How to Get Cast in Training Films: Make Money & Change Lives

In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how you can help protect and heal the world by acting in training films. And watch this video to the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. It's all about— do you know what ADR means? If not, you've got to watch the video. All actors should know about this. Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. I love doing training films. They are also called industrial films or corporate films. They all mean the same thing, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of these. Sometimes they are very technical. I remember being flown to Great Lakes. It's outside of Chicago. It's a— it's— the Navy has a base there where they Work on diesel engines. I don't know anything about diesel engines, but I was able to teach people in a— no, I thought a pretty honest way of how to repair diesel engines. I've done videos about laying cables under the ocean. Don't know anything about that, but I can do it in a convincing way. Now there are also some of these videos that will really help this world. And hey, before I tell you about the first one, let me just mention, if you haven't done this yet, don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. If you like it, give it a thumbs up. That's actually very helpful. And share the link with your fellow actors. So I'm just gonna quickly tell you about a couple of really, really good and important training films that I've done that I truly believe will help the world. One of them was training doctors how to deal with patients, especially if they have to tell them about a cancer diagnosis. And this, this was really good. They flew in a cancer specialist from the Cleveland Clinic, which is a world-renowned hospital. And this guy was really very helpful in giving out information and helping me in the scenes. And basically it was making sure that you are able to share the news, which hopefully I will never hear, In a way that will be helpful to the patient. So that was just one quick example. Here's another one. This one was fascinating, and there's a little bit of a weird twist to it. Got hired to do a video at Fort Detrick. It's in Maryland. It's one of the— and I'm going back a number of years, so I'm assuming this is still true. It's one of the few places in the United States Where they research anthrax, which is a very, very deadly chemical. It's also one of the few places where if you get in contact with anthrax, they have a special room. They used to call it the slammer. And actually, I saw the room where you immediately go into, and they can actually save your life. And that's what this the video was all about. What do you do if there is a chemical attack, and what people should be doing? Now, on the side note, and nobody really knows it's never they've never come out with a definitive answer. Not that long after I did this video, somebody was mailing anthrax. To people through the mail, and people died from it. There were theories that it was somebody, a researcher from Fort Detrick. Never proven, so don't know, but it was just kind of weird. Let me tell you just about a couple others, just to give you a sense of how important these things can be. There was one Where I was a politician, and there were people from the local— my local PTA who had a meeting with me. And it was all about the proper way and the way not to approach a politician to get things done to help students have a better education? So they would come to me and then I would give them a lot of double talk. Great question, great idea. I really like it very much. And we'll see what we can do with that. And then they were being taught how to respond to that so that they actually could get what they needed and not allow the politician to just walk all over them. It was a really very beneficial type of video. Before I tell you about the last one, let me also just share with you— so there are union training films, there are non-union training films, and at least in it— well, I don't want to get into the union stuff, but let me just tell you really quickly, just so you have a basic idea. Look, if it's a non-union training corporate or industrial film There's no way of knowing what the minimum is that you're going to get paid because everything is negotiable when it's a non-union project. As a union member, I know that if I do a training film, the minimum that I'm going to get— and the numbers will change, so I'll just give you ballpark ideas depending on what category it is, and, and I'll explain that to you. If it's a Category 1, that means it's in-house, it's just being shown to employees. Once again, it's a training film, and so you get paid a little bit less. It's the, the last time we had negotiations for that, and once again, the numbers might have changed. You can always check the union website to find out. I want to say it was like close to $620 for an 8-hour day. If it's a Category 2, meaning it's open to the public. So let's say you go to a big box store and you see a video of somebody using a, I don't know, a certain kind of mop, a special mop. And it's, it's shown in a little video in the area where that product is being sold. That's a Category 2. That's over $700 for an 8-hour day. You could get booked for a half day, which is like $400-some. And then if you are, and I love doing this, if you are the on-camera spokesperson— or I'm sorry, on-camera narrator. What that means is you're not one of the actors in the scene, you are the narrator. And basically, instead of spending a tremendous amount of time having to memorize everything, everything's on a teleprompter. So yes, you have to be very, very familiar with it. You also have to be teleprompter proficient, you know how to read teleprompter, use teleprompters well. But there's nothing that you have to memorize. I try to memorize parts of it, especially the beginning, but that's like $1,100 for an 8-hour day when you are the on-camera narrator. So anyhow, I wanted to share that part of it with you. There was one other one that I also thought was really interesting that I wanted to share with you, and this one is all about— it was for the United States Navy. And I used to do a lot, a lot of government training films— CIA, TSA, DIA, let's see, Pentagon. I did a lot of these things. This one was for the United States Navy, and this was about suicide. And I remember being flown down to Florida That's where they were shooting it. And it was, if you see certain signs from fellow sailors, this is what you need to do. This is how to approach them, how to find other people to inform them, because this could be a really horrible situation. It was fascinating. And once again, on a side note, this was so unbelievable. While we were in Florida, because there were a few of us who were flown down, we got a chance to watch planes land on a ship. And it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Honestly, I don't know not only how the pilots do it, but how the sailors— The sailors. on the ship do it just because it's a very dangerous job. And they come in and there's a hook. It's crazy. There's a hook that they have at the end that's on a wire, and it just attaches as they're landing and attaches to this wire. And that's how— that's one of the ways that they stop. So when they're actually coming in— I know this has nothing Nothing to do with what— about what the video is about, but it just popped in my head. So as they're coming in to land on the ship— and once again, I don't know how they do that because ships, it's not like they're on land, and, you know, they might be rocking back and forth, especially if they're way out at sea with this stuff. And they actually have to, as they're coming in for a landing, they have to pick up speed. Which is kind of counterintuitive because you're trying to stop. You have to pick up speed just in case you can't land and you have to pull back up and do it again. So they're coming in really fast, and all of a sudden you just hear this hook thing connect. It's truly amazing. Anyhow, I wanted to share that with you. So I know most of the time for actors we're thinking of film, TV, commercials, independent film, student film, you might want to check out industrial films, corporate or training films. They can be really interesting, they can be very helpful, they can be lucrative, and it gives you an opportunity to act. And I like to spread myself open as much as possible and learn as much as I can. and try to get as much work as I can. I did promise I was going to have a bonus video for you. You can see it right up here, and it's all about ADR work, which is something all actors need to know about. I'm Aaron Marcus. Oh hey, one thing I forgot to mention. Hey, if you have ever had any experience doing a training film, please share it with us so we can learn from you. What did you do? What was it like? Did you like it? Have you done a bunch of them? So please share that with us so we can learn more about the industry from you. I am Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.