Jayne Atkinson & Michel Gill on Headshots
How does an actor choose a headshot? Actors Jayne Atkinson and Michel Gill offer their advice in this video!
What’s going on with the soaps?
Daytime soap operas are getting cancelled left and right but some, including One Life to Live, still are alive.
What better way to find out more on Saturday, June 17, when One Life to Live‘s associate casting director Tori Visgilio offers a Daytime Intensive Workshop? You’ll get her perspective on casting (she’s currently casting 5 episodes/week!) and she also might be able to answer some questions about the world of the daytime soap opera.
Click here to learn more about her class, hit the play button below to to learn more about how One Life to Live tackled the topic of cyber bullying.
Have a smashing Memorial Day weekend!
Summer’s official here and the 2011-2012 t.v. season is just around the corner (and, just in case you are wondering, there are only 212 shopping days left ’til Christmas)!
Before you take a long weekend break, watch the promo for the new NBC series Smash, which will be premiering sometime next season on t.v. In case you haven’t heard about it, it’s about the making of a Broadway musical. The promo features lots of casting directors and auditions.
Do you think they will get it right? But, even more important, do you think it will be entertaining?
If you’re looking for a summer performing arts program in New York, check out our classes and seminars using the tabs at the top of this page.
Thanks, Mom!
This is the trailer from one of the most talked about performances from the ’80s by a living actress. The performance won a Razzie Award, was snubbed by the Oscars and wasn’t well-received by the critics.
The actress asserted that this role killed her acting career. Always pay attention to your choices.
Let’s take a brief break from our regularly scheduled postings, so you can (in case you haven’t) — in the words of Paramount — “Meet the biggest MOTHER of them all!”
Happy Mother’s Day!
RIP: Sada Thompson & Arthur Laurents
This week, Sada Thompson and Arthur Laurents died.
Click here to read the New York Times obituary for Laurents, writer of Gypsy, West Side Story and The Way We Were.
Click here to read remembrances by Patti Lupone, Harvey Fierstein and Jack Viertel, artistic director of City Center Encores! on Playbill.com. He was 93.
Tony and Emmy Award winning actress Sada Thompson also died this week. Click here to read her obituary on Broadway.com.
Thompson was best known for her role in the 1970s television series Family. She was 83
How do you get cast on Law & Order: Criminal Intent?
If you want to be cast on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the best place to start is by talking to a New York casting director. The easiest way to do that is to take an all-day class at Actors Connection with Kevin Kuffa, head casting director. Coincidentally, there’s an all-day New York acting seminar with Kevin tomorrow (Saturday). Click here to learn more about the class.
Wouldn’t you love to see your name in the opening credits? Or simply any of the credits?
Insider Acting Tip #12
By Tony Nation
Online Postcard Marketing
To perform in NYC, it’s important to know how to keep yourself top-of-mind for key players.
To postcard or not to postcard, that is the question!
Many actors that I meet don’t use postcards when marketing themselves to agents and New York casting directors. But with so many actors in the business, you MUST set yourself apart as well as remind the industry that you are out there seeking either representation or work.
Postcards can be used as a thank you, a follow-up, a reminder of availability and more! A postcard coming in at the right time can many times get you an audition or an agency interview. As a tip, you should only postcard talent agents when you have something to sell (i.e. a callback or a booking) or after an interview to say thank you for the meeting.
Hard copy mailings of picture, resume and cover letters as well as postcards can be time consuming and laborious. But what used to take hours and hours to postcard, label and stamp, now only takes minutes once you’ve done the initial setup.
Remember to put your main headshot that you are using on the front of your postcard with your name, contact number, email, website and union affiliations.
For Postcard Marketing, here are two online services that you can use for your business of acting that are both time and budget efficient:
Check them out to see which one is right for you!
Roz Coleman on being fit
Roz Coleman, who will be teaching “inTreatment,” an on-camera New York City acting class, beginning April 26, recently offered some observations on “A-listers” she has worked with in film, stage and television. Here is one observation that she shared about the stars:
Another thing about the stars, they are in much better shape than the rest of us. Touching Tom Cruise, for example, is like touching stone and it makes you feel so unfit. The best I can compare them to is elite olympiads/athletes — but applied to the craft of acting.
They are completely fit: vocally, physically, mentally. It’s very humbling to work with them. These people are really good and I didnt’ realize they were going to be so good. At the same time, they are very human, very down to earth…
Click here to learn more about Roz’s class.
For a list of acting classes in New York City, check out the tabs at the top of this page.
Insider Acting Tip #11
Now You Can Always be a LOCAL!
by Tony Nation
As a working actor performing in NYC, it’s important that agents and New York casting directors ALWAYS recognize your contact phone number as a local number. You don’t want to lose work because the industry thinks you’re either out of town or too far away to get in for a last minute audition!
Now for FREE, you can get a Google Voice local phone number for incoming calls which is currently available only for users in the United States.
Users may select a single US phone number from various area codes. Incoming calls to the number may ring simultaneously any of the user’s configured phones or the account’s Google Talk feature. Based on the calling number, or contact group (e.g., Family, Friends, Work), or on time of day, e.g., disabling a home phone during business hours and routing calls to mobile or business number, individual numbers may be configured to ring. The service also features voicemail with indexable automated voicemail transcription, accessible via a web browser, e-mail, or by phone. The number of rings before voicemail takes over is preset, however, and cannot be changed by the user. Google Voice provides automatic blocking of known numbers, e.g., telemarketers, the ability to switch lines in mid-call, differentiated voice mail greetings based on caller, SMS forwarding, and call recording.
Follow this link for more information on Google Voice, it’s features and how to get set up.
Now whether you’re in NY or LA or Chicago, you can now always have a local number for your business of acting!
What’s to become of Erica Kane?
All My Children has been on the air for 40 years and, come September, Erica Kane will no longer be a part of the television landscape.
One Life to Live also has been cancelled. Very soon, there will only be 4 daytime soap operas left on t.v.
According to the Chicago Sun Times,
….the demise of daytime soaps also endangers their cherished conventions: evil twins, reversible deaths and commercials signaled by actors with frozen expressions.
They’re also boot camp for stars such as Kim Delaney, Kelly Ripa, Josh Duhamel, Sarah Michelle Gellar and recent Oscar winner Melissa Leo (all seen on “All My Children”), and Dixie Carter, Laurence Fishburne, Tommy Lee Jones and Mario Van Peebles (“One Life to Live”).
The soaps are being replaced by talk shows. Has anyone out there reading this been on one of these daytime dramas? If you do, are there any stories you would be willing to share about how working on soap operas helped you as an actor pursue your dream of acting in New York City?
