Color guru Jill Kirsh and type specialist Mark Atteberry join our hosts to get specific about branding and how actors can use their actor brand to help build buyer loyalty. How can actors type themselves (and why should they)? Why are first impressions so important in our industry? How can the color of your clothing change everything about how you come across? Find out right here on Your Actor MBA.
Branding: When you’re in another market, you’re told you can play everything. In a market like Los Angeles, though, we’re looking for specialists, and you must have laser focus on your type (your brand) to cut through the masses and pop on the buyers’ radar.
Typecast: Note the word CAST is in “typecast,” and that’s a good thing. Book work in your primary type, show us that one thing you can do very well, get us to trust that you will always deliver, and then teach us the other things you can be and do.
You Are a Product: We discuss the evolution of Nike from a shoe company to one that sells apparel and sports equipment too. Actors can brand themselves just like companies do (and they need to, in major markets). As Mark says, “Branding is defined as what the public says about you.”
How Others See You: Let strangers type you! We share stories about recognizable working actors Willie Garson, Ed Harris, and Victor Williams and how they embrace what is specific to their castable brand. Mitchell describes charisma as “doing the same thing with confidence.”
First Impressions: We discuss why TV casting is much more about charisma and immediate connection, since viewers are flipping by using their remote control and not committed to go on the ride like consumers who’ve bought a ticket to a film at a movie theater. This is “flip by” appeal and it’s true for the emerging webseries casting happening right now too.
How to Type Yourself: Back to the concept of letting strangers type you, we discuss why typing is so important in a major market. Tracking patterns will help you zero in on the buyers who most need your type, regularly, which makes any contact you make focused on helping them solve a problem, rather than focused on you trying to get a job.
Color: Using color to pull focus is a very powerful tool. Jill says everyone can wear every color, it’s just about finding the right hue and getting colors to help all the “arrows point up” to your face. It’s not to overwhelm, overpower, or overshadow anything about yourself at the audition, but to have everything going for you in terms of the right color for your brand, so that the “It Factor” comes across effortlessly.
Headshots: Since almost everyone has switched to color headshots (in the past few years, CSA and Breakdown Services have done surveys and concluded that color headshots have reached about 95% saturation in major markets), be mindful of things that didn’t matter as much in the composition of black and white photos (backdrop, colors that distract or compete). Jewel tones work best on camera. Mark explains that agents are attracted to commercial headshots that show the fun an actor can have and to theatrical headshots that show the confidence an actor has.
Branding and Color: We discuss the use of color (and font and music) in all of your marketing materials to help convey your overall brand to the buyers.
Color Type Yourself: Yes, you can “color type” yourself. And remember: You can wear (almost) every color. It’s just a matter of which hue is right for you (and your brand).
We know you love that most beautiful, flattering headshot from the shoot. Save that photo for your mother or your lover. Don’t use it for casting unless that is exactly how you look, every time you walk into the room. And that means you should use retouching sparingly (if at all). We need you for your flaws, your wrinkles, your braces, your grey hairs! Don’t assume we want to see a photo of you in a look you could never easily replicate for a last-minute audition. Because, as Bonnie says, “a headshot is not (just) a photograph; it’s a marketing tool.”
No matter what you’ve seen or heard, you do not need headshots in costume! No medical scrubs. No cop uniforms. No overalls and hardhats. Just suggest the characters you play most — what’s in your primary type — with the clothes you choose during your headshot shoot. Usually, any agent that requires multiple, in-costume headshots from specific photographers is receiving a kickback for that high-priced photo session. Beware!
Grab a list of adjectives from breakdowns you’ve seen over the years (check Actors Access and LA Casting for the most common ones in use for casting), print up a sheet of 50 or so of them, grab an actor friend, and go to a mall or park or anywhere strangers are out and about (and not in a big rush), to ask them to “type” your buddy. Switch off, so you both get typed. You’ll start to see patterns emerge, which make certain breakdowns a slam-dunk for submissions. Get specific (like, are you a cop on Law & Order: SVU or a cop on iCarly? Very different, even though they’re both “cop types,” right?)
Get your headshots typed by putting ’em up at Facebook or on your personal blog and asking people to come up with adjectives or roles that best describe the photos. It’s important that your in-person typing and headshot typing align, since the last thing you want to have happen is getting called in for a type your headshot sells and then be a totally different type when you walk in the room!
If you’re not interested in a self-typing exercise that involves strangers, do this in your acting classes, your power groups, any workshops or meetings you attend with fellow actors, where you have a few minutes to kill. And if you’re looking for the easiest at-home method for self-typing, Mark recommends you grab your high school yearbooks and read everything everyone wrote about you, back then. You’ll be shocked, but they probably nailed your primary type all those years ago!
Submitting on-brand is really important so you don’t come across as “the little boy who cried wolf” by submitting on everything just because it lines up with your gender. You begin to teach us that not only do you understand your primary type, but how to respect what we’re casting enough to submit on roles where that intersects with who you are. Sure, sometimes we’ll “go another way,” so an off-target submission now and then can work, but if you simply sling spaghetti at a proverbial wall by submitting on everything, every single time, we don’t believe you’re right for anything, because clearly you believe you are right for everything. And remember, we’re a town of specialists. That’s what we need you to be!
Actors in smaller markets absolutely do not have to get as narrowly focused on their type as actors do in Los Angeles. Heck, even agents, managers, and casting directors have to specialize in Los Angeles — and very narrowly, usually. In minor markets, actors can have a wider range and play more types of roles across a broader age range because there is less competition for the roles. In Los Angeles, the shortest distance between you and the role that’s right for you is finding what you do that you make look effortless.
Re-assess your type every three years, minimum (about as often as you should shoot new headshots, if you’re an adult — young actors need new photos as their growth spurts happen). Don’t feel just because you were pegged to the wall as one type five years ago that the same is true for you today. While your core essence won’t have changed, the types of roles your brand best fits may have evolved over the years.
All of this is important so that we get you quickly. Think about how long you linger on a radio station while driving around in your car before changing the station if the song is not what you want to listen to right now. That’s about how long it takes us to decide — based on your headshot — if you’re the right fit for what we’re casting right now. So, make sure we’re always listening to “the hook” of your song. Show us your you, right off the bat.
You can use color as a tool to decrease your power when you’re going in on a role that is the victim! Learning the colors that make you powerful — then choosing colors that are at the opposite end of the spectrum from those colors — can help you carry off the “tired” or “beaten down” look of a particular character when necessary. It’s not always about finding colors that make you “pop” on camera! Sometimes, it’s about manipulating the colors to help you come across as weak.
Even your website should be done “in your colors.” Your postcards, the accent colors on your cover letter, the graphics on your demo reel, all of it should be in sync. Think about your overall brand when choosing the font for your resume and cover letter, as well as on your website and other marketing materials. Choose a music bed for your demo reel that compliments your brand. Anything that competes with your brand takes us out of having a very clear — and instant — understanding of what you’re going to be like, in the room. So, make it easy for us to get you. Yeah, this seems like a lot of effort to put into something that — when done right — we won’t even notice, but that’s the point. If you don’t do this right, we’ll notice the contrast. If you do it right, we’ll notice your acting. And that is what you want!
This episode of Your Actor MBA with your hosts Mitchell Fink, Bonnie Gillespie, and Marci Liroff was recorded on August 8, 2010.