Actor Aaron Marcus explains why you should hold for one to three seconds after your final line in an audition instead of cutting off abruptly. Lingering lets the casting director see your character's inner life and makes the scene feel complete rather than rushed.
Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus. I just finished doing an online audition for a film where I was a priest, so that's why I'm dressed kind of looking a little bit like a priest. Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know, if you are watching this on YouTube, hey, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the notification button, and that way every time I upload a new quick tip video here, you'll be notified. The other thing too is I'd love to have you be a part of my acting and modeling family. So there's a link below where you can make a And as you can imagine, there is a lot of time, money that goes into keeping this channel up and running. And I greatly appreciate any kind of donation that you can make, whether it's, you know, $1, $5, $10, whatever you feel you can afford. And if you find that these videos are helpful to you, I greatly appreciate you helping out. So let me tell you what I'd like to discuss with you today, and that is Never finish your audition after the last word. You always want to extend your audition by at least a second, 2 seconds, maybe even 3 seconds. Uh, I did that recently, just booked the job, and I'm not saying it was just because of that, but it certainly helps. The reason why you want to do it, and I'll show you an example of exactly what I mean in a second, is because when the casting director and/or the director is watching your audition, and they want to believe that the scene is being shot and they are really sucked into your performance. If you just end it really quickly on your last word, it's kind of jolting. So what you really want to do is extend it. And I'm not necessarily saying that you've got to add words. Sometimes that would be inappropriate. Sometimes that's fine to do. Depends on the project. And also it's going to depend on the, on the director and the writers and things like that. But, but what you will do is when you do extend it, it grabs the attention of people. It helps solidify the audition and it helps to calmly bring people back down to earth after watching it. So let me show you exactly what I mean. Let's say I'm doing an audition and the other character who I'm reading with says, okay, hey look, I'll see you tomorrow. And then they— in the scene, it says the person walks out of the room. So instead of having the person say to me, okay, I'll see you tomorrow, and then boom, just end it, shut things down, what I'm going to do is follow the person, think about what just transpired, then come back, then end The audition. By doing that, it makes it so much more powerful, so much more interesting, and people get a chance to see more of your inner life, of what just took place in that scene, as opposed to just ending right on those last words, uh, okay, I'll see you tomorrow. So incorporate that in every audition that you do. If there's some auditioning, uh, techniques and tips that you can share with other people here, please do that. Look, that's why I'm doing this. help share information with other people. And like I said earlier, just building this family of actors and models who really truly want to help each other. So leave a comment below and don't forget, hey, I'd love to have you, uh, be part of the family and leave a donation as well. Thanks so much. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon.
