Not only is Portia DeRossi highlighted as one of the most beautiful people in People magazine this month, she is also featured this weekend in LA’s Parade magazine. My photo shoot with Portia was really amazing and I am so glad Parade chose one of my photos to run with their article.
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Actors that I meet with will ask me all the time how I will “direct” them during the shoot. Well, to be honest, it depends on the actor. Sometimes I throw tons of words and lines and directions at the actor during the shoot and sometimes I don’t say much of anything past regular conversation. It depends on the actor and if they need me. If the shots are looking good and you are connecting, I just let you have at it. If I feel like you are stuck or blank or not present, I will give you things that I call my “tricks” to bring your attention and focus out to the camera.
Our shoot day is a performance. It’s a performance for you with me and the camera is in between us to capture everything that goes on and oozes out of you. The scene is between us and I am ok with whatever you need to do to get there. The great part is that you don’t have to go very far. You don’t have to cry or burst out into laughter, you just have to connect and keep your mind busy. It’s actually not difficult at all. Kids are great at it because they are not concerned about what they look like during that moment, they are just playing and exploring and listening.
Happy shooting!
An actor on the Backstage West Boards asked this:
“I’m getting my headshots updated and am having a difficult time narrowing down my type.
I’ve got 1 look figured out and just need 2 more.
Do any of you have a list of all the “generic” character types that exist in dramas and sitcoms?
Or do you know where I can find this information somewhere online”
Here was my honest response, I hope it helps you too:
I shake my finger at you… if you don’t know who you are yet or what you can and really want to do yet that’s ok BUT it’s not someone else’s job to do your homework for your headshots. I recommend that you watch TV and look at the roles that fit you and then write down some adjectives that your friends would use to describe you and that you would use to describe the characters you see on tv. Then look at what kinds of jobs those characters have, what their financial status is, their luck or unluck in love and their relationships, how their clothing fits their role (sexy? homely? matronly? plain jane? eccentric? earthy?) and you will have a good start. It’s not brain surgery, but it’s your homework, as an actor, every day. You need to watch movies, and tv and film and pick scenes for yourself and see what those characters you gravitate towards are like… then how do they dress on TV.. in commercials. This is your job. If you want to be on tv then you need to know what you are selling. If you don’t know what you are selling then how is anyone else (an agent or manager) supposed to sell for you. Ask strangers if you want some unbiased opinions but do the homework. It’s worth it. It will save you time in your career going for roles that you are not right for. Then, when you become a big star you can play whatever roles you can imagine for yourself and use whatever publicity picture you like because everyone will already know who you are.
Phew.
Hope that helps
Joanna
www.joannabrooks.com
Headshots LA
Do I have to be smiling in my “commercial” headshot? Ok… so the short answer to this is NO. I think that smirking is the new Smiling. You can look like you are up to something, like you have a really silly thought in your head… like you have a fun secret. It doesn’t hurt to come up with a few things that you can run through your head during your session.
Whatever your expression is in your headshot it has to be REAL. It has to be authentic. You KNOW when you are faking a smile and everyone else will know it too sogo into your shoot with the idea that you are going to be authentic and see what bubbles up. We laugh a LOT in my headshot sessions and I try to catch you as you start to smile and as it melts away. All those things in between are great and as long as you are not trying to fake it, then you will get a nice shot.
Commercial shots, although they don’t need to be smiling, they do need to be warm. They also need to be simple. No over-the-shoulder shots, especially for a commercial photo.
So, whatever you are doing in your headshot, it needs to be authentic. Those are the best photos.
I had the opportunity to shoot a session for an actress who wanted to give her boyfriend some photos of her he would not forget. She was an awesome sport and wanted to get really artistic nudes.
I had SO MUCH fun and they came out so well that I decided to offer these types of intimate shoots to all women who just want to celebrate their bodies.
So… Want to celebrate your femininity and have some amazing artistic shots forever? Let’s do it!
Shoots are $375 and include a discrete disc of 20 final images along with 4×6 prints. You can bring lingerie or just wear your skin and I will shoot them in a private environment.
Sound like fun? Want to do something daring? Want to surprise your partner? OR Just want to celebrate yourself?
Call me to book…
I interviewed Actress, Casting Associate and all around awesome gal Lisa Nicole Lennox.
