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Fast Forward Productions. The women are speaking. Oh, what's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the One Broke Actress podcast. An honest account of actor life, plus a few lessons in the process. And please ignore me while I wipe the sweat from my face because the air conditioning in my house just went out and it's about to be 100 degrees and and I actually filmed this whole video in the take prior and the camera turned off. So moving to the iPhone. We got a mic plugged in. We're going to make it work. She is sweating. You know what? It's just like old times. Speaking of what has changed in 13 years? I didn't have air conditioning when I first moved to Los Angeles for the first 12. So it's just like that. We will power through. We've done it before, we'll do it again. Today we are going to talk about what has changed since I moved to LA in the past 13 years and what has stated stayed the same. This business has changed so much and there is a lot of things that have shifted, but there are some solid truths I want to kick it off with that actually have not changed to a certain extent. The first one that is, I think by far the most important is the amount of skill it takes to work in this business. And I know some of you are thinking, all I need is a co star. I just want one or two lines on a show and then things will start to happen. I'll be able to use that footage to get an agent or something like that. But the work it takes to be good enough to be repped by a good agent who's going to have the relationships to get you seen, submitted and hired for that kind of work is actually not just co star work, it's the work to be a fabulous actor in general. So I think that it's core, the basis of how good you need to be at this job just to get going is pretty high. And, and I don't think that has changed. We're going to talk a little bit in a second about what has changed between film and tv. But truly it is a lot of work to get really good at this business. And just like it hasn't changed the amount of work it needs, the amount of time it takes to get somewhere is in the same bucket. You need to be able to be really good at this job and continue to get better as you grow and change in order to be viable, to be booked continuously. And that is inevitably the job we want. The next thing that has remained completely consistent in this work is networking. The sayings, it's all about who you know and right time, right place are both important because they are still relevant. It is really important that you are out in the business meeting people and I'm going to tell you why. If you got a script and you were told, hey, you're going to be the lead in this and you can have all of your friends be in it, you get to pick, of course you're going to pick the people you love the most and trust to do good work. That is what networking is. It's just taking a little bit of the guesswork out of the casting process, out of the production process. It's finding people in this business you know like and trust. You might not know where a relationship is going to go yet, but it's still just as important to build and develop them. The cool thing about the time now that is kind of different than before is we have social media now. You have access to be on the radar of people who are nowhere near you in society yet who are nowhere near you in your day to day. It's such a gift to be able to do work and share it in the world. And I know some of you are like, but what's my work like? I don't have anything to share on social media or I hate social media. I think that you can learn to like social media. I think you just have to find your way in. But if it's not for you, that's okay. It's just one of many ways you can utilize it. To me, social media is like having a billboard that people can consistently see all of the time, whereas not being on there is like, you don't have to have a billboard, but how many people saw that billboard? I will do a video eventually for you guys about really showing up on social media as an actor because I get that it's very hard to put yourself out there in that way because you're not usually given a script, you're not given exactly what to say and you are being you, not as much of a character, but hard truth coming at you most of the time. The characters you're going to play in this business are distinct versions of you. So getting to know yourself on camera via social media to me is just a cheat code. And at the same time it puts you in front of people you might not have met before. So I love that networking is still as important as it was before and it only gets easier as you get older because the people in the power positions and you start to become around the same age and you start to have real life conversations. And this is why all of you need things going on outside of this business. Because when I'm around people who are in the business, we're not always talking about the business, we're not always talking about acting. Sometimes we'll talk about what TV shows or movies we're watching. But a lot of the times people are telling me the activities their kids are into, what hobbies they have, what they're doing in their downtime, where they're vacationing, you know what's going on and when your air conditioning goes out. But those are real life things that networking is based on. So in order to be good at networking, which stands the test of time of importance, you also need to be good at having a real life outside of this business. That being said, it brings me so nicely to point