Casting director Candice Elzinga came in a guest for my summer intensives, and I wanted to share some choice bits of of her advice for actors. Candice has been casting in Vancouver for thirty years and has cast literally hundreds of TV shows and movies. Here’s some student questions and her answers, transcribed by me, so any errors or misspellings are mine 😉
Michael Bean
Acting Teacher
@confidenceoncamera
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Student: How do you stand out in an audition?
Candice Elzinga: You have to be able to answer who you are and who [the characters] are specifically. You know, where do they live? What kind of environment do they live in? What happened before the scene? You have to know what the emotional state of your character is, and then you need to know where you’re going to. You need to know what your character wants.
If you have done that homework and have made a decision on all those things then it will come through your work, and I will believe what is happening to you, and that will make you stand out. It’s not going to be the clothes you wear. It’s not going to be your hair and makeup choices. I mean, you should dress to suggest your character, and if you have a show that is taking place in a different time, then prepping and understanding that era and what your character would going through. Really to me, it all boils down to the homework. How many times you’ve run your lines, the decisions you’ve made. I guess it’s a bit like a test at school. What’s going to make you stand out is if you studied for it, because then you’re going to probably perform well. And the more preparation and the more investment that you’ve made in the scene, then the more the more connected you will be to your character, and that will make me more probably interested in watching your choices.
Student: Any recommendations about headshots?
Candice Elzinga: The most important thing is just make sure it looks like you. It’s not it’s not a glamour shot. You want to make sure that your picture just says hello, and it just looks like you look. Just make sure that it’s a natural, honest presentation of yourself.
Student: In the first five seconds of a self tape, what’s something that catches your eye and makes you more compelled to watch it?
Candice Elzinga: I don’t think you can tell much in the first five seconds. But I guess, in the first five seconds, you’re looking to see if you have met the actor before. Do they look like their headshot? Have they dressed to support the character? Is my first impression like, “Oh, yeah, I believe they could be so and so’s daughter or so and so’s brother or whatever this character is doing”. So I guess the first impression is your visual hit. So I guess just doing your homework, and if it’s a period piece, don’t don’t dress 2025 if it’s 1885. And then then once we’ve taken in the the visual of you, then what will stand out is a well composed shot. Meaning that you’re not doing your audition with a very distracting background. Your background is neutral so I can focus on your eyes and your expressions and you being very present. The light should be coming at you, not behind you because it it often puts you in shadow, and you can’t really see your eyes. And if you can’t see your eyes, you can’t really know what’s going through somebody’s thought process. The eyes are sort of the window to the soul, which is the window to what you’re doing. So if I can’t see your eyes, it’ll be very hard for me to connect with you and connect with your character.
Student: What’s a red flag in a self tape or an audition tape?
Candice Elzinga: Absolutely reading the sides and not lifting your eyes to your reader, that would be, probably the one of the biggest red flags. If you if you don’t have time to fully memorize it, at least be familiar with it. If you’re truly just reading it then it’s very, very, very difficult to lift the character forward. So that would be probably the biggest red flag for me.