In this quick‑tip video, actor Aaron Marcus shares his recent experience landing an out‑of‑town booking for the Fox series Gotham and offers practical advice for actors who need to travel for auditions and shoots. He walks through the entire process—from receiving a call from his agent, using the HopStop app to navigate New York, preparing by watching the show, signing an NDA, and handling the unexpected change where his original character was cut but he was offered a non‑lined week‑long contract. Marcus explains his rapid decision to accept the role, then details the logistics of wardrobe fittings, transportation, and lodging. He recommends specific tools for travel and accommodation, such as HopStop, Airbnb, Hotels.com, and last‑minute hotel booking sites, emphasizing cost‑effectiveness and proximity to the set. The video concludes with a promise of a follow‑up tip and an invitation to ask questions via his Facebook page.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and first I just wanted to say I know it's been a long time since I've sent you some information. Things have been crazy for me for the past 3 weeks. I mean, good crazy. It's been everything from doing workshops in Florida, doing auditions, callbacks, jobs in Atlanta and in New York. So I've been traveling an awful lot. So as part of my quick tip series, And actually, this is going to be a multiple quick tip series. It's how to get out-of-town bookings. So let's get started. The first one I want to share with you is information about a booking that I just had for the new Fox television show Gotham. And it was an incredible experience. So let's start from the very beginning. I get a phone call from, from an agent. And travel up to New York to audition. Something that you should definitely know about if you're ever working in New York, and they probably have this in other cities as well, it's called HopStop. It's a great app that you can use so that you can easily find your way around the city. It will tell you about whether you're walking, whether you're taking buses, whether you're taking subways. And the audition itself was You know, pretty good distance from where I normally go for auditions. So anyhow, HopStop was really— it's a really, really good app for you. I also made sure that I watched the show. I wanted to be familiar with the style of the show. I wanted to be familiar with the characters of the show. And when I went in to read, To make a very long story short, and also I can't really give out any details about the show. Typically, all actors are asked to sign— it's called an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. You know, the studios don't want information about the shows going out. That's why if you are doing an online audition, you never, never, never post your audition online, you know, on YouTube or Facebook or any place where people could see the copy because they don't want that information going out. But to make a long story short, the part that I read for, the agent called me and said, well, I've got some good news and maybe not so good news for you. The good news is they really liked my audition and they booked me for the part. Then they called the agent back shortly afterwards And told him that they decided to cut that character out of the episode, but they liked my audition. They wanted to offer me something else. So the something else was, they said, look, um, we are going to offer you a week contract, uh, and there are no lines for this other character, and it's a more integral, uh, part of this particular episode. So the agent, he was great and said, Look, if you don't want to take it since there are no lines, that's fine. You can continue auditioning, you know, for you know for the show. So it was my decision as to whether I wanted to turn down the role because there were no lines or you know accept it and then understand that I won't have any lines. So it took me about three seconds to make that decision. I said, "Of course I want the show." You know, you just never know what's going to happen. So anyhow, I accepted it and. And had to go up there on a Monday for wardrobe fitting, and then we started shooting on Tuesday. And so that's why having information about how to get around the city is really very, very helpful. The wardrobe fitting is actually at their studios, which is in Brooklyn. And so once again, I had to— because all the people working on that show, they're all considered local hires. So it was my responsibility to cover transportation as well as hotels. And so another helpful app to have, Airbnb, in case you're thinking about, well, maybe you could stay at somebody's place. Quite often it's less expensive. You get an opportunity to meet local people there. I didn't choose to do that. There are other websites and apps that I use, hotels.com, but you can find a slew of like Last minute booking hotels and you will find discounts. That's what I wound up doing. I decided that I wanted to find a hotel that was near where I was working the following morning. Since I was shooting the first day in the city itself, I didn't want to stay in Brooklyn. Anyhow, every one of my Quick Tips series is always under 4 minutes. I wanted to get you started just to give you a little sense of what was going on and some of the really helpful apps and websites that you can use if you do get booked out of town. And I'll be shooting and sending you Quick Tips Series #2 for getting bookings out of town shortly. See ya. I'm Aaron Marcus. If you have any questions at all, always feel free to go to my facebook.com/howtomodel page. See ya.
