I love stuff like this, because it cuts through all the bullshit and mysticism about how casting works and gets right to the practical issues. Especially in Toronto, where actors and agents can sometimes get obsessed with whether they have the right acting coach on their resume, or whether they’re on a perfect 45 degree angle in their headshot, Lowenstein’s article reveals casting even lead roles in big US network pilots as a straightforward problem of finding the right actor for the role. Get good
actors in front of casting directors; the rest is so much hand-wringing. In the words of screenwriter Alfred Gough:

“You may have had a character who does one thing, and the actor comes in and they are great at 90 percent of what you need and just 10 percent they’re not so good at, but they have the right sort of chemistry with the other actors. They’re the person you want for the role, [so] you tailor things, and you try to always write to their strengths. Then over the course of a show…you watch them grow as actors.”

There’s lots of practical advice in this article about things like being on time (some of it mirrored in this post of mine), but some of the most important takeaways are things you can only believe when they come right from the horse’s mouth. Namely, that casting directors are not your enemy, and nobody’s doing you any favours when they book you for a role. As Gough says:

“When [actors] go into the room, everybody on the other side of the table is interested and is rooting for them. “Because if you’re great, you’ve solved all their problems.”

Give it a read. Whether you’re stuck auditioning for commercials and can’t seem to crack principal, or you’re on your way to LA for pilot season, knowing how the business really works and seeing how you fit in goes a long way towards giving you the confidence you need to be a working actor.

A Guide to the Casting Process, From First Read to Meeting the Network Execs [backstage.com]

All 10 episodes are still available for free through iTunes as well. Check it out!

I don’t mean when it comes to acting — that, as you quickly figure out, is only one half of your job — but rather when it comes to working. Working and acting, you realize after some time in the trenches, are two completely different (and sometimes mutually exclusive) things.

I’ve always thought the solution to this problem is relatively simple: if you’re not sure about something, ask someone who knows. Getting conflicting opinions about what casting directors want you to wear to an audition? Ask one. Not sure whether a director wants a second audition take to be different from the first? Ask one. Wondering whether you should mail or email a solicitation to an agent? Ask one. Seems obvious, right?

As a new or emerging actor with questions about how something works, you typically have to make do with parsing conflicting opinions, showbiz folk wisdom, the occasional hard-bitten rant from an overworked industry vet, and various other forms of untrustworthy bullshit.

But like a lot of things in this business, common sense isn’t always common practise. Casting directors are busy, and easily put off by pushy actors, and agents can be notoriously thin-skinned if they feel your impatient curiosity might be criticism. The result is that information about things like etiquette and best practises doesn’t travel well between casting, agents and actors. Should you slate square to camera, or at an angle? Do casting directors like getting Christmas cards? Do agents want to see a demo reel? Can your headshot be black & white? Is doing commercials going to hurt your chances for principal roles?

As a new or emerging actor with questions about how something works, you typically have to make do with parsing conflicting opinions, showbiz folk wisdom, the occasional hard-bitten rant from an overworked industry vet, and various other forms of untrustworthy bullshit.

Well, as your favourite crusader against fear and ignorance, I’m assembling a series of interviews for this very blog with casting directors and agents about what, exactly, they want from actors. I’ll be asking people from all levels of the business to participate. I want to establish a realistic, useful dialogue between casting, agents and actors.

As an actor, this is your chance to ask people in the business the burning questions you’ve never found a satisfactory answer for. I can’t guarantee I’ll include everyone’s questions in the interviews, but I’ll try my best to cover as many bases as I can.

If you’d like to submit a question, use the contact form in the sidebar, or email me at chris@chrisframpton.net. You can use your name or remain anonymous. You can also post your question as a comment at the bottom of this page, and I encourage anyone reading along to get involved in the discussion.

Lastly, don’t forget to share this post with your actor friends on Facebook, Twitter or through your blog. Let’s clear away the smoke and mirrors, and get a real dialogue going between casting, agents and actors.

You might notice a few familiar faces in there, and I don’t just mean celebrities. Some of my favourite pictures are outtakes from shoots with actors, and several have made it into the portfolio. It’s this kind of creative, editorial-style photography that really informs my work with all of you, and I think actors who work with me are happy to know that I’m not just a “headshot factory.”