three of what has not changed in this business. How expensive it is to be an actor. There are so many things we have to spend money on, but there are so many things we no longer have to spend money on that used to be a cost. So to me that actually hasn't changed that much. Yes, inflation, economic, blah blah, blah, blah blah. But I used to drive like an hour and a half to an audition and 45 minutes back home and that was gas and then parking and then probably eating some sort of snack in my car that I kept in my glove box that was just probably a granola bar on its last day just melting away and I would just try and eat it with my hands and it would get all over. It was just, it was a nightmare. But that is not something we do anymore. In fact, I would say in person auditions are about 2% of what I do. The difference is I now have this space you on YouTube can see right here. I have an entire self tape space that I've had to purchase all of the equipment for learn to use. Okay, like you have to learn how to light yourself. I can't put on one more light in here because I don't know if you heard me say at the top of this video, but my air conditioning is going and I am too. So it's a one light kind of day. But even learning how to use one light and get a good tripod and frame up your camera and test a microphone and build out yourself tape space does take cash. Along the same lines, submitting on the online profiles takes a good amount of cash. So paying for casting Networks, Actors Access IMDb Pro. Maybe you're on casting Frontier or backstage or the list goes on and on. And by the way, I did a video about what of these websites I think are worth it and it's linked here if you want to check it out. So there's lots of stuff we have to spend money on. Getting new headshots every 2012-18 months. If you're a child actor and you're watching this, get off the computer. What you shouldn't I curse too much? Get out of here. If you have a child who's an actor, they probably need new headshots every six to eight months, depending on what stage of development they're in. Paying for classes, paying for coaching, even online coaching. Those are all services that we do pay for regularly and we need to be able to access regularly in order to be able to take take the auditions that are given to us. Yes, there are absolutely ways to be an actor on a budget and do it well. But I think that some people feel very limited by their budget. I think some actors feel very locked into being poor as a piece of this business. And I actually refuse to believe that that is true because the more financially successful I've been in my outside businesses, the better my acting career has gotten. So I have some words to say about that. But if you're at a place where you are like, Sam, I hate my day job. It barely pays for acting. I don't know how to handle any of these things. I actually created a free Back to School challenge that starts on Sunday. So it starts September 8th. There is a link below to sign up for it and in that you will join the email list for one broke actress and you will instantly be added to the group. I'm going to send out videos every single day for five days complete, completely free of how to get you back on track, whether that is in your day job or in your networking or in your acting skills and figuring out what you need to focus on. And I'm calling it the Back to School Challenge because it's September time we are getting that feeling back for actors. So sign up for that free five day challenge because I'm very, very excited about it. I think it's going to really help some of you solidify what you need to work on. And I think at the end of it you will feel some epic shifts as well as some inner peace in your acting career. And it's completely free, so just sign up. Take my emails. They're already made, so come and get them. Let's talk about what has changed significantly since my career started and for those of you who are coming back to acting, you're going to want to note all of these things very vividly in your brain. First of all, everything you see in this frame self tapes are king. Like I said, 98% of the auditions I do are in this self tape space. Honestly, probably three fourths of those I do with an online reader. I use the same handful of people consistently. Gabrielle is probably my number one reader. And then if not, I will snag a reader from inside of the membership that I run with her, our online actor community. And if Alice fails, I will utilize my husband as an in person reader. But being able to act in the corner of your room, or if you're in New York in your tiny, tiny little matchbox apartment, you probably share four other people and a couple of rats. I don't know how you guys do it. I have so much respect. Regardless of your space, you now basically have to have somewhere to self tape. And yes, there are places you could go to pay. But a lot of these, especially commercials, are so fast turnarounds. You need to be able to pop open your camera, turn on a light or two and, and get that shit done. And even to add on to that, you need to be able to act well in these circumstances because anybody could put up a camera. But to be able to do it and act like you are actually in the moment in the scene when there really your wall is behind you in this backdrop, your makeup on that table and your computer over here and the flowers that you need to get rid of, being able to focus in without those distractions. It's so much harder for someone like me to do that in my own space. And it's just a completely different skillset to know how to self