But now I’m back in Toronto, refreshed, with a new perspective and a ton of great new ideas.

In the past year I’ve seen my powerful, unique headshot style imitated by photographers all over the city, both old and new, but this year I’m going to take things a step further, with a new personal shooting space, an exclusive schedule, and a more versatile product that’s as at-home in the digital age as it is in the world of traditional casting. I’ll also be getting back to the blog, so if you haven’t subscribed to this site (via email or RSS, in the right-hand column), I suggest you take a second and do that now.

I should be set up and shooting by the second half of July. If you’d like to schedule a session or a meeting, get in touch via email at chris@chrisframpton.net or call me at (416) 834-0840.

-Chris

If you’re an actor who wants to work with me, this may be your last chance for a while. The next two months are going to fly by, and I’m already booking up like crazy. Get in touch with me now to set up a consultation or a shoot date.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be available to make prints and do retouching, so you’ll still be able to get 8×10s, print masters, and all the other products available through the website with the same 5 to 10 business day turnaround. The site and the order page are staying up, and you’ll always have access to your images.

If you’d like to be notified when I’m back to work or of one-off shoot dates, I highly suggest you subscribe this blog either via email or RSS.

I’ve been so privileged to have been able to meet and work with hundreds and hundreds of talented actors over the past few years. I wish you all the best for 2010.

Not surprising, I suppose. January is definitely a time to take a step back and evaluate what you’ve been doing for the past twelve months of your life, and specifically to make some new decisions, start new projects, and make some kind of fresh start. For actors, this is a great time of year to take some anxiety-free downtime and make plans for March and April when the industry starts to come out of its post-holiday hibernation.

A lot happened in 2009. I think we saw the business of acting take its biggest steps away from the traditional structure of casting>agents>actors and features>TV>commercials, and toward something far more remixed. Actors, casting and production are speaking directly for the first time through sites like AACTION and Casting Workbook. TV, a medium that was once completely overshadowed by features, is in the middle of an incredible renaissance. And the web is almost overloaded with viral advertising and comedy projects, both low budget and high.

Two things have never been more clear when it comes to the business of acting. One is that the harder you work, the luckier you get. As an actor in 2010 you have opportunities to create work, develop your skills and market yourself in ways actors of 10 years ago couldn’t even dream of. The other is that at this point it’s change or die. If you’re waiting to be discovered, trying to appeal to everyone, or worried about offending your agent, you’re probably screwed.

So here’s my advice for you for 2010, whether you’re working or aspiring. If you want to make a real change in how you audition this year, ask yourself this: Why should anyone care about me? Why should a casting director be excited to watch my audition tape? Why should a producer or director want to work with me? Why should people want to watch my work? The advice part is this: there are lots of great answers to those questions, but it’s not casting’s job to drag them out of you, it’s your job to show them.

This year, take some risks, reveal yourself. You really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Chris Frampton’s Actors Headshot F.U.Q.

I hate the way I look. Will I like the way I look in pictures you take?

I think I have big gums/bad teeth/an unattractive smile. If I clamp my lips together though the whole shoot so that it doesn’t show, will it look funny?

Some actors friends in L.A./Vancouver/New York/Toronto say you’re the hot photographer to shoot with right now. I don’t like your pictures, and I don’t want my pictures to look like yours. Will I like pictures you take of me?

I’ve had my headshots done a million times. They’ve never made an ounce of difference for me with casting. I hear you do pictures that casting love, and that you have a collaborative approach that helps actors translate their skills and instincts for still photography. I want pictures like that, but I’m probably just going to ignore you during the shoot and pose or “make my face” like I always have. Is this going to work out?

I’m fat. I’m going to look skinny in my pictures, right?

Another photographer told me you used to be an actor, and so that makes you less familiar with the process of casting than them. Is that correct?

I hear that not only are you a great photographer, but that you do panel discussions on headshots with casting directors, that you’ve worked in casting yourself, and that you’ve even cast your own web show. I should probably just shoot with the Leyes brothers, right?

My agent is a out-of-touch dinosaur who thinks this whole “color photography” thing is a passing fad and longs for a return to black turtlenecks and chins-on-fists. Will he/she like your pictures?

