Why Building Relationships with Casting Directors is So Important
One of the best ways to improve your odds is to emphasize relationship-building as a core part of your strategy for success
(by Carmichael Phillips)
(Photo: Fauxels | Pexels)
A casting director might receive hundreds, even thousands of submissions for one role. No joke! Some breakdowns receive two thousand, three thousand, even four thousand submissions from hungry actors or from their hotshot agents. It’s ridiculous!
But don’t be discouraged by these very discouraging numbers. After all, this is the life you signed up for. You knew when you decided to embark on your quest to become a professional actor that it would be tough and that the competition would be fierce. You just didn’t know that it would be this fierce. You didn’t know you would be one face in a Pacific Ocean of faces.
But cheer up! Just because the competition for acting roles is ridiculous doesn’t mean it’s time to give up and go get a cubicle job. It just means you must find a way to cut through the clutter.
One of the best ways to cut through the competitive clutter:
Building relationships with casting directors.
Casting Directors
Here’s an important thing to remember about casting directors:
*Casting directors have reputations to protect.
*Protecting that reputation requires that they consistently bring in talented actors for roles.
*One way casting directors can consistently bring in talented actors is by bringing in actors whom they already know and trust; actors whom they know will consistently deliver quality performances when called upon.
And there it is! This is a great equalizer:
Relationships!
Relationship-Building
Relationship-building is one of the best ways for an actor to go from 1,000-to-1 odds, to odds that are more favorable, more reasonable. Building relationships with casting directors is one of the best ways for an actor to break-through the competitive clutter.
You want casting directors to read a script for the first time and think, “I know exactly who could play that role. The person I have in mind would be perfect.” You want them thinking, not about the 1,000 other actors who will be submitted, but about you!
Suddenly, competing with 1,000 other actors doesn’t seem so impossible, does it? You can become the first of the 1,000 actors considered, rather than being one anonymous actor in the ocean of 1,000 other actors, most of whom will never come close to getting an audition.
There are many things an actor can do to build relationships with casting directors. We won’t cover them in this article. The main point of this article is to get you to stop thinking solely about marketing yourself as an actor and begin thinking about making strategic connections. Stop trying to overcome overwhelming odds and, instead, begin to improve your odds. And one of the best ways to improve your odds is to emphasize relationship-building as a core part of your strategy for success.
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