tape. Also, you have to choose from your takes, which is really hard. Some people film way too many takes and some people just film one and they're like, that's good enough. You have to be able to cut it. Cut off the beginning and the end most likely, and turn it in. The skillset is just different. And while you're not going into offices and being unsure of your framing anymore, you have a lot more power in your hands. But that means you have a lot more responsibility, ability to deliver inside of your auditions. Speaking of auditions, the next biggest thing that's changed is TV and film. When I moved to LA, I was still getting DVDs of lost sent to me every single week from Netflix. I don't know what they're doing with those DVDs now I hope they're in a landfill somewhere. I hope they're in some sort of art installation that's gorgeous or something. But I just know deep down that they're in a land, which is so sad. But that was the world I came into. Netflix was the first real streaming platform and. And as I grew in my acting career, all these other ones popped up. Knowing what was on each one and what the tones of the shows were, and keeping up with all of these shows was so overwhelming. Film used to be the thing that very serious actors did. And now you have Selena Gomez and Meryl streep on a 30 minute comedy show on Hulu. Like that's crazy. And that's not even Meryl Streep's first show. She did Big Little Lies. That was insane. So the weight that film held is now very similar to the weight that TV holds. So that playing field has pretty much been leveled. And while peak TV has gone in and out, meaning the amount of shows that are filming at any one time, it is still a networking, streaming, ongoing battle, which means that TV shows are going off at random times. The actor schedule that I was told to build my life around back in 2011 is no longer relevant to the actor schedule of today day. This means I have to have harder boundaries on my time if I'm going to go on vacation or take time away from self tapes or I have to constantly be ready to self tape basically at any point in time. So that goes back to me having to be really responsible for my work inside of this business. And the last but probably simplest thing that has really changed since I moved to LA is headshots, man. When I moved here, my first agent wanted me to get headshots with a stethoscope in scrubs and then maybe one with glasses and then maybe one in like a Harry Potter sweatshirt or something to show my like kooky girl side. Those headshots look super dated. Not just because I changed, but because the business has changed. Headshots nowadays are much more based on who you are and the types of characters you can play instead of you fitting the mold of a character and putting on a costume. I would never tell an actor nowadays to take a headshot with a stethoscope. Some of your agents are going to tell you to do it. I don't question it, Just question it. I don't know. That's not really the norm anymore. Now headshots are built on your essence and it's all about the look behind the eyes. Yes, the style comes into it. And I think that's heavily based on filtering what shoots in your area that you are a local hire for. But the style, style is simpler, cleaner, and your headshots last 12 to 18 months solid, maybe even two to three years if you're an older actor, maybe five or six, who knows. But if you have headshots from 2011, they are no longer relevant because they are not the type of shots we are taking anymore. If you guys are curious, I have a link below. I have a whole ton of headshot content. I will link some of it below along with the headshot workshop that I taught with Gabrielle Bin Lass. If you guys want to pop in, it's an hour of your time and it will massively change the headshots you get from now on. All of that being said, what do you need to focus on in your acting career? The thing is, I don't know where you are at in this business and I think anyone who gives overarching acting advice is a little misleading because everyone's journey is different. Where you're at, where you've come from, what you need to focus on, the funds you have to do it, the time you have to do it, it's different for everyone. So instead of worrying about taking care of everything I just said and making sure that your skills and networking and expenses and headshots and auditions and understanding of TV and film is like all on lock, I would rather you get specific about what it is you need to do over the next couple of years. If you guys saw my last video, I talked a lot about how I don't think that survive till 2025 is the vibe. And yes, that did rhyme. Thank you so much. I think there's so much you can be doing right now, but it's going to be specific to where you are at in your level. So like I said, if you want help with figuring out what it is you can be working on in all these areas we just covered and maybe a little bit more. Sign up for the free Back to School challenge. I want to be able to get more of you unlocked in what's frustrating you about this business, especially if you've been in it for a minute. Because like I said, a lot has changed. And if you're someone who's new and you've been watching a lot of content from people who were in this business auditioning 20, 30 years ago, that's awesome. And also I think you need something relevant to the times. I look forward to seeing you guys in the back to school sessions and I will talk to you next week. I will, I will put my heart on the line Give it all this time I will, I will put my heart on the line Nothing will stop me this time.