JB:
Lisa, you get to be an actress who works in a casting office. Tell me some of the things that you helped cast in the last few years. Maybe the highlights for you…
LL:
I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to be involved in the casting process. The first project I worked on was Twilight: Eclipse and that itself was a crazy and exciting experience from day one! We were responsible for casting three roles for Eclipse and saw over a hundred actors read for just one part alone. There was also a worldwide contest held for a chance to be chosen for a small part in the film by submitting a self-taped audition. We received well over two thousand video submissions and watched every single one of them! We picked about 20 of those submissions and passed them on to the director and producers to view. Seeing the casting process from the other side of the table completely demystifies and humanizes the casting/audition experience for me as an actor and has also taught me some invaluable tips to use for my own auditions. I will say, nothing beats being prepared and having confidence in your self and your work as an actor. As a casting associate, you can taste the desperation of an actor looking for the big break – or even just a small one – the minute they walk into the room. Just come in, be polite, do your work, say thank you and leave. Leave us wanting more of you.
JB:
What were some of the turn-offs? I mean how do actors get in their own way when they walk in the room?
LL:
Doubting their work and outwardly showing frustration, asking for multiple retakes and nothing from our perspective significantly changes in the performance to be worth the time. Don’t get me wrong, I tend to always have a better second take, and I believe you should ask for it if you feel it will make your performance shine or you have another idea for the material, but not just so you feel better. Be kind and considerate of the casting office time, don’t create too much conversation about the traffic or how difficult it was to find parking. Also- always have a headshot and resume with you. Always. Even if you think you don’t need one. Casting directors like to keep their own files and may just want to slip you in there. This might seem obvious but don’t be rude, arrogant, or needy. Just be polite, grateful and awesome!
JB:
That’s amazing advice! Thank you so much!
One last question, since I am a headshot photographer…
What do you respond to in a headshot? How important, or is it that important for an actor to submit a serious shot for Film rather than a smiling one?
LL:
As everyone says - it’s the magic, the life, the energy and the story behind the eyes. Hands down most important. Make sure you’re looking right into the lens of the camera and not slightly above it. That little difference affects the impact your photo has on the viewer. Yes! If you’re going in for a comedic role have an energetic smiley shot. Remember the casting directors are absorbed in the project you’re auditioning for and you want to fit into that “mood.” Don’t make them have to stop and take the time to imagine what your dramatic shot would look like if you were smiling or vice versa. You want to make it easy for them to love you and hire you! Also, love your own headshot so when you hand it to the CD we can feel your confidence about it. If it’s not your favorite shot but it’s getting you auditions, keep it and fake that you love it. Never apologize for your photo – even in body language. Casting directors are inherently very intuitive to what your body is saying outside of your words. I believe it’s what makes them excel at their job, or any job for that matter. But this job is about human beings coming in the room using everything they’ve learned about life to tell a part of story. You begin to develop a keen sense of body language when you spend your whole day with actors who might be auditioning with same material. We’ve seen those same lines said over and over all day long and we start to listen to what else you’re saying. We can start to sense who is confident, prepared, happy, and who is not. It becomes crystal clear by end of sessions. We have been to know to say: Yah, he was pretty good but there was something weird going on there. What was the “weird?” I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t as prepared as he wanted to be, or was worried about his parking meter, or lacked the confidence to give his best. But we sensed it. I can’t believe I am about to write this but - have fun with it! Seriously, it’s so true. When you’re having fun with what you’re doing, then we are relaxed and having fun with you. If you’re not, then we aren’t either. And, really, if you’re not having fun, why are you doing it?
JB:
Ok, I lied… I do have one more question. Do you call people in with little to no experience just because they have a great photo? What about if someone has a terrible photo but maybe the right-look, do they make it in to your office?
LL:
The answer to both of those questions is yes – sometimes- but it depends. We have called in people with less experience because their photo looks like what we’ve envisioned for a specific role and the office I work for has a desire and open mind to finding new talent, which is a treat and bonus for all actors. Not all offices work that way though. Sometimes the resume is all that matters. We do look at their credits and honestly we’ve gone both ways. It depends on what kind of role we’re casting. If it’s a lead, chances are we won’t call you in if credits are sparse. If it’s a smaller role, we have more flexibility with who can bring in.
Here’s the deal: a breakdown goes out and we can get over a thousand submissions for one role. (!) We look over the photos quickly and see who jumps out at us and looks right and we pull those. We then look at their resume and the rest of the photos in the gallery and then say yes or no. We do this process about three times in case we’ve looked over someone, which can happen. But this is why your photo is so important!! Get yourself pulled in the first round because other offices may not have the gift of time to run through the submissions two or three times and once the auditions slot are full, they are full. I would suggest having your photo cropped tight like passport photo – this way it’s easy for us to see your face – and we don’t have to search deeper in the photo to find you. Imagine your photo (the size of a passport photo) lined up on the computer screen with a thousand other photos. Does it catch your eye? If not, you may be hurting your chances of getting called in. Get an objective opinion. Ask your agent or someone who doesn’t you all that well. Speaking of photos in the online gallery, less is more! I would suggest having no more than 5 or 6. Really. Even if you love all ten, narrow it down so you have a nice variety of what kind of parts you can play. I started to notice that the more credits an actor has, the less photos they have in their gallery and vice versa. When I opened up an actor’s resume and ten photos pop up, it feels a bit desperate and “trying too hard” which feels novice. Also, half of the ten photos are redundant and unnecessary. Be wise and selective about this process. I personally had 11 photos in my gallery and quickly cut it down to six after realizing this in my last casting job. Of course, this is just my opinion, but it started to become fact that more credits equaled less photos in the gallery. So, to sum it up – your photos are VERY important as it is the first evidence of you that comes through the office. Spend the extra money for hair and makeup and for the right photographer. Photos that are cheap, look cheap and then read novice. And remember, if you don’t want to make the investment, there are a thousand other people who will – and are.
