not just immediate bookings.
Hey, I'm working out of town, but I wanted to make sure I got this quick tip video, um, prepared for you. I know this is going to sound crazy, but not booking your last audition, it's still really great. And I know that sounds weird, but watch this video to the end and you're going to learn exactly what I mean. And also at the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. You're going to learn 2 special ways to slate for every Okay, let's get going. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center, where I take my experiences from nearly 1,300 bookings and share them with you here. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget, click the subscribe button, the notification bell, so you always know when I upload a new video. If you like the video, please Give it a thumbs up and share the link with your fellow actors. So here's what I mean. You do the audition, you don't book the job, and I know that feels bad. You know, everybody wants to book the job. And I'm not going to go into the whole rap that you might have heard before about, look, I really don't expect to get the booking from the audition. I really don't. I just want to have a good time. At the audition. So here's what I mean. When you fully understand that booking a job, it's really hard, and there's so many factors that go into getting it and not getting it. Here's another way to view doing your audition. Doing your audition is the absolutely best way to Introduce yourself to a new casting director, or giving a casting director another opportunity to see you perform, see your skills. This was a while ago, and I was offered the opportunity to audition for— they call them, you know, low-budget projects. It was a union project, but it was very, very low budget. And instead of making almost $1,100 a day, If I would have booked it, I would have made like around a little over $200 for the day. And so initially you might be thinking, well, why would you even take that on? It's insulting. You're used to getting a much higher fee. And by the way, those are union fees. For smaller independent films, who knows? You can get anything you want. But that's That's the basic fees that the union has negotiated. And by the way, for the low budget, ultra low budget, those things are flexible as well. It all depends on what kind of budget the company has that's putting it together. And so first of all, I don't have an ego in that sense of, well, you're expecting me to do a performance for a couple hundred dollars? I'm used to getting a lot more than that. That's not the way I think. Here's what I was thinking. I hadn't auditioned for this casting director for a while. It was an independent casting director, and I've read for her, but it was a long, long time ago. And look, you can send emails, which I don't necessarily recommend unless you already know, you know, the person. You could send things through the mail. You could send a hard copy of a headshot and resume and a short cover letter, you know, either introducing yourself or letting somebody know, you know, you're still around, what you've been up to, and things like that. But that's not going to be nearly as effective as actually being seen, whether it's in person or even if it's a home audition. Let them see you work, because when they see you perform, it gives them an opportunity to really understand what your skills are. And so I decided, yeah, I'm not going to— if I had booked it, I'm not going to make very much money on it, and I'm going to put a lot of time into it, but you know what? It's a great way for me to reintroduce myself to a casting director. And who knows? Yeah, now, you know, she's doing a very low-budgeted project, and, you know, maybe, maybe in 3 days she might get brought in to cast a major feature film, in which case hopefully she will have liked my audition and she'll think of me again. So Every time you get a chance to audition and read for a casting director, it's phenomenal whether you book the job or not. And I think when you slightly change the way you think about it, it makes the audition process much easier, and especially when you don't book the job. It's almost like making, you know, a small deposit at the bank, and your initial deposits, it's not going to add up to very much, but over a period of time, you know, that money will accrue, you know, a lot of interest. So the other thing too is, and this happened to me, and that's why I want to share it to you because I always like to give real-life experiences. There's a casting director, and I had worked with a number of times, and there was a project I auditioned quite a few times. Not, you know, I'm thinking like maybe 4 or 5 times for the project, never booked it. And I don't know exactly why. And I can tell you, it was a small role. I don't care. I just like to work, whether I have one word or a couple pages. I like to work. And I don't know if she felt sorry for me, she felt bad, maybe, you know, hey, I like this guy and I just haven't been able to find the perfect part for him. All of a sudden, I get a phone call from my agent saying, hey, you know that show you've been auditioning for? And I said, yeah. And he said, Well, guess what? They just offered you a role. I said, you mean to audition for? And he said, no, no, they want to book you. Are you available? And so here I booked a television show without having to audition for that particular role, and it was strictly because this agent was— I'm sorry, this casting director was familiar with my work. I'd auditioned for her a lot, hadn't booked anything for that show, but she knew I'd be perfect for it. So that's what I mean. You didn't book your last audition, so what? You know, I get it, you know, you wanted the job, but so what? You got a chance to show your acting skills to a casting director, and that can be invaluable to you down the road. So not if, but when that does happen and you don't book it, And I'm not saying don't feel bad. If you want to feel bad, you can feel bad, but just understand that it still could be really great. Hey, if you guys haven't done this yet, just a quick reminder, click the subscribe button, notification bell. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends. And also, I had promised I'm going to share a link to this video, and you can see it right up here. And the video is all about— 2 techniques for slating during an audition. If you're not 100% sure what slating is, it's a way to identify yourself. Typically, the casting director is going to ask you to slate. It could be anything from your name, could be your name and your height, could be your name, your height, your agent, what role you are reading for. It could be a whole lot of different things, but most of the time you will be asked to slate, and there are a couple of techniques. It's up to you which technique to use. I share both of them with you, and I also tell you which one I like to use and why. Hey, you know what? I'm going to tell you one little secret right now. A secret, little hint. Whenever I'm slating, if they do ask the actor to slate name and the character that you're reading for, here's something that most people do I never do. Used to. Don't do it anymore, and I'll tell you why. So let's say I'm reading for the role of Dr. Barnes. Most people would, you know, do, hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, I'm reading for the role of Dr. Barnes. That's what most people do. Here's what I do: hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, I'm Dr. Barnes. I'm not reading for the role of Dr. Barnes, I am that character. I'm the person they should hire for that. It's a very subtle thing. I like it. I think it's powerful. And so Feel free to use that yourself. Hey, if, if you have had any kind of really interesting audition experiences when you didn't book the job, please share them below so that way we can all learn from each other. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
