Hi friends.
Our community consists not only of filmmakers, crew members, and musicians, but of several actors - based in NYC as well as across the country. Actor friends of ours admit to us that they aren't that good with the business side of acting, how to get agents, etc. We get asked for advice a lot along the way and we thought it'd be cool to give you some - straight from the experts. Here are answers to some of the top questions we get asked about acting and the industry as a whole. Enjoy!
Getting your name out there
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8O3i9mvJAM
How to Network
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpgJVJ-JPFk
SAG vs Non Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umMCFSUBnk0
Getting the Job
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfUoeFRSxH4
When to get a manager
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7p73vVNcsw
Getting an agent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEl-XxjRPA
Business for actors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcTU_0Q5ob0
Extra advise - on the house
Here's the deal. It sucks. We know. We started this business wanting to be nothing but directors. That's it. However you get scripts that are not capturing what you want to say, or your view of the world, and you end up writing them yourself to suit your strengths, as well as sometimes even your budget (or lack thereof). Then you get going and you realize that producers these days are not on the same page as they were in the 70s, or even the 90s. They dont get your vision of the film, or where you want to take it creatively. Then, out of necessity, you end up producing the film as well. This is what you sometimes have to do, in order to place yourself at a level where agents, producers, and studio execs end up taking over for you so you can concentrate on doing what you do best - being creative. This is the way it is for actors as well. Eventually you may realize, that you should just suck it up, and do it to move forward to the day where soon you wont have to.
Also, the industry math breaks down like this:
There are two types of acting jobs. Paying jobs, and non paying jobs. The paying jobs give you a fat paycheck that may even take care of you for several months if you get one in TV or a good commercial, but those jobs will for the most part probably not do much for you as an artist. You will be asked to "walk over there and say this" over and over again. The script proabably sucks, your co-actor may be the latest fad star-of-the-moment from some former boy-band. But you will get your check. This will clear you up time-wise, to get more paid work as well, but at the same time you can take projects from people whose work you respect, whose scripts challenge you, although they may not be able to pay you up front.
The unpaid jobs are these kinds of jobs. You wont get a check up front, or maybe even at all if the film doesnt sell. But what it does is it propels you forward, as an artist. You will be allowed to improvise, be in the moment, and sometimes, do really good and inspired work, because the directors of these projects build their movies around YOU. Find a Hollywood or TV gig where the producers and directors let you be yourself and basically follow your own instincts in front of the camera. You wont.
Your only job is to mix these two kinds of acting jobs. Integrate both. We know an actor who did a no budget film and afterwards got representation, and vowed to "never do no budget gigs again." Big mistake. We know people that have been leads in big Hollywood movies, standing next to giant actors in the business. They skipped the no budget work entirely and jumped straight to the big league. The down side, is that now the actor is back to square one, again on the hunt for anything - commercials, etc to pay the bills, as well as being on the look out for interesting non paying work.
Why? Because that actor realized that Hollywood gave them great exposure, but failed to show the world fully what they could do. The actor never got a chance to let it really all hang out, to really have a story that was detailed to their gifts as a performer, thus leaving a reel that is lacking any real depth. That actor has been "to the mountain top" and has had the big trailers, big paychecks, and huge red carpet treatment. That actor now has learned and is no longer phased by that, nor holds any value to it. They are more excited now by the good stuff - where you are the story, your talents are stretched and challenged, and you grow as an actor. Less people will see the films, yes, but on the festival circuit as write ups and awards are presented, they will have opened themselves up to a whole new group of independent filmmakers, with steadily increasing budgets, that were not aware that you they had so much depth, range, or raw talent. Then, as has happened plenty in the past, Hollywood suddenly remembers again. The secret is, a lot of directors cast their films by watching other films. Get in as many as you can, as long as they mean something.
Greta Gerwig's career is the perfect example. Care for her acting style or not, she is the Julia Roberts of low budget film. Every DIY director wants to work with her, and reputations travel, because we hear that she is a joy to work with, her attitude is encouraging, and from what we know, like the cast of Quiet City, she'll even "help carry equipment." She could care less about her credits, her screen time, her lack of a trailer, or even that there is not a full make up staff to make her look glamorous. She started with Swanberg's LOL, and was so great to work with was cast in Hannah Takes the Stairs as the lead, then lead and co-writer in Nights and Weekends (which opened a couple weeks ago here in NYC), in several prominent low budget films in between, before going to do Baghead (by The Puffy Chair directors The Duplass Brothers), that went on a nationwide theatrical release and was picked up by Paramount Classics. The film has made money, and continues to. Deferred payments and/or ownership points are not all that bad if you can sustain yourself in the meantime. Greta now has an agent, and is in a Ti West new film "House of the Devil" which reportedly had a distributor already in place before shooting and had a reported budget of over a million dollors. She is on her way. Case closed.