You’ll notice a Facebook “like” button in the bottom right corner of the new site. If you like my work, I’ve recently made an official Facebook page that you can like and join, at facebook.com/chrisframptonphotographer. Thanks!

Some of my favourite things Carolyne says:

• Callbacks are 60% what you look like.
• Know your type. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.
• Don’t feel you have to “do more” than other actors.

Watch part two after the jump.

Part two:

Some of us do, some of us don’t. I get asked about it all the time and people are often surprised to hear that I trust them to be professional enough to show up on the day of the shoot, when I have equipment set up, precious time set aside and my makeup artist booked.

Only about 7 times in the 7 years I’ve been shooting actors has someone simply not shown up. That’s pretty insignificant when you consider the hundreds of actors I’ve shot, but it still completely floors me when it happens.

It’s tremendously inconvenient, but that’s not the reason. The reason is that actors so frequently fail to see how they have a reputation for lack of professionalism, and that that reputation discourages casting directors from working with new actors as much or more than anything else.

“And don’t even think about feature films or episodic TV, where in addition to all of those factors you might also have a significant amount of actual acting to fuck up.”

Agents (and sometimes casting directors themselves) ask me for feedback on actors I work with all the time. Sometimes they’re concerned with their confidence or how they look on camera, but nine times out of ten they want to know about a new actor’s professionalism. Did they show up on time? Were they difficult to work with? Were they condescending or rude? How did they treat my makeup artist? Could they follow direction or did they think they knew better? Were they constantly distracted by their phones or Blackberries? Did they pay me promptly?

I’m patient and polite (among other wonderful qualities). Plus you’re my client, so it’s my job to be accommodating and manage the stress of a headshot session for you in order to get fantastic pictures and make the experience fun and rewarding. Whether it’s working out a payment plan or dealing with a little pre-shoot insecurity attack, I’m ultimately here to help you.

But consider for a moment how casting or production sees the issue.

When you step on the set of a TV commercial, for example, a tremendous amount of time, effort and money has been invested in that one, delicate moment. Clients have sat through hours of pitches and presentations at an ad agency. Those pitches have been crafted and honed based on hours of market research. A director has been hired and consulted with. Casting has taken two full days and a team of a dozen people, and callbacks and editing the audition tapes have doubled that. Keys have been hired, and crews. Locations scouted and booked. A catering company has been hired, and then fired, and then replaced. Payroll, accounting, ACTRA agreements, wardrobe fittings, set building, lighting, camera rentals, postproduction contracting; by the time the actor steps onto their little taped-down ‘T’ upwards of $1,000,000 and hundreds of man-hours have been spent for each day of shooting.

And what if you’re two hours late? What if you’re hungover? Or texting constantly? Or hitting on extras? What if you insist you “need to run out to an important audition”? What if you’re up the 2nd AD’s ass the second you’re into meal penalty, or on the phone to the ACTRA steward every time the caterer forgets about your gluten allergy? God forbid, what if you just don’t show up?

And don’t even think about feature films or episodic TV, where in addition to all of those factors you might also have a significant amount of actual acting to fuck up. Without a pre-existing relationship, a casting director is taking a huge risk every time they book an actor, and it’s a risk they (and your agent, for that matter) are keenly aware of.

The fear of flaky actors might be exaggerated, but it’s unfortunately not completely unfounded. Those green actors who can’t take the business of acting seriously ruin it for everyone, and to work in this city it’s imperative you’re not one of them.

Being a professional is something you can do instantly. Work on your craft, become a better actor, but be a professional right away.

2010 was a pretty unusual year for me. As with most creative industries (film & TV being no exception), photography has been in a tremendous state of flux and change. Digital imaging technology, the internet and mass amateurization have radically altered the business of photography. While there’s never been so many good images being produced, the professional value of photography has become pretty fraught.

Last March I was feeling a little burnt out from shooting hundreds of actors, arguing with old fashioned agents, and hustling for celebrity and editorial work that was paying less and less, and all the while seeing my headshot style ripped off left, right and centre.

So I shut the studio down and went on hiatus for a few months, looking for some inspiration.