My agent is a vainglorious bully who hides their feelings of fraudulence by compulsively meddling in everything. Even though they’ve said they love your work, they’re going to demand you reshoot the entire package because they don’t like the colour of the shirt I chose in one of the setups. They’ll explain this to you in a 30 minute long phone conversation during which they’ll demean and belittle your talent and experience in the most condescending manner imagineable. You’ll happily kiss their ass and comply, right?

If I don’t listen to you and just flare my eyes in every picture, will I look intense?

I found a guy on Craigslist who’ll do my headshots for $30. Will you match prices?

If you’ll do 100 pictures for $350, will you do 1 picture for $3.50?

I don’t want to pay your hairstylist but I don’t want any flyaways in my pictures. You can fix that in post, right?

My friend went with another photographer. She’s a 21 year old tomboy and her pictures make her look like a glamourous 40 year old soccer mom. That’s good, right?

And lastly a personal favourite:

I can’t take direction and I’m a compulsive talker. You can just snap pictures between words right?

That may sound backwards, but generally speaking I will get more killer pictures out of a sweating, nervous newbie than I will out of someone who’s been on every Canadian TV show since Littlest Hobo. Do you know why? It’s because veteran film & TV actors develop a shtick – an act or routine that they can easily call up and deploy. It allows them to stop listening and concentrate on making it look a certain way. It allows them to control the performance.

In front of the camera a shticky actor might nod or laugh at a joke, but they’ll never break the pose or position they’ve put themselves into. They’re constantly working against you as a photographer because, hell, you’re only a photographer, right? They know what their “angles” are. They know how to “find the light”. They know they’ll look thinner on a 45 degree angle. To hell with the emotional language of the picture. They’re actors! They have a shtick for that! I’ve actually had actors drop to the floor for a few quick pushups when they’ve thought I was pausing to tell them a story.

You can’t blame them really. In film & television acting is usually competitive. You worry about how much coverage you’re getting, why you aren’t in more scenes or shots, whether your best take happened on your closeup, if the light’s better for you or the other person in the scene, if the director likes you, if you’re screwing things up for the continuity person, if your lines are going to be cut, and you worry about all this stuff compared to the other actors.

So since nobody’s worrying about all this messy “acting” stuff — listening to the other people in the scene, letting go of your vanity, taking chances even if they might make you look foolish — you’re free to concentrate on other things, like figuring out if you’re in meal penalty. So you develop a shtick. It can be a great shtick (Diniro has a shtick), but it’s shtick nevertheless.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that the more you give in to your shtick, the less able you are to let go of it when you need to. The shtick is the posy headshot of acting. It’s selfish, meaningless and uninsightful. At it’s heart it’s not acting at all, it’s simply meeting expectations.

What’s this all mean to you? Well if you’re Paul Gross, nothing. Carry on. If, however, you’re struggling to make a career for yourself as a film & TV actor, shtick should be your kryptonite, because when you’re doing shtick you are 100% incapable of blowing someone away with your performance because shtick, by its very nature, is about things we’ve seen before. It’s a shorthand that works because we don’t really have to process it. It’s generic.

In headshots, shtick is the kiss of death. If you can’t show a casting director who doesn’t already have a relationship with you something authentic, interesting or original in your headshot, why would they think you’re going to do anything but shtick in the audition?

I think casting directors like my pictures because my goal as a photographer is to reveal the actor. I’m a shtick-hound, and I try to stamp it out wherever I see it.

Do you have a shtick?

It’s funny as hell, not just because of how David Cross is gamely holding his own leash as if he’s offering it to you, but because it’s only vaguely unrealistic. All over the world (but let’s be honest — mostly in L.A.), desperate actors and terrible photographers produce embarrassingly overstated headshots that are (bless their little cotton socks) more like car crashes than calling cards. From the transgressions of the 80s and 90s (leather jackets, bare chests and cycling shorts anyone?) to more modern Funkë-esque costume pictures (It’s my E.R. shot!), headshot photography can be long on irony and short on sense.