Below is another in a long, growing list of articles about her.
The accidental ‘It’ girl
By Mark Olsen
July 26, 2008 in print edition E-16
Think of her as an ingénue for the text-message set. With her offbeat allure, charm and sass, actress Greta Gerwig has become something of an indie-film sensation over the last two years after several of her movies played to swooning responses at such festivals as SXSW and Sundance. Since her insightful portrait of youthful uncertainty and anxiety as the title character in 2007’s “Hannah Takes the Stairs” (the defining movie of the recent low-budget, dialogue-driven “mumblecore” film movement), she has seemed to be on the cusp of something bigger.
But not quite yet. In the new micro-budget horror-comedy “Baghead,” currently in theaters, Gerwig plays Michelle, a twentysomething transplant to L.A. desperate for attention and connection. The character is by turns flighty and wily, determined to get what she wants even if she doesn’t always know what that is, and provides an ideal launchpad for Gerwig’s distinctively natural, goofy-yet-sultry screen presence.
“Baghead,” a hybrid of mumblecore’s character-based talkiness jump-started with genre kicks, follows four struggling actors as they set out to make a movie in the woods, only to find themselves terrorized by an unknown assailant. Michelle is in no small part a complicated creation of Gerwig’s own devising, as filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass, whose previous feature was 2005’s small-scale hit “The Puffy Chair,” allow their actors a wide berth through improvisation and collaboration.
Gerwig is something of the accidental “It” girl, a reluctant starlet whose first on-screen performance, in the 2006 film “LOL,” consisted largely of saved voice mails she had left for her then-actual boyfriend. (Along with risqué camera-phone pictures she took of herself for the movie in the bathroom of a university library.) Yet with her choppy blond hair, wide eyes and pouty mouth, she has one of those faces that the camera, at whatever the budget, just seems to like.
“The way I describe it is when I’m shooting, [the camera] just wants to go to her,” said Jay Duplass, who besides being co-writer and co-director of “Baghead” also shot the film. “Greta, her face, like, glows.”
“She’s kind of her own secret weapon,” said Mark Duplass in trying to define Gerwig’s appeal. “She’s got a lot of things working there and I’m still not exactly sure how it all computes, how all the pistons fire.”
Gerwig, 24, puts across her characters with such ease that it can seem as if she is not acting at all. Whichever performance of hers someone sees first – mischievous and a little dim in “Baghead;” whip-smart and reckless in “Hannah” – it’s all too easy to assume that’s just her.
“I sometimes wish I could lose who I was a little bit more,” Gerwig said of acting. “In my mind, my performance in ‘Baghead’ is so wacky and out there, and then I look at it and it’s still me. I sort of can’t get rid of who I am.
“I don’t think anybody would hire me if they wanted somebody who was completely a blank slate. I’m not comparing myself to her, but if you hire Diane Keaton you’re going to get Diane Keaton. She can play lots of different things, but she more often than anything is Diane Keaton. I think that would be something closer to what I would be able to do. I don’t ever see myself playing Queen Elizabeth.”
The comparison to Keaton works not only for Gerwig’s eccentric mannerisms and personalized sense of style: Like Keaton, Gerwig comes across as a breezy combination of native California kookiness and bookish East Coast smarts.
Originally from Sacramento, Gerwig moved to New York City to attend Barnard College. There she studied English and philosophy and was an aspiring playwright. “LOL” led to working again with director Joe Swanberg on “Hannah,” which costarred Mark Duplass, leading to “Baghead” and other roles. Although her background as a writer has proved useful in the collaborative world of low-budget indie filmmaking from which she has emerged, her self-image as a performer has needed a little work. How does she see herself exactly – actress, writer, director or all-around scene queen?
“That’s actually a question I’ve kind of struggled with over the last two years,” replied Gerwig, on her cellphone while waiting for a bus in Brooklyn. “You always have your mental image of yourself, the thing that you think that you are, and you keep saying that until you realize it doesn’t match with reality. I’ve sort of recently realized one of the things that I am is an actress.”
The unshakable Greta-ness of Gerwig should not draw away from the power of the performances she has given, an incisively varied gallery of idiosyncratic sirens.
“I think there is an effortlessness to what she is doing because she’s really good on the spot,” said Mark Duplass, “she’s really good at improvising, she’s really good instinctually. That being said, it’s like any good thrift-store outfit: It takes a lot of time and energy to make something look so lackadaisically put together.”
After the release of “Baghead,” Gerwig has plenty more projects on deck; already in the can are two comedic examinations of female friendship: “Yeast,” for director Mary Bronstein, and “Nights and Weekends,” on which she also shares writing and directing credit with Swanberg. She has also shot “The House of the Devil” for indie horror director Ti West and is working on “Thomas the Obscure” for filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.
- LA Times
See you on the festival circuit!
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