In this instructional video, veteran actor Aaron Marcus shares five concrete strategies to help beginners deliver stronger auditions for film and television. He begins by establishing his credibility (36+ years of experience and nearly 1,300 bookings) and encourages viewers to subscribe and engage. The core advice includes: (1) research the show or director thoroughly—watch the series, study its tone, and review the director’s past work; (2) read the audition sides repeatedly without acting, ensuring full comprehension and correct pronunciation using tools like Dictionary.com and Forvo.com; (3) answer the five W’s (who, what, where, when, why) to ground the character and make the performance specific; (4) use pronunciation resources to guarantee clear delivery (integrated with tip 2); and (5) avoid cutting the scene on the last word—let the performance fade out with a brief, natural reaction to suggest ongoing internal activity. He concludes by linking to a bonus video on common audition pitfalls, reiterates the call‑to‑action, and invites comments on personal techniques. The video’s purpose is to provide a step‑by‑step, actionable system for actors and models to prepare and execute auditions more effectively.
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Hey, in this video I'm going to be sharing with you 5 incredible strategies and tips for auditioning. If you watch this video to the end, you are going to have a real system, a real guideline of what you need to do in order to give a great audition. Okay, let's get started. Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus and welcome to the Actor and Model Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center where I share information with other people from my 36-plus years experience as a full-time actor and nearly 1,300 bookings. Hey, if you haven't done this yet, please don't forget, uh, click the subscribe button, the notification bell. That way you always know when I upload a new video. And if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up, um, and like it and, uh, and share, share the link with your actor and, uh, and model friends just to help share information and help others in the industry. So, uh, what I'm going to be doing here is sharing 5 incredible tips that will really give you a guidance and, and a real, um, step-by-step way of preparing for your audition. And at the very end, I've got a great video, uh, for you that I know you're going to want to watch. Number one, so you get an audition. First of all, congratulations, that's incredible. They're hard to get, so if you've gotten an audition, you're doing some good things. Very first thing, if you're auditioning for a television show, make sure you watch the show. You've got to be really familiar with the show. What kind of show is it? Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Do people play over the top? Is it more understated? You really want to be very familiar, and if you happen to know which actor, which character you're having a scene with, make sure you're familiar with that actor's performances in the show as well. If you are auditioning for a film, well, you can't watch the film because it hasn't been done yet, but what you can do is get the director's name, go to imdb.com, Internet Movie Database, Look up the director, find out what other projects the director has directed, and you can find clips on YouTube and become more familiar with the director's work. That will be really, really helpful to you. Okay, let me check. Number 2, read your sides with absolutely no emotion at all. Do Do not begin acting as soon as you see the sides. The sides, those are the words that you're going to be auditioning with. You don't know what you're doing with your character yet. So what you really want to be doing here is read everything through a number of times, be familiar with what's going on, what are you trying to get out of the scene, is there another character preventing you from getting things done? And what's also really important, certainly you've got to make sure you understand all the words, and you can easily look that up on— I think it's just dictionary.com. You also need to make sure that you know how to pronounce all the words. So you can go, and I'll list it below, it's called forvo.com, F-O-R-V-O dot com. It's great. You can just type in the word and it will tell you how to pronounce it. Okay, number 3. You always want to answer the 5 W's very specifically. Who, what, where, when, why. Who are you talking to? What are you talking about? Where is this scene taking place? When is it happening? And why? Why are you saying these words? The more specifically you answer the W's, The more interesting your read's going to be, because the way that I like to view auditions is I'm not really auditioning. I want the director to see the performance as if it's really happening. So, so the more specific you know what's going on, the more interesting it's going to be. Like, for instance, where's the scene taking place? Well, if you're doing a scene and you are sitting across from somebody at a dinner table in your kitchen, well, you're going to talk very differently than if you were walking down 7th Avenue in New York City. You can't talk at the same volume. It's going to feel very different if it's crowded as opposed to a private conversation. And even like when, what time? Is this happening at 4 o'clock in the morning? It's Most likely going to sound very different than if it's 12 o'clock in the afternoon. So anyhow, answer the 5 W's. Also, what is happening? What is happening to your character prior to the scene starting? So if your character is running into an office and you're late, well, then you've got to understand you just couldn't find a parking spot, you just ran 2 blocks, you ran up, you know, 3 flights of stairs, you run into the office, and you're going to sound very Very different than if you just start saying the words without understanding that background as to what took place with your character prior to the scene starting. And number 5, make sure— and I think this is really powerful— don't end your scene on the last word. Let it just fade out a little bit. So like, for instance, let's say you're talking to somebody and the person says, okay, I'll see you. Um, I'll see you tomorrow. Well, what I would do is after that last word is done, I'm going to follow the person out of the room, react to what just took place, and then end it. So that way, if they're really into your performance, and hopefully they are, you're just kind of fading it out a little bit like a great song. You're just fading it out a little bit so it's not an abrupt ending. It allows people to see there's more going on with your character, that there's more happening internally. It's just a much more interesting thing. So look, you're not going to spend 5 minutes reacting after the last word, but maybe 2 seconds, maybe 3 seconds, and that way it will be a much more powerful performance. So those are the 5 Really interesting steps that you want to take when preparing before and while you're doing your audition. For the bonus, if you look up here, you're going to see the link. It's a really interesting video that I created. It's something that can really sabotage and kill your audition. Watch this video. It will be really helpful to you. Really quickly, again, if you haven't done this yet, subscribe, click the notification bell. If you like the video, please like it, and that's helpful to helping let other people know about it. And please leave a comment if there are any specific techniques or strategies that you use for auditioning that you find helpful. Please share it below so we can all learn from each other. That's the whole point of having this channel, to create a, a place where actors and models can go To share information, to learn from each other. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