Last year comedian Patrick Borelli and photographer Douglas Gorenstein decided to exploit the unintentional hilarity of awful American-style headshot photography by publishing Holy Headshot, a so-called “celebration of America’s undiscovered talent”.

Sure it’s easy to make fun, but from the outrageously overstated to the embarrassingly earnest, maybe the most shocking fact is that every headshot and resume in Holy Headshot was freely and willingly submitted by its owner. Here is Pete Traina, “Cocked, locked and ready to rock”, who glowers with crossed pistols in one shot while looking like a creepy veterinarian in another (and is that an actual child’s hand in the picture?). And freaky stay-puft trailer mom Cindy Clark, her mascara as black as the rose tattoo that gloops out of the top of her denim tubetop.

The book’s website has some great samples, but be sure to check out the Meet the talent page, where you can watch a handful of the book’s most insane subjects blabber, chew scenery, and generally attempt to dazzle you with their star power. My absolute favourite is Yenz Von Tillborg, a kind of gender-bending pirate nutbar who ad-libs some dialogue from Dracula. “You? You get your pancakes. I get my blood!” It’s an internet meme waiting to happen.

Holy Headshot contains a forward by Funkë himself, David Cross, and is available through Simon & Schuster via holyheadshot.com, in bookstores, or you can order it directly from Indigo online.

Jesse Thorn’s enhanced podcast The Sound of Young America has a great interview with the books editors, and shows quite a few of the pictures. Check it out, or listen to the unenhanced embedded version below:

And if you think Toronto is immune from this kind of headshot horrorshow, think again. From a certain big-name shooter’s trademark “unbuttoned jeans” pubic-hair peekabo to the dozens of dodgy pictures turned out every day on Craigslist-powered “portfolio” sessions, you’re always only a picture away from casting office infamy.

Even my own business - photography - is changing into a strange hybrid of media production jobs. I spend less and less time doing traditional photography, and more and more time producing, directing and editing video projects.

The slate's in the DVD menu! How cool is that?

Actors (and particularly actors agents), as usual, are slow to change, but that doesn’t mean the world around you (the world of production and casting) is too. If video is the new photography, a video demo reel of some kind is the new headshot. I can tell you from experience, having a demo is a must-have if you want to take the next step as a working actor.

One of the new services I’ve been offering is called “The better audition piece”, and it’s a great alternative to the cheap “self-tapings” casting houses offer. Traditionally when an actor submits on an audition they can’t actually attend, or has to provide prospective agents with a taped audition, they book a self taping — a short session in the audition room of a local casting place where they have an opportunity to have themselves “taped” performing a monologue or scene.

Even for big deal productions, self-tapings tend to look and sound like ad-hoc, tinny VCR recordings. Harsh fluorescent lights, a drab office setting, no direction (unless you’re lucky enough to have your acting coach with you), and shitty sound aren’t just not ideal, they’re hindrances that distract and detract from your performance in a huge way.

I wanted to take the same high production value, collaborative approach that I use in photographing actors, and apply that to producing demo pieces that they could use as stand-alone audition pieces, or for integration into a demo reel. And I wanted to do it quickly and cheaply.

I think the results are pretty awesome! Check out these two pieces I produced for Michael Paylor, a fantastic and talented young actor from London, Ontario. Michael wants to make the move from theatre into film & TV, and to help him land a great agent we chose scenes that were contemporary, relevant, and targeted to his category and his perspective.

Since I also edit and author DVDs, I put together a menu for his monologues that integrated his slate and contact info. Pop the DVD into the player and up he pops to introduce himself. Awesome!

The “better audition piece” is only $199 at the moment. You get up to an hour of my time in the studio. We’ll run it a few ways and watch playback. When we have a take we’re happy with I’ll grade and edit your piece and deliver it on DVD and as standalone quicktime files formatted both for HD and web. I can even help you choose an audition piece, provide a reader, and connect you with other actors who might want to shoot a scene with you.

Then it really gets cool. Two actors means we shoot the scene in coverage, and I produce an edited piece with tight cuts between closeups and twoshots.

