
Discover the important differences between stage and camera acting. Learn what the camera wants from you and exactly how to deliver it.
Learn why you don't need a lot of words to tell a powerful story on camera.
Learn why reactions and stillness are more powerful than actions and movements on camera.
This lesson introduces the first 3 steps to learning your lines for any audition. Practice this system faithfully, and you will develop a powerful memory. You will learn scenes without focusing on memorizing lines.
This lesson is a deep dive into script analysis from the actor's point of view. You will learn how to identify all your beats in a scene. When you do, you will have a range of important moments to play. Each moment marks a transition in thought and feeling. Approaching a script this way will give your performance, variety, color, and life.
This lesson will help you give subtle performances and reveal your magnetic presence to the camera. It focuses on scripts with very few lines or seemingly boring dialogue. Your character says mundane things that just deliver information. This kind of material is exposition; it is not inherently dramatic. It could be medical, legal, or scientific jargon. You will learn the secret to making flat data come alive.
This lesson gives you strategies, secrets, and skills to help you dominate the script, to make the lines totally your own. You will learn how to practice your scene alone, how to make the words on the page come to you. You will also learn what to do while you travel to your audition. You will start to build unshakeable confidence.
This topic isn't discussed often, and it's vital to your success. The lesson in this video will arm you for the psychological warfare that happens in the audition waiting room. If you are not prepared for it, this phase of your audition can undermine you and steal your confidence, even if you are well prepared. After this lesson, you will have the awareness and the mindset to remain calm and confident under fire.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Will you shrink with fear, or will you have fun and win with confidence? This lesson teaches you the do's and don'ts of your moments with the casting director, director, producer, and others in the room. It also prepares you to face the camera with confidence and ease so that you perform at your best and win, even if you don't book the job.
It's easy to overlook this important topic. The audition's over. Right? Wrong. This is when all of your doubts wake up and spring to life. If you're not ready for them, they will blow out your flame and steal your power to reignite it. This lesson teaches you how to nurture and grow your belief and keep your dream alive so you can charge into the next audition with a winning spirit.
Good and great actors can improvise. They are comfortable with the unknown. You will be too after this lesson that teaches you what I call The Trigger Happy Memory System. It's my approach to learning lines without trying to memorize words. You can master it by doing two things - keep your mind open and practice, practice, practice.
This lesson takes a deeper dive into The Trigger Happy Memory System. You will learn a powerful exercise that can and should practice at home to make your new memory skills second nature. The payoff will be huge in all of your auditions.
This introductory video presents the different options you have for self taping, and the different requirements to consider depending on where you live and work.
This lesson demystifies and simplifies your choices for self taping at home. It offers a detailed screencast of all the gear available to you, from low to high budget, to shoot professional auditions at home. It includes lights, mics, cameras, and accessories, from low to high budget.
This lesson takes you by the hand as I walk you step-by-step through the exact equipment I use to shoot self tapes for myself and other professional actors. It also gives you a crystal clear diagram of my studio setup (easy for you to duplicate) and explains the how and why of my gear and process. The lesson is detailed and specific to give you the ability to start creating your own audition videos with ease and total confidence.
This video offers you 3 lessons in 1. First, you will learn from a professional working actor, Mr. Ron Lea, who talks about the do's and don'ts of playing certain stage directions and other actions in your auditions. Next, you will learn a lot from watching two of Ron Lea's recent self tape auditions that he and I shot together. This is not theory. This is the real thing. Finally, you will get an insight into the magic and ease of using green screen to shoot your own auditions. You will discover that green screen is definitely within your reach. The lesson does not go into all the details about green screen. There are entire courses for that.
This video is the last one in the CORE lessons of this course. There are 8 more bonus lessons coming up.
This video takes a deeper dive into our lesson about how to enter the audition room. Should you walk in as yourself or as your character in the script? You've already learned that you should enter as yourself. This lesson will deepen and expand your understanding of why this is important.
This important lesson gives you insight into your journey from technical expertise in your craft to instinctive mastery. It serves as a roadmap from a state of not knowing what to do to a state of peak performance when your talent shines on demand.
This lesson gives you more specifics about the relationship between camera eyeline and your performance. It will help you enrich all of your on camera moments.
Learn how to be calm and centered when you walk into an audition room and discover the unexpected. This true audition story is about a time that happened to me, and I won.
This lesson shows you how to step into your unshakeable confidence before you walk into the audition room. You'll learn not to expect a cuddly environment and friendly people waiting for you. In fact, sometimes they can be downright cold. You can still win them over.
It's great to read for a big role. It's also dangerous. In this lesson you'll learn to avoid a huge trap that can steal a big role from you.
There's no other way to say it. This is a story about bombing big time at an audition. Yes, it's my story, and I'm sticking to it. The good news is that it happens to everybody, and it's okay. It doesn't define you, and you can still be great.
This is the finish line. And, it is a new beginning for you. A beginning that takes you to new levels of confidence and excellence as an actor. A beginning of a new richer phase of your acting career. This lesson summarizes everything you learned and gives you a clear view of your journey through an experience that is really 6 courses in one.
What you’ll learn
You’ll discover a new sense of confidence that you will carry into all your auditions.
You will know exactly what to do before, during, and after your audition. This will give you a sharp competitive edge over most actors.
You’ll eliminate the guesswork and worry about what casting directors want from you. You will know what that is and how to deliver it every time.
