Casting Director advice: How to succeed in commercial auditions and understand your USPs

Описание: Casting Director, Mark Summers, talks to The Stage about how to succeed in commercial auditions and understand your USPs.

Video Transcription

Commercials can be financially rewarding for all. From normal actors to Hollywood A-Lists to Oscar winning directors. They are truly the lifeblood of our industry.

Before you book a commercial you need to understand your USPs, your Unique Selling Points, not UFOs. When a Casting Director sends out a brief they’ll send a character description of what they’re looking for so you need to work out what is your playing type after all, you are your own business. So take a look in the mirror, you could be tall, you could be short, you could be big, you could be small. Use these to your advantage, remember, when you are applying for a job, stick to what your playing type is. After all, if you’re four foot eleven, how can you play somebody that’s taller? Or if you’re forty, how can you realistically play a sixteen year old? Remember guys; you are your own business. If you mess up and send a suggestion to a Casting Director for a role that you’re totally unsuitable for what’s going to happen is this: You’ll go in the green sack for recycling or they’re going to press the junk file and put you in there permanently.

Unlike film, when Casting Directors are asked to cast commercials, their clients sometimes request hundreds or thousands of performers for one single role. Remember, a Casting Director is a freelancer and works with different clients every single day. So once you get on their list if they call you in again, and again and again and again and you don’t get the job, don’t get disheartened. After all, they have faith in you and they’ve called you in. Don’t give up, learn as much as you can, take every single audition as a learning experience and one day, you will book a lot of commercials.