One of the questions I get asked a lot is: How do you stand out during episodic season?
There are a lot of things that go into a strong audition, but one of the most important is making sure you have a really strong beginning and a really strong ending.
You have to remember that casting may be watching hundreds of tapes.
If you’re number 75 and they’re planning to watch 100 auditions that afternoon, there has to be something about your work that grabs them immediately and makes them stop thinking about the person they just watched.
That doesn’t mean you need to do something big, strange, or completely different just for the sake of standing out. It means your beginning needs to feel specific, connected, and alive from the very first moment. You want them to be with you immediately.
It’s that idea of, “You had me at hello.”
When someone begins really, really strong in class, I’m with them. They’ve got me.
Then, when we watch the playback, I may realize there were a couple of moments in the middle that could have been stronger. But that beginning was so strong that they had already pulled me into the story. That matters.
The same is true of your ending.
I want your ending to be so interesting, so strong, and so connected that casting is still thinking about you when they start watching the next person.
A lot of actors put tremendous energy into preparing the conversation (scene) itself but don’t give enough thought to the final moment.
Don’t mentally leave the conversation just because the dialogue is finished.
Stay in the circumstances. Allow that final moment to land.
Your ending is the last impression casting has of your work, and during episodic season, when they may be moving quickly from one audition to another, that impression matters.
A strong beginning or ending does not mean making a bigger acting choice.
It means making a clearer and more connected choice.
You want the person watching to immediately understand that you are inside the story. Your relationships, circumstances, need, and point of view should already be working from the beginning.
And when the conversation ends, we should still feel that story continuing.
