5 Commercial Audition Tips Every Actor Must Know

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Video Transcript:

What's up my friends Toby Lawless here, just literally wrapped up a coaching session. I wanted to take a quick second to give you five commercial tips for your next audition to crush it. Doesn't matter if you're just beginning or you're brushing off some rust or breaking off rust or however they do. These are five things that I see in the room, uh, more often than I'd like to see them, that if you do them or you don't do them next time will help you with your audition. I've got them right here. Here we go.

Okay, so first one tip. I wrote these. I'm just reminding myself. Director's creatives and casting love working with actors who make their job easy, who make the job of the directors, the creatives and the agency and castings job easy. Why is that? Well, those guys are dealing with so much stuff. They, this process has taken six months. They had to get a concept, they had many concepts. They had to get that concept approved by their client and they had to get a director, get their director approved, and then go into production and they've got like 18 balls in the air. They want you to come in, present your solution, make that a very easy solution for them. Meaning you're not asking a ton of questions. You don't need a lot, you don't need anything. If you're going in, you should be asking yourself, do I need something here or am I offering something? If you need something that's not the way to go, its better offering your, take your solution, make it easy so they don't have to work and they're like, ah, this guy's got it covered. Okay, here we go. Next tip.

Audition tip. You no need to shake everyone's hand in the callback room. They know your name from the slate. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, this is about personal boundaries. Guys. Like these guys are seeing eighty people. Even if you don't know this, this is a very good tip for you. If you do know this, trust me, people do this and what I'm talking about is crossing over and shaking hands and sort of being more personal than you need to. And with introductions, we'd like that to be the case, but they know who you are. We just sort of want to see what your take is. So be friendly. You can say, Hey, what's up guys? I'm Toby. How's it going? Um, this is a great spot. Let's do some fun stuff. You could ask a question, that's okay, but when we cross over and we start touching them, that's a no. Next tip.

Always know your eye line. Hint, looking at camera is not a good plan, okay? Knowing your eyeline is key its one of the two things that I suggest you know when you come into the room. Know your eyeline and no, take a look at the board, right? So knowing your eyeline means, okay, do I know where I'm looking at any given moment in the audition, in the slate, I'm going to look in camera. Check, this is a commercial about a donut man and a donut shop and a little kid. So donut man is to the right. The donut shop is behind him and then the little kid is to my left. Make sure I know that I don't want to come in thinking action. Hey donut man. Oh No, don't have guys over there. Oh, why not? Well think about it in the big picture, they're going to see like eighty of these videos and the vast majority of them will be dialed in.

They're looking over there cause they're professional actors. They know that doughnut man and the donut shop and the little kids here. And then there's one guy who's going over here and then here and here and here and all of a sudden it looks like you don't know what you're doing and now you're making their job more difficult, which as we know, we don't want to do that. So be clear about your eyelines. It's okay to ask. In fact, it's great to confirm, hey, so is the donut guy here and the guys behind and the kid is there. In order to be able to confirm, you got to know that. You need to know that, so think eyeline's. Got It.

Okay, next tip. Let's see. Always know what role you're auditioning for. What I mean is when you get there and we're like, hey, what's going on?

It doesn't harm. I'm here for an audition, that doesn't, it's not good enough. We need to know. Okay, are you here for Bayer? Are you for McDonald's or Walmart? Oh, I'm here for McDonald's. Great. That's us here. What role are you? Oh, I'm the hamburglar. No the hamburglar has been cast what? What roll oh young dad. So this is part of the prep and why I emphasize prep is so important. When you get your audition notification, look where the audition is. Ah Oh. The callback is in a different location. Okay, cool. Good thing I didn't drive halfway across town when I got to be on the other side of town. What role am I playing. Guy number two he says, guy. Okay, well we got four guys here. We got one, two, three, four. Which guy are you? Oh, let me, give me one second. That's just a little annoying sometimes because we don't always have a second and we want to feel like you guys are prepared.

We know with this stuff, there's a lot of stuff that you don't control and we respect that, but some of the stuff that you do control as an actor is being prepared, knowing what you need to know. What's your role? Where's your audition? Did you have sides? You should know all this stuff. If you're unsure, you can ask, but in the breakdown, in your audition notification, it will say what role you're playing. Guy Number four, know it.

Okay, next tip. All right. Making it your own. Parenthetical, inviting your personality to play within the concept and is the easiest way to make your set your audition apart from others. Yes. We talk a lot about make it your own or just play with it. Have some fun, improvise. What that is really about is get a grasp of the concept, of the idea of the story.

Of this script. What's the story? It's a doughnut man. He's trying to give you a donut. This little kid's gonna come and take your donut and you're going to say, I love kids. That commercial would never have been approved. It's not a great story. However, if you understand what the story is, then you're able to play within that story and then drawing on your own personal experience. That's how you're going to make it your own, and that way you're going to stand out from other people because no one else is going to be able to draw on your personal experience. Case in point, I've got a donut shop next to my house, eh? Go there every Friday for my kids. Okay? I'm not eating donuts anymore as often as I should. My kids get donuts every Friday. I might use that. So I'm going to say, let's say there's a little pre-life.

I'm going to go, hey, it's not Friday, but I'm here. Okay, I'm just drawing on, I may use my knowledge of the donut shops like, “oh no more Eclairs?” Thought you guys love at Claire's?” Just specificity. I'm drawing on what I know about donut shops and the more I'm able to do that and make it personal to me. So, hey mom, you work at the donut shop. That's not a great example because that's not real. My mom doesn't work at the donut shop, but if I can draw the experience of, Oh, I do take my kids every Friday to the donut shop, that's personal. It feels real. No one else is going to do it. So when we're talking about making it your own, we're not talking about inventing. Improvising isn't about inventing these funny jokes. That's not how that works. What it is about drawing on the useful source information inside of you, which is your life experience with donuts, and then using it with specificity within the story.

Those are the five tips. Don't shake hands. Know your eyeline's. Make it easy. Know your role. Make it personal. Boom. If you like that and you want more free training, click the link below or click above and put lawlesscastingseminars.com I got more free training for you all around commercials and how to elevate your audition to the next level. Things like the three biggest mistakes people make in this room.

You don't want to make those mistakes. Just check it out. See if you do or not, eh, click above, click below, click below first or click above after lawless guessing seminars.com. Gotta to go. Bye.