If you’d like to learn more about audition pieces or demo reel editing, check out the products and services page, or click the Contact Chris link in the sidebar.

Well guess what? This year I’m writing, producing and directing a comedic web series called Act Natural, and I’m ready to cast the pilot episode! Woo!

Act Natural is an original, dry comedy series about the surreal world of commercial actors. It follows the lives of three less-than-perfect actors with visions of success but very different viewpoints as they try to make careers for themselves in film & TV.

Think Flight of the Conchords, Napoleon Dynamite, and Arrested Development.

The show is comprised of short, web-only episodes 5-10 minutes in length.

This is a no-budget, beyond-indie web production, but you never know with these things. I’m looking to build a great up-and-coming cast and crew who can learn, grow and find opportunities through the project. My plan is to build a small following for the show on the web, and then leverage that either through sponsorship, syndication, or reproduction for a larger media body.

The pilot episode shoots July 4th through 7th, 2009, in Toronto. Casting is May 17th through the 19th. If you’re a non-union actor (whether you’re totally green or a total vet — except for you, Paul Gross, you’re busy enough) and this sounds like something you’d be interested in, get in touch with me via email or phone (check the link to your right) to chat or arrange an audition. You can download the script here.

Are you a member of AACTION? They’re doing much of the heavy lifting for me on this, and I encourage you to submit through aactionauditions.com if at all possible, purely in the interest of making my life easier.

I’m casting for the following leads:

Gary 20s/30s
The good actor. A nice, well-mannered guy from a small town. Gary followed his dreams to a 4 year degree program in Theatre performance, and then to Toronto to try to make it in film & television. He’s a great actor, but isn’t exactly matinee idol material. There’s something non-threatening about him, and he’s always felt like a bit of an also-ran. Gary thinks the world should be a meritocracy, and is always a little frustrated that less trained, better looking, more confident people get picked for things over him. He’s a bit of a loser, but a sweet one. He’s always willing to try harder, he just might not be great at deciding where to focus his energy.

Shawn 20s/30s
The manipulator. Smart but rebellious, Shawn’s been getting into trouble his whole life. He’s a bit of a benevolent sociopath — able to mimic emotions but not necessarily feel them. His cocky, cynical perspective puts a lot of people off, but like most “charming rogues” Shawn just wants to feel loved, and he wants to be a successful actor mostly for the respect and adulation. He’s taken a few classes, but is otherwise an untrained actor. He relies on his charm, instincts and luck to see him through.

Mel 20s/30s
The future cat lady. Mel is a smart, pretty girl who is sincere but a little defeated. She was a geeky girl, into comics and romance novels, and her love of make-believe led her into a theatre minor during her Creative Writing degree. Acting is one of Mel’s many “backup plans”. She auditions for the loser girls and frumpy friends, never the heroines. She wishes she could be more like the girls Gary and Shawn seem to like. She has a cat and likes to watch vampire movies. She has a fantasy in which Gary is a vampire and comes to her in the middle of the night to sensuously bite her neck. She’s not sure if she’s secretly in love with him or not.

And the following principal roles:

Mike Kelly (recurring) 20s/30s
The ad man. Mike is Gary’s foil — successful, tall, good-looking. He’s an accounts guy at an ad agency and knows Gary from high school.

Casting Dave (recurring) 30s/40s
The camera operator at the casting place. Dave has nothing but contempt for actors, and lords his position over them. Secretly though he probably wishes he could have been an actor.

Director (1) 30s/40s/50s
Most episodes have a nameless director in them, and he/she’s usually the most ridiculous and over the top character in the script. This one is the passionate helmsman for a pretentious perfume spot.

Julie (recurring) teens/20s
The bitchy casting girl. Julie’s the cute, ambitious girl who works at the casting place as an assistant and seems to get all the plum roles without auditioning.

Plus a nerdy guy and a metal head to dance in the audition scene, and people to play ad agency hedonists and “male actors”.

I’d also love to hear from people who’d be interested in crewing and production work. I have my makeup key, but I’d love to chat with people interested in the following roles:

Additional makeup
Hair
Sound
Locations (as in people with locations to donate)
Production management & co-ordination
Wardrobe
Set decoration & art direction
Props
Craft
Publicist

Don’t be shy about this people! Whether you’ve worked with me before or not, this could be a great opportunity to have fun doing great work.