Through the spring and summer I travelled to Barcelona, Greece, up the coast of Turkey to Istanbul, Bulgaria and through the countryside of Romania, to Budapest, Hungary; to the caribbean for a month to dive and write and lie on the beach, and more recently to Iceland, to spend time in the Westfjords, my ears ringing from the silence.

It’s impossible not to learn some things about yourself when you make this kind of radical change in how you spend your time. What I learned is that despite the success I had created, I had been coasting. I was doing a great job of the photography work that was coming to me regularly, but that’s all I was doing. It had become a job. I had become a craftsman, and stopped being an artist.

“Commissioned art has a way of sliding slowly and imperceptibly into commercial trade…. The challenge in such circumstances is to convince the patron that you alone know the right way to make the piece.”

- From Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland

Maybe, as an actor, you know what this feels like.

The commercial audition process can be addicting, and seeing yourself in a guest starring role in a Canadian TV show is definitely a thrill (believe me – the first job I ever had as an actor was on a cop show called Blue Murder as a former Olympic runner who gets gunned down in a case of mistaken identity. It was barely a role but it felt like I had won the lottery).

But is standing beside a Jetta with your arms crossed or playing a badly written stereotype what you picture when you think about what’s really satisfying about being an actor? When you first decided this is what you really want to do, did you envision shoring up your self esteem after losing an SOC commercial, or being afraid to call your agent even though you’re not sure what he does for you? For most actors in this city, the only really good, meaningful work they get to do is in an acting class. Is that what you thought it would be like?

Like I was, there’s a decent chance you’re been coasting too. It’s easy, in the assembly line visits to Powerhouse or the routine of your weekly scene study, to forget that you, too, are capable of and interested in making art. You are an artist. Your job, to a very large extent, is to communicate with others about your ideas, your experience and your point of view, in order for them to better understand the world they live in.

How do we forget this?

The short answer is that as we get older the pressures of life increase, and suddenly the thought of putting on impromptu guerilla performances of Sexual Perversity in Chicago in west end dive bars starts to seem a little irresponsible compared to paying your student loans back or having furniture you haven’t salvaged from the side of the road. We make this worse when we compare ourselves to people who took the expected life path; who have been working in corporate jobs for years, and are buying nicer cars and bigger houses and having families. Or worse to other artists who have “made it” in ways we haven’t.

But there’s another reason we stop making art and start making widgets, and that reason is fear.

“Fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work, while fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing you own work.”

- From Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland

As artists we fear all kinds of things: we seek approval, worry about being judged, about not being talented enough, not having the magic “it”; we feel like we need to be perfect, or we worry about being pretenders. As an actor you’re probably intimately acquainted with fear. Forcing yourself to be vulnerable is hard enough among trusted peers in an acting class, but doing the same thing in front of a bored camera operator, or worse in a commercial audition room with a gang of type-A advertising jerkoffs staring blankly at you from the other side of a folding table is almost inconceivable.

The message in casting is usually clear: you’re not here to make art, you’re here to meet our expectations.

As artists, we have to learn to balance these things, because if we don’t they will destroy us creatively. I’m speaking from experience. By last March, in catering to my fears about being understood, accepted and ultimately successful, I had crippled my ability to do any of those things effectively. I had stopped trying to communicate entirely, and had instead started only trying to meet expectations.

Since then I’ve made a lot of changes, both to my perspective and how I’m spending my time. I’m back in Toronto in a great house with a home studio I can live and work out of. Every Friday we set up for an entire day of shooting actors. A big focus this year is my production company, Flyweight Films, which produces documentary and other content for the web and beyond.

If 2010 was a year of explosive change, 2011 is a year of organizing, producing and artmaking. Whereas balancing commercial trade (however creative) and doing work that was deeply satisfying to me seemed like an impossibility a year ago, today it feels like the only path.

So I’ll make you a deal. There’s still no one in this city who understands contemporary headshots like me. I’ll continue to help you guys get into those audition rooms, if you promise to make at least part of your focus this year creating work – either alone or with other people – that you’re really interested in. If you’re going to do student films seek out scripts you actually like, or write a script about your life, rent a camera and make your own. If there’s a theatre role you want to do, produce the show yourself. If you have something to share with other actors, start a blog or host a workshop. Find a high vision and work it.

And if you need a collaborator you can always get in touch with me.

Chris Frampton, Toronto 2011

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

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?