JB:
Thank you so much for your time and being so detailed and helpful. I am sure actors will find this really valuable.
I had the chance to interview my friend and actress Katie VonTill. I think she had some really useful info, here’s how it went down:
JB:
Hi Katie, your career is going awesome. Tell me some of the shows and commercials you have recently worked on.
KVT:
The last year has been a busy one for me. I have a national commercial which will start running in April. I can’t tell you what it is for as I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but it’s a great spot, so keep an eye out for it! Also airing soon is my second episode of “Community” on NBC! I play a nurse. In the last year, I also appeared on “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Tonight Show,” and “Better With You.” I’m thrilled to be doing lots of comedy these days. I feel like my quirky persona fits best in the realm of comedy. I still do stage from time to time. I just returned from doing “Guys and Dolls” with Symphony Silicon Valley. I played “Adelaide” and was thrilled to receive laughter from not only the audience in front of me, but also from the symphony musicians behind me! The many “Bravas!” didn’t hurt my ego either. Despite working a bit in TV, film and stage, most of my work is in voice over. It’s my bread and butter so to speak. In the last year alone, I’ve done work commercial and animation work for Disney, McDonald’s, Warner Bros., CBS, The CW, Fisher Price and Pier 1 among others.
JB:
That’s awesome. You know I love your voice. You use the word “quirky” and I hear actors use that all the time for one of their headshot looks, can you explain what that means to you?
KVT:
Well for me personally, I refer to myself as “quirky” rather than as a “character actor.” The term “character actor” has come to mean “unattractive” and while I may not be a leading lady, I’m certainly a cute girl. Quirky to me can mean many things. Quirky is funny, spunky, sassy. It can sometimes mean broad or larger than life. It can also mean odd or offbeat. It can also be “hyper” anything … hyper-driven, hyper-active, hyper-sensitive, hyper-smart, etc. I feel I play any and all of those things well. I might even say that I’m quirky in real life as well. Truth be told, I’m funny but bossy. “Bossy” has a negative connotation, but “quirky” is endearing.
JB:
You are cute, and maybe a little bossy! Ok… so let’s chat a little about headshots, since that’s what I do. You and I have shot a LOT of headshot sessions, what are some of the mistakes that you made early on with your headshot choices that someone else could benefit from?
KVT:
I’d say my biggest mistake was selecting shots where I looked super pretty as opposed to shots that were easy to “type.” Another mistake was shooting with photographers who didn’t have the right “feel” for me and my type. I’d get shots where I looked like a model and that’s not what I’m selling. Part of that is my fault, too. I shouldn’t have picked photographers who didn’t make me feel comfortable. I really need to be having fun. Getting shots is expensive and so there is a lot of pressure to get it right. I also worried about my hair being perfect. I looked too “done.” I’m using lots of quotation marks in this interview! Wardrobe has always been tough for me. It still is. But I think, I’m better at it than I used to be. I think that layers look great and my fashion sense is somewhat challenged in that regard. I’m great at telling other people what to wear!
JB:
That’s great advice! Does having a good makeup artist change your shoot outcome?
KVT:
Oh, for sure. There have been times when money has been tight and I’ve had to do my makeup myself. Ultimately, it ended up costing me time and money as I had to do myself or pay someone else to do a lot of retouching. Granted I’ve learned a lot about makeup from those experiences and I’ve improved, but a headshot session is a very expensive form of trial and error.
check out Katie’s website for updates and to hear her amazing voice over reel…
Ok, so you send your awesome new headshot/resume to a handful of agents and you need a cover letter on top. I have opened many of these and I will tell you my experience. These envelopes are usually not opened by the person that you will end up interviewing with when you go to meet the agency. They are opened by actors that intern in said office. Maybe they are opened by assistants or people that may be paid for their jobs, but probably not. When I pulled your headshot out of the envelope, if a cover letter was not stapled to the back, it usually got separated and thrown away. I didn’t take the time to staple or tape your cover letter to your headshot if you hadn’t done that. Here’s the thing… DON’T staple it to the front of your photo. Staple it to the back. That way we see your awesome face first and can flip over and see your resume and cover letter next. Then a pile is made and that pile is set aside to be gone through later by the important people in the office that do that. I have never worked in any office that didn’t open something. Everything gets opened and looked at so I feel that envelopes with windows are a waste of money. Just don’t seal your envelope. It hurts fingers after a while to unclasp or open all those piles of submissions.