If you’re a returning client, 10 referrals would mean $150 off the regular session price with the returning client discount

You know what I got for my efforts? Tire kickers, models wanting free portfolio work, and angry skeptics. If I’ve learned one thing from buying advertising it’s that this business is all about referrals.

An amazing number of actors who shoot with me are returning clients, people who like and trust me enough to come back when it’s time to update their headshots. These are the same people who talk about what a great experience they had with me, and the positive impact my pictures have had on their relationships with casting. Together with agents, acting teachers and other supporters, these people are the engine of my business.

I really appreciate referrals, but I’d like to make my appreciation a little more concrete: for every client that comes my way because of your good word, I’ll give you a $10 credit towards a regular session.

If you’re a returning client, 10 referrals over 2 years would mean $150 off the regular session price with the returning client discount.

If you’re not a client yet but plan to shoot with me in the future, start referring your friends now and you could rack up a significant discount by the time you’re ready to book your session.

Just make sure the person you refer lets me know. I’ll keep a running tally against your name. It’s as easy as that.

But what those new photographers quickly find out is that the business of actors headshots — the actual production of pictures working actors use to market themselves to casting directors — is hugely complicated, and fraught with traditions, fear, opinion, egos and rules. One thing it definitely isn’t is what those new photographer think it is: simple pictures of people’s heads.

If you’re here, reading this, congratulations, you’re among an elite group of established and aspiring actors who understands that this is a business, not a lottery. On some level you understand that actors headshots have become the opposite to what their purpose is. They’ve become a liability.

They’ve become the chief way in which an actor lies about themselves — about their age, their flaws, their personality, their perspective, their physical appearance, and their confidence. Especially their confidence. They’ve become pictures that nobody trusts, because for decades now we’ve tried to make them seem as perfect as possible. And that’s not just the fault of actors, it’s agents and photographers too.

But wait! you say. Isn’t that the point? To make us seem desirable? To minimize our flaws? To hide our personality so that we can be seen in any role?

Sure, if that was how it worked. But not only is that not how casting decisions are made (the most perfect, the most neutral), the camera knows when you’re faking. The still camera, unlike the motion picture camera, can’t see your performance. Without time and nuance, sets and locations, and other actors, it’s just you up there. You have a good fake smile? It’s obvious in your headshot. Been practicing your steely intense look? It looks overdone. Think anyone is convinced you’re a badass because you’re standing in an alleyway or beside a freight elevator? Please.

My job isn’t to make you look nice, it’s to change how you audition by recommending you to casting. I do that by showing what you’re like, what you bring, and who you are. I show them why they should care about you enough to invest a tremendous amount of time, money and face in letting you audition when they’ve already got a list of people they know well and are comfortable with.

I’ve been tremendously lucky over the past few years. From shooting a few friends under overpasses and in hallways my actors business has grown into a bit of a movement, attracting a hundreds of amazing clients from all over the continent who believe in my dynamic, market-minded approach to headshot photography. I’ve become one of the busiest and most imitated actors photographers in the city, and still managed to keep my rates at a level that’s reasonable for working actors.

This site marks a relaunch of my actors headshot business as Chris Frampton Actors, and is a recommitment by me to helping actors by offering new and innovative ways to buy and use headshot photography and offering video production services, but also by creating a personal resource of information, opinion and advice on the business and marketing side of acting.

Don’t worry, it won’t all be me ranting about old fashioned agents who think colour photography is a passing fad (although there’ll be some of that). On this blog I hope to be able to bring you articles, news and interviews about the business of acting from agents, casting directors, producers, acting coaches, and actors themselves.

I’m an insanely busy guy with a Boston Terrier for an assistant, so I can’t promise you daily updates, but if you subscribe to this blog via email or RSS, or just check back regularly, I promise you’ll be occasionally rewarded. I also encourage you to spread the word about this site, whether you’ve shot with me or not, and to get involved in the discussion (by commenting on this post right now, for example).