Aaron Marcus, a veteran actor-model, shares what to do when a photographer and agency rep give you conflicting direction on set. He clarifies by asking questions, confirming what the client actually wants, and staying flexible to deliver the right performance.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus and welcome to my YouTube channel. It's my Acting and Modeling Quick Tips. And, and by the way, feel free to, to share this link with all of your friends throughout social media. I've got tons of really helpful acting and modeling videos here, quick tips. So here are a couple things. If you're not familiar with me or my work, really quickly, I've been a full-time actor and a commercial model for over 30 years. I've been really, really fortunate. I've booked over 1,200 jobs. You've seen me in my recurring role on House of Cards, worked on Gotham, worked on Mr. Robot, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, done feature films, independent films, tons and tons of TV spots, commercial modeling ads, voiceover work. And what I love doing here is sharing information from my experience with you. And so This is a situation that I was in actually yesterday, and it could have been really complicated. It could have really been a major problem. But if you know how to handle things, it's simple. And that's exactly what happened. So I can't give you the details. It's a— it was a commercial modeling shoot, shot it in New York. It was an international campaign. It's really going to be pretty cool. Um, And the photographer walks over to me before the shoot, and there were about 5 of us there, and said, this is what's going on. This— these are the kinds of reactions that I need to have from you. Great. Got it. Start shooting and felt like I gave the photographer exactly what he was looking for. And then they took a break and photographer walked over all the different commercial models and gave some additional feedback and some tweaking. And he walks over to me. I said, really like what you did. Thank you very much. And then someone from the advertising agency walked over to me. Honestly, I wasn't sure if it was the creative director or art director. I don't know if it was the person who came up with the concept for the ad campaign or the person who actually put it together so everybody could see what it looks like. In either case, the guy says, I saw what you were doing, looked at the shots. This is what I would like for you to do. And it was— and once again, I can't give out details, but it was a very different concept, completely different kind of reaction to what the photographer was asking. And I said, yeah, fine, I can definitely do that. Just want to let you know, the photographer gave me some different information about this. He goes, you know, that's fine. I spoke with the client. This is what we would like. Great. So Start to shoot again. We take a little break. Photographer walks over and he goes, Aaron, you're doing some very different things here. You know, I'd asked you to do this, this, and this. And I said, no, no, I understand. But then I mentioned, you know, the gentleman from the ad agency came over to me and said this is what he wanted. And I said, honestly, I'm not sure who to follow here. And I'll do both if you want, you know, but just let me know what's best. So he walks over, talks to this guy, comes back over to me, and he said, I apologize, the information I gave you was not correct. Actually, the client saw it, they decided to take your character in a different direction. Just do what this other guy from the ad agency told you to. I said, great. And that's exactly what I did. That's how we finished the entire shoot, and it worked out really well. And the reason why I'm mentioning this to you is because I have seen people react in different ways. And I've seen some models start getting very frustrated and angry and defensive and they start getting into, hey, look, you're telling me this, you want this, this guy's telling me he wants this, I don't know what to do here. Tell me, what should I do? Because you're making it— Don't get into any of that stuff. Just talk to them, have a good line of communication and just, you know, let them know. Look, sure, I can do that. Somebody else asked me to do this. What should I do? I'll do both if you want, but just let me know. That is how you handle it. It worked out really well. Everybody was happy, and it's a great way to develop a good relationship with people too, because they, they know they can communicate with you. They also know that you can take direction. You can give them a lot of different kinds of things. That is how you take care of a potentially difficult situation. Hey, just wanted to make sure, um, if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, please subscribe. Click the notification button as well. That way you will always know when a new video is posted. Share this with all of your friends. There's just— there are tons and tons of great acting and modeling quick tips. Very last thing, if you can, I greatly appreciate— as you can imagine, these take a lot of time to put together, to edit. I have people help maintaining it who I hire. And if you are in a position where you can make a small donation, there is my PayPal link right below. Greatly appreciate it. Doesn't matter if it's $1, $5, $10, $20. If you have $10 million that you'd like to donate, that would be great as well. But I really would— I'd appreciate some kind of donation just to help, help me so I can at least break even with all the stuff and also maintain this and keep adding a lot of videos here. So thank you for doing that. If you have any questions at all, you can always Find me at howtoactandmodel.com, and you can also get to me through howtoactandmodel.com/home. Anyhow, this was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to share some new information with you really soon. See ya. I'm Aaron Marcus.