You’ll develop powerful new memory skills to quickly learn any number of lines. Imagine learning an entire scene within 10 to 15 minutes for an impressive cold read.
Requirements
Your burning desire to be a highly respected, well paid, professional film & TV actor
Description
This is a no-nonsense course that gives you a clear, proven, step-by-step system to help you master every phase of the on camera audition process. No fluff. No theory. You will learn powerful techniques and secrets that lead to acting success and career advancement.You gain from my experience of more than 40 years as a professional actor and teacher. I reveal the best of what has worked and still works as I continue to audition and book film and TV roles.
Master professional audition skills and create the mindset that executes those skills with elegance and ease.
A small glimpse at what this course offers you:
How to make the camera fall in love with you
How to get casting directors excited about bringing you in for great roles
The secret to remembering all your lines without memorizing words
How to light up the audition room with your magnetic presence
How to win at every audition
Master the audition process that begins at home, peaks in the casting studio, and winds down as you leave the experience behind you.
You can learn a lot from many qualified acting teachers. You can also find valuable knowledge on YouTube. Consider this course if you want a complete learning experience that covers all the bases. My aim is to make you bulletproof by giving you mastery of things that can win or lose an audition; many of these things happen as outside and away from the audition room. This course will help you become an insider whose mastery goes beyond obvious knowledge.
CONTENTS & OVERVIEW
Your audition mastery in this course will take you on a learning adventure with a clear beginning, middle, and end. You will enjoy a journey of more than 4 hours through 26 video tutorials.
Here is the trajectory you will follow.
Beginning
Your journey begins with an eye-opening exploration of the significant differences between stage and screen acting. This important foundational step is often skipped in otherwise good courses. Without it, it’s easy to make good acting choices that may work beautifully on stage but miss the mark completely on camera.
Next, you will learn specifically how to adapt any performance to the camera. You will round off this section of the course by leaning the three shots that affect you the most.
Middle - Part 1
This comprehensive section will make you comfortable with any script written for the camera. You’ll know how and why good screenplays are very different from good stage plays. You’ll appreciate and, maybe, even fall in love with the sparseness of good screenwriting.
You will learn how to identify beats that will give your performance variety, color, and focus. One module is devoted entirely to a detailed breakdown of a scene from an award winning screenplay.
My expertise in this area will enrich your learning. I taught a very popular script analysis course in the drama department at York University in Toronto. It helped actors and directors as well.
Middle - Part 2
You will take a deep dive into the entire audition process. There’s a lesson on what to do before an audition. This includes learning your scene at home and reinforcing what you’ve learned while you travel to your audition.
Another lesson focuses on how to handle the waiting room at the audition venue. Many a good actor loses the game here before stepping into the inner sanctum where the camera awaits.
Of course, there is a lesson on what should and should not happen once you are in the room with the casting director and anyone else involved in the project. This lesson covers the technical details of your relationship to the camera and the reader.
Sometimes, they throw you a curve ball at an audition. They like you and want to read you for a role you haven’t prepared for. Gotchya covered. There is a great lesson on how to ace a cold reading, complete with powerful memory secrets. This is where you will learn the Trigger Happy Memory System.
But wait, there’s more… :-)
Middle - Part 3
The course would not be complete without specific guidelines on how to self tape. I take you through the process in a series of videos that cover everything from shooting at home on a smartphone, to shooting with a DSLR camera, to shooting in a professional studio.
And, get this! There’s a separate video on a hot and important topic for you - what actions you should perform in an on camera audition and which ones you should ignore. You’re going to love this one. The guest instructor is a professional working actor in demand. His name is Ron Lea. He has numerous credits, including lead roles in two TV series.
When we shot this lesson, we had just completed a self tape for Ron. And, guess what? You will see the final cut that he submitted tor the role. Plus, we added one of Ron’s another totally different audition pieces. So, this video really covers three topics: 1) The do’s and don’ts of performing stage directions; 2) What an actual self tape audition looks like. This is real world learning, and I’m excited to offer it to you.
3) You will also get a taste of green screen magic (We shot Ron’s auditions with green screen; you will see clips with and without green screen backgrounds).
Bonus Lessons
As I created this course, I discovered things along the way that would support and enrich lessons I had already developed. So, I created additional videos for that purpose.
There are 4 videos, each one, telling a story about one of my professional auditions. Three were victories. One was not. I didn’t shoot these videos to talk about myself. You’ll find that they will shed light on what you have already learned.
Plus, I have created a few important lessons on the mindset that underlies the techniques you will learn for doing powerful auditions, as well as videos that take a deeper dive into some of the important course topics.
The End - Really a New Beginning
I created a review video that shows you the roadmap of your entire journey through the course. It provides a framework for you to instantly visualize how the course sections build on each other.
Transformation
You will get the most out of this course by practising the skills as you learn them. You can easily do that at home with a smartphone, a tripod, a mic, and some basic lighting. By the end of the course, you will have more than knowledge. You will have new habits and behaviors that are part of your acting DNA.
You will show up at auditions with calm, certainty, and presence. When you step in front of the camera and hear, “Action!” you will be open and available to let your talent shine through. You will win the roles that you are best suited for. When you don’t book a role, you still win by leaving a great impression on the casting director who will eagerly bring you back to play and win again and again.
Who this course is for:
Actors with any level of experience who want to learn proven screen acting techniques, develop their talent, and master the art and skills of professional TV and film auditions.