bloggie blog

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was surprised to find out how important it was to agents and casting directors that such-and-such actor had just worked on this other TV show. It seems to be a very good way to get an audition for an episode of X, to have just shot an episode of Y. Wouldn’t the producers of Y be more interested in fresh faces? Well, it’s not how the entertainment industry works. Or rather, it’s now how society works.

In Job Seekers Find Bias Against The Unemployed, a recent NPR article, find mention of the “numbers game,” which certainly applies to acting, and general discussion of how the working find it easier to find work than the unemployed. Ponder how this is another thing that is not unique to The Biz.

Article Five in my occasional series on things that many people in Hollywood talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities. (For more, see Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.)

Commercial acting teacher Carolyne Barry has put a series of short videos on YouTube. They are informative snippets that show her teaching commercial acting. You can learn a lot from them, and they also give you a sense of what her classes are like.

There are 18 of these helpful clips, but only about 20% of the viewers of clip 1 have made it through all the clips. This is probably because the title of each video is long, and identical except for the number, and that number gets cut off as the titles are shortened by YouTube, it’s pretty hard to watch them in any sort of order without a lot of clicking around.

Until now.

Visit this YouTube playlist I made, and you’re good to go.

Dear bloggie blog readers who are on Facebook,

Please take a moment to visit my Facebook profile and click “Like” on the video I just uploaded there. It’s an opportunity to submit for a few very established and influential casting directors, so I’d really appreciate the vote.

Thank you!

Love,
Kevin

My friends Tanya and Phoebe have made a web series called Da Legendary Remix of Itty P and DJ Model T. Below, see them and my pal Tony P in episode 2. Watch carefully and you’ll see me play a tranny. Playing it straight, I should say — as a tranny named Kay Kay. Good times!

“It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to a craft rather than a career, to an idea rather than an institution. It’s courageous and requires a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.” —David Mamet, True and False

Before today, it had been a long time since I washed my car. I’ve never gone anywhere near that long without washing my car — in southern California. It was filthy. It was gross. It had a disgustingly thick film of filmy thickness all over it.

“Oh well,” I’d said to myself. “I’ll save a few bucks, it’s not hurting the car. Maybe I’ll wash it to celebrate my next booking, maybe not, we’ll see.” I didn’t really make a hard and fast promise to myself about that. I’m not saying that. But I am saying this: today I washed my car. Know what I’m saying?

If you are trying to juggle a support job and auditions at the same time, it might be helpful to know when auditions happen. Now, it’s important to know that auditions happen on all days and at all hours, and that’s all the advice you’ll get from most people in this town. And with good reason! But, if I may, you should also know that the full union projects such as national commercials and TV shows do tend to have auditions during regular business hours, and that, beyond that obvious statement, there may be trends in terms of times of day and/or days of the week that might help you out over the years.

Over the last few months, I’ve had a pretty good number of auditions for union projects, and I present here some quick little calculations.

Over half of my auditions are in the afternoon. Most of those, or 45% of my total number of auditions, are between 2:00pm and 4:00pm. About 10% of my auditions come during the industry-standard “lunch hour” of 1:00pm to 2:00pm. And that leaves a little more than a third of my auditions before 1:00pm, but none before 10:00am.

There are significant percentages to note in days of the week, too. Almost half of my auditions have happened on a Wednesday. None have happened on a Monday in many months, and the rest are evenly spread over Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Now, let me repeat, these numbers are simply my experience over the last few months during summer 2010 doing union auditions in Los Angeles. And while the number of auditions I’ve had is sweet, it may not be statistically significant. These numbers could be a total fluke that will mislead you for the rest of your career! Consider yourself warned! Nevertheless, you might want to schedule a day job that works Monday all day, gives you Wednesdays off, and always lets you be free in the afternoons, most importantly between 2:00pm and 4:00pm. Break a leg!

Frequently, people tell me I remind them of Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. It’s confusing because Darrin Stephens was played by Dick York for 156 episdoes then by Dick Sargent for 84 episodes. Two Darrens, two Dicks.

Which Dick do I remind you of most? Links in Dicks’ names are to Google Images. Click, look, and weigh in via the comments.

Actors: If you’re new to town, or if you’re new to targeting commercials, you can turn to many paid online and print sources to learn who casts commercials in Los Angeles and where they work. The trouble is, these lists aren’t visual, and they contain long lists, while the reality is that the few, busiest commercial casting directors do most of the work.

Take a look at this map I made over on the Google. It shows the busiest commercial casting locations in LA. This is handy information! But not complete. Some of these are drop-off friendly, others are not. Some good commercials do get cast elsewhere. But most commercial actors are going to one of these places whenever they get an audition from their agent.

Good luck!

Please leave a comment if you find it useful, or if you find an error.

All My Sons is going well every night and I’ve gotten some nice feedback, but last night? Well, I got a lovely compliment from audience member David Hartman, former host of Good Morning, America! I was gabberflasted.