Now, to the content of your cover letter. You write “Dear… I am seeking representation” I say… REALLY??? OH, THAT’S why you are sending me your headshot. Duh…I know that. That’s sort of a given. Then you go on to tell me that you are an actor who absolutely LOVES acting and is passionate and that with the right representation blah blah. Thank you. Actor. Look, there is nothing wrong with that cover letter. It’s just the same cover letter that the every other generic actor sent in to the agency.
My feeling is that you need to say what makes you unique without being a smarty-pants, seeming angry or detrimental to yourself. It’s funny because the things that make us unique are usually the things we try to hide in our headshot. Be creative. It’s your job. You are expected to be a creative person in this industry, that’s why you will be hired. So, choose a creative way to introduce yourself with a couple sentences. No, it’s not easy, but this business is not easy. Use it as an exercise. You may just learn something about what makes you special in the process.
I just saw a young new actor’s website and he had some headshots on his home page (I will talk in another post soon about why I don’t think you should have your headshot on the home page of your website) and they are him in a sweater with a rather wrinkly white tshirt coming out the neck area. He was asking for advice about his headshots. Next to the headshots are “screen grabs” from student type films he has done and he is dressed in WAY more interesting clothes. A green army style jacket with a black t-shirt underneath, another shirt with a “I bought this tie for this job, tie” and a light plaid shirt kind of open .. ANYWAY… he looks like all kinds of people in his screen grabs. He looks like a student who is really smart and solving some problem, in another he looks like he could work in some boring office and flit with the cute girl, in another he looks a little troubled… so you get the picture. He is wearing a dark sweater in his headshots with a distracting t-shirt under it and then in the films he has done he has been dressed in all kinds of specific clothing that tells us not only his age range, but his class and maybe that he is a dramatic and intense actor.
SO… I wrote him some feedback and told him that those screen grabs were way more interesting than his headshots. He thanked me, and said he felt he should be a blank slate in his headshots, to let other people decide what kinds of characters he should play.
I wrote a fairly nice response back but I really want to say: WHY would you want to do that??? Why don’t you want to stand out? You are not a big star. There is no body of work for people to refer to so you need to define yourself and you don’t get very many chances to do that in this business so do it with your headshots! I am not saying that you can’t wear a sweater, but you do need GREAT headshots because otherwise you are just wasting a year of no one paying any attention to you. Don’t be VANILLA. Stand out but stand out in a way that makes it look like you actually know who you are and that you care about your career. If you are not a celebrity with a familiar face, if you are not a stunningly gorgeous human being, if you don’t have a killer agent who is calling casting to pitch and define you then you need an awesome headshot that says something about who you are.
I worked in casting, we never knew 100% what we were looking for, but we were always in the ballpark and I flipped through and ignored hundreds of headshots from actors who didn’t look like they were professional enough to bring in. We didn’t want to waste our time so we looked for actors that fit with in the pocket of the “type” we were after. Yes, we have huge imaginations, but we didn’t really need to use them because there are thousands of actors to look through. Why do I need to imagine that you could play a warm sweet character from your scowling submission photo when I have a thousand warm sweet looking photos. Unless you are already known, you HAVE to have specific shots that say different things. Why wouldn’t you want to???
Ok. Thanks for letting me vent about that 
I saw a posting of a young guy wearing a white shirt asking for feedback about his headshots. I wrote this and thought it would be a good thing to post today:
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I would compare it to a singer on a talent show who would stand up and sing “happy birthday” for a record deal. Maybe you can see that they are a nice looking person and seem to have a good voice, but what kind of record would they make? What kind of artist are you? Does that make sense? Your headshots are one of your marketing tools that you have the most control over. You are telling people who you are. When you audition for a play, you walk in with your photo and stand in front of someone and do a monologue or scene and they can see your work but when you audition for film/tv your headshot is the thing that people use to decide if they even want to see you. You are selling a product, you, and you need to tell me what “you” is and where it fits in the world of tv&film. Since it’s a really competitive field, it’s important to be specific. So, I would say that these are just thoughtful photos of your face. I want to see who you are and tell me what kind of work you are perfect for. I feel like a broken record with this, but you need to stand out. How will you stand out?
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