A Note on Actor Research: Be Mindful

A Note on Actor Research: Be Mindful

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Dear Actors,

A little note on Actor Research.

Be mindful of the questions you ask your industry contacts.  If you can GOOGLE the answer, or find it in a short internet search, I don’t suggest emailing your contacts for the answer instead just so your research is more convenient.

Agents, Casting Directors and other industry professionals are very very busy.  They want to see you succeed and many of them do everything they can to help you– but you need to be mindful about the time you request of them.  Using their time for a question you can google isn’t ideal.  Using their time for a more complicated or situational question– that is more worthwhile and a million times better for building a positive relationship with that contact.

Career research is YOUR job.  Creating your brand is YOUR job.  Knowing about opportunities is YOUR job.  Asking someone else to do the work for you may make them think you are a lazy actor– and in the most competitive industry out there– you do NOT want ANYONE to think that of you!

Take ownership over it.

Know your type.

Take a class to learn and ask questions.

Know the work out there for your type.

Learn about the major offices.

A question for the sake of asking a question doesn’t build relationships.  Trust does.

Build the Trust!!!

🙂
Colleen

 

[Photo kindly by Andrew Neel]

The Importance of Self-Talk | Butterfly emerging from a chrysalis

The Importance of Self-Talk

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Let’s talk about your self-talk.

This has come up a bunch of times recently.

Isn’t it amazing that things you would never DARE to say to another person you are saying to yourself?

There is a DIFFERENCE between helping yourself learn/grow/improve and tearing yourself apart.  Let’s take an audition for example.  Say you get in there and you botch your 16 bars.  Maybe you didn’t warm up enough.  Perhaps went out the night before and shouldn’t have.  Maybe you chose a poor cut.  Perhaps you didn’t do your actor homework on what the character actually wants in that moment.

Well– you have two choices.

A. You can beat yourself up for hours or even days until your faith in yourself is black and blue and you feel miserable and unworthy of success

OR

B.  You can take some notes on how to adjust for next time, congratulate yourself on the aggressive learning you just did and MAKE THE CHANGES and get back on the horse.  Babies don’t beat themselves up learning how to walk.  Why beat yourself up when learning how to soar in one of the most complicated career paths on the planet?

OUR WORLD NEEDS YOU TO DROP THE NEGATIVE SELF-TALK.

It’s not making our world better and it is certainly not making you better.  LOVE yourself through the process, don’t be a jerk to your own brain and heart– you deserve a better learning environment– and YOU are in control of that.

So whatever smack you are talking about yourself… DROP IT.  NO MORE  “I’m not ready,” “I’m not good enough,” “So and so is better,” “I’ll never,” “I can’t,” “It’s too hard,” “The chances are slim,” — you are so much better than those lame comments.

You ARE growing.
YOU’RE worthy of it.
YOU’LL learn it.
You CAN book it.
YOU’RE doing it.
If anyone can, YOU CAN too.
You are CREATING your chances.
You are BUILDING your dreams.

So take your lunch money back from your inner bully.

Go get from your life what’s yours.

xo
Colleen

 

[Photo Kindly by Suzanne D. Williams]