ARE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS REALLY THE ANSWER?

This week hasn’t been very encouraging. I’ve been running around asking a bunch of actors if they’ve actually booked jobs by using new social media tools. The responses haven’t been positive at all. Everyone seems to be so negative about whether these tools are actually helping. So negative, that I even began second guessing the effectiveness of this movement. I think the problem is these tools really can’t work without the “conversation”. If people aren’t engaging then your efforts as an actor remain one-way. Think of a blog with no posted comments. Or a podcast that no one listens to or calls into with comments or feedback. Or a fully loaded profile on a social networking site without any “friends”. This is what it feels like as an actor sometimes. There’s no conversation! If the highly sought after agents or managers would actually engage with actors by viewing reels that are online and post comments, this would be one simple way that actors could get direct feedback. Casting directors could make comments about the terrible headshots or even the effective ones that are on the casting sites. If I were a casting director I would want to weed out the actors that aren’t serious enough to clean up their profile. If actors could gauge how they’re doing and see where they stand, there would be such a difference in this industry.

Thanks to a good friend and fellow actor, Robert Manning, I found an answer!!! It’s called CAZT. This is the most innovative and encouraging discovery since I became a professional actor. Your agent calls you with an audition that’s being held at CAZT studios. Woo-hoo! She emails you the sides (the audition material). You learn the material. The next day you go to the audition at CAZT. They offer you an option to receive your audition through a link that you can upload when you get home… with the casting director’s notes! The reason why I’m so excited is because actors never get to know how they do on an audition. They guess and are tormented by the experience when they don’t hear anything. Now actors can start to learn from their auditions. 

This is a real way that social media can be a truly effective tool for actors. I hope this becomes the norm for all auditions.