Online audition course

2025 MONDAY NIGHT SELF-TAPED AUDITION COURSE

Starts: January 20, 2025

Time:  Every Monday 7 - 9 PM for seven sessions

Cost:  $280 total cost for all 7 sessions payable at once or in 2 installments

Enrollment: 2-hour course limited to 8-10 students

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This class is a 7-session intense overview of self-taped auditions that covers the foundations of your home audition from the lighting, sounds, and setting to the foundations of turning in an effective read at all role levels.  The course is about 80% acting technique and stagecraft and 20% business acumen. Each week builds upon what was learned the week before.  All classes are recorded and posted to a private YouTube channel so that you can rewatch them as much as you like and review the feedback and lessons.  Also, because I am a working actor, there may be a need to postpone one of our sessions to the following week.  In this instance, the end of our course will be bumped to a week later to ensure that you still get all 7 nights of class included in the course.  

Through the learning of audition technique, Keith teaches how to build emotional and intellectual specificity into your performance, visualization of circumstances,  use of frame when working on camera, using eyeline to communicate emotional intent in tight framing, along with script and character analysis.

Week 1:

• The audition process and the people involved.
• How on-camera work differs from other forms of acting.
• Speaking for intimacy, proximity, framing.
• The language of the lens - framing
• “Slating” and your audition setup.
• Understanding scenes, circumstances, and specifics of what is around you.
• Following the submission directions and where they will mislead you.
• Sending two “versions” of a scene.
• BUSINESS - Headshots and resumes.
• HOMEWORK: a one-line scene

Week 2:

• Review of your first scene submissions - 1 line scene
• Understanding your purpose in the production - the stick and the river
• Understanding preceding and following action - where are you coming from and where are you going?
  • What happens after your final line beyond where you are going?
• Understanding purpose/action/objective - what are you trying to accomplish?
• BUSINESS - What is type and why does it really matter?
  • It is not appearance.  It’s believability.
  • You don’t have as much control over it as you think.
  • Why it makes life easier.
  • Why it makes life harder.
  • Changing casting’s perceptions.
• BUSINESS - Setting up profiles on casting websites for use when you are ready - do it now.
• HOMEWORK - retape one-line scene to incorporate feedback, record new 2-4 line scene.

Week 3:

• Review of your 1-line resubmissions
• Review of your second submissions 2-4 lines
• Understanding stakes - the price of failure.
• Understanding relationship and how it creates complexity.
• What do I do when not speaking?
• BUSINESS - The agent / actor relationship.  Are managers useful?
• HOMEWORK - retape 2-4 line scene, record new full scene scene.

Week 4

• Review 2-4 line read resubmissions
• Review your third submissions - full scenes
• Inner monologue and the relevance of historical specifics - blending self and character
• Expectation - weighing what is happening against what you worried or hoped would happen.
• BUSINESS - Self-produced content as a path to opportunity.
• Direct to camera appeals – on camera hosting and commercial copy
• HOMEWORK - retape full scene, record new direct to camera or commercial audition.

Week 5

• Review full scene resubmissions
• Review commercial or direct to camera appeals 
• Scene arc - how you change between beginning to end
• Finding scene waypoints - leaving room for audience to fill in thoughts in significant moments of decision - beat changes.
• BUSINESS - diversifying your opportunities to compensate for variability in your career.  Freelance pros/cons.
• HOMEWORK: retape commercial/DTC appeal AND record two-scene auditions.

Week 6

• Review of Two scene auditions - NOTE because of the size of this assignment, this week’s class may run long.
• Looking at how information from one scene affects the other.  
• When you last parted company - expectation… again.
• How the audience being along for the ride makes your job easier.
• BUSINESS - Demo reels and clips.  Where do you get usable footage?
• HOMEWORK: Reshoot 2-scene auditions

Week 7

• Review of final project retapes.
• BUSINESS loose ends to wrap up.
  • How commercials work - session fees, usage, cycles, and market.  Conflicts.
  • How film/tv work can provide long term compensation.
  • Agents and managers and your long term relationship with them.
  • Why you should always ask for money - always.
  • YOU are your best advocate and biggest threat.
  • Localities and RTW vs. Union regions. - how labor law affects how you pursue your business.
  • What do I do now?