Acting Tips: If You Get The Role

If You Get The Role

If You Don't Get The Role

If the actors aren't getting paid, chances are good that the filmmakers aren't making any money either, and are possibly financing it themselves and are losing money on the project.

As a filmmaker, it drives me completely crazy when people act as though their doing me a favor by acting in my movie for free.
If you want to do charity work, go volunteer at a soup kitchen. If you're going to work on a movie without pay, do it because you want to work on the project or want experience.
You are probably taking the non paying job because you aren't to the point yet where you can get enough paying ones.

Simple things like retuning phone calls as soon as possible and showing up on time will help out everyone working on the project so much.

When a filmmaker has to call you and 10 other people to coordinate a shoot for the weekend and you wait two days to get back to them, that makes thing difficult for the person doing the scheduling and the 10 other people who don't know if the shoot that weekend will happen.
Even if you call back and say "my work schedule comes out this Wednesday and I won't know if I'm free until then", at least the person doing the scheduling will know what is going on, even if he doesn't have a definitive answer.

Keep in mind that there are only so many people who make movies in your town and they often know each other and work on each other's projects.
So if you are good and professional, you may be invited to work on the filmmakers next project or they could recommend you to a fellow filmmaker. However, if you're always late or don't come to shoots prepared, they won't work with you again and it may keep you from other roles.
So when you do a good job on one project, you maybe opening doors for yourself in the future. if you act unprofessionally, then you may be burning more bridges than you think.