All of us spend more time at home these days, but the good news is that there are lots of things we can do as actors to maintain our talents! Any extra time spent at home with your child can be used to explore and hone existing skills as well as learn new ones.
Current Acting Skills
Make sure you can perform the skill shown on your resume during tomorrow’s audition. It’s a terrific opportunity to work on your piano skills, your baton twirl, or your cartwheel. We all get busy with life and auditions, and occasionally we forget the initial skills we stated on our resumes. Make a brief inventory of your child’s skills to ensure they are current. If not, you may come up with some enjoyable rewards to encourage them to practice frequently.
A Second Language
Spanish or another language is your child’s native tongue? A good time to brush up on your foreign language abilities is now. One thing you may do is organize some practice auditions in different languages using old audition scripts or sample commercial copy. Play it up! Several excellent language-learning apps exist as well, such Duolingo and Gus on the Go.
Accents
Salute to accents! The more your child can perform expertly, the better. But first, look at your child’s type and the responsibilities that they have previously been called upon to perform. European peoples? In that case, which nations? Southerners as the characters? If yes, which state and what area? characters from the Big Apple? Which borough, if any? Don’t forget to be specific! If you’re unsure of where to begin, I personally believe that performers, especially those engaged in theater, should always have a typical “RP” (Received Pronunciation) British accent. You can find so many excellent YouTube videos for studying dialects, and you might even think about hiring a dialect and accent coach.
Singing
You’d be astonished at how frequently actors who can sing are requested for TV, film, and commercial auditions, even if your child has no plans to pursue a career in singing. Singing is also enjoyable! The good news is that many vocal coaches now provide online courses. I usually think that after an actor has successfully finished a singing audition, especially an actor who might be a little apprehensive to sing, acting auditions seem less intimidating. Speaking words becomes much easier if you can breathe and project your voice like a singer!
Self-Taping
This is a major issue! You are aware that the age of the self-tape has arrived. Take advantage of this time to practice, practice, practice while perfecting your self-tape setup. Online classes on self-taping are being offered by several acting studios, including mine. Online, you may get inexpensive lighting rigs, smartphone tripods, and backdrops for photos. Your youngster must have a wonderful self-tape setup and be accustomed to recording things in order to be competitive in today’s world.
Characters
If your kid is particularly funny, they might want to explore the field of creating characters for both animation and sketch comedy. Sketch comedy programs like “Saturday Night Live” actually demand that actors applying for roles have a variety of completely formed personas, some of which are impersonations of famous people and others of which are entirely original.
Your child is welcome to play around with on-camera performances of various characters. A complex setup is not necessary to make a character reel. Now is a terrific time for your kid who enjoys voice-over to experiment with and perfect different characters for an animation reel. Contact us now for more information.
