Introduction
As my second year of training is drawing to a close, I am beginning to think about how to best market myself going forward
This marketing portfolio highlights the research I am doing into the current industry and my future plans for how I will prepare myself for the industry during third year. it also outlines key moments in this academic year that helped me discover the type of performer I want to become.
Researching the current industry means I will gain a broader understanding of what the industry requires at the moment, helping me to figure out what I need to do in order to align with this.
This understanding of the current industry meant i knew what to include in my bio (see figure 1) Having the 150 word limit meant i had to be strict about what i would include and what I’d leave out. I decided it would be useful to mention my interest in other areas of the arts such as music and cinematography. This means i am presenting myself as a multi faceted performer and implies my other talents. Mentioning that I go to Leeds Conservatoire early on means they can see I have already been learning how to deal with the industry and what it means to be a professional actor. I will be keeping my bio quite alive/active so adding a section at the end to show what i’ve been working on paints me as a proactive performer.
FIGURE 1
Headshots
Headshots are one of the most important things as an actor and are most likely the first thing an agent/casting director will see. Therefore, when choosing which company to go with, I had to think about my priorities and non-negotiables that were important to me.
I knew that my headshots needed to reflect what kind of actor I am and which roles I want to be put forward for so a big non-negotioable for me was that the photographer had experience working with darker skin tones. As a brown skin woman, I see too often others who look like me getting photographed in the complete wrong lighting. I also needed to make sure that the photographer I went with had backgrounds which would enrich and nourish my skin tone, making me look happy and spirited which is the vibe I’m going for. That’s when I started looking into @tharajordana.photography and found I really liked her style and the fact that she used darker backgrounds to make her clients skin tone pop. (see figure 2) She is also based in London which is ideal for me. The only problem for me was the price. I appreciated that she offered a student deal which reduced a session to £185 but I was still set on finding someone cheaper as I unfortunately wouldn’t be able to afford that.
I started looking into AKTAs ‘pay what you can’ scheme and found that I may be able to get my headshots for £75 instead of their normal price of £299. Thankfully, I ended up getting accepted for this and i found some styles on darker skin that were similar to the ones on @tharajordanas page (see figure 3) I found I was a fan of the contrast of bright colours on darker skin paired with a darker background to make certain features stand out (eyes etc).
Going forward, I now have a clearer idea on the stylistic choices I want to make for my own headshots which I am due to get in July. I plan testing out different colours and backgrounds before to see which ones compliment me the most so I am well prepared.
FIGURE 2 ______________________________________________________FIGURE 3
CV
As a CV is another important tool for an actor, I wanted it to come across as being professional whilst still being simple and easy to understand. I checked out various templates online and eventually decided on adobe express as they had plenty of actor templates which were easy to use. I took the template that looked the most minimalist so that it’d be easy for me to import my own information into it and for me to expand on it as my career progresses.
When creating my CV, I used some current third years spotlights as an example of what headings to use and what sort of skills I could include. Analysing things i liked and disliked about their spotlights helped me decide what I wanted to put into mine. It also means that its clearer and more concise as most agents and casting directors are used to looking at spotlight pages.
I went with a style that had my stats and headshot at the top so that agents and casting directors could instantly put a name and basic information to a face. I’m planning on importing the headshot that most portrays my casting type and the roles I expect to go for.
I was nervous for the ‘credits’ section as I am aware that I haven’t been in many full productions so this part is quite empty at the moment. However, everyone must start somewhere and showcasing my skills in the section after this shows that I am capable.
Industry Research
Theatre Company
I decided to do some research on independant theatre companies as most of the shows I have seen recently have been produced this way and they seem to be what is dominating the theatre industry at the moment.
I chose Nouveau Riche theatre as Ryan Calais Cameron (the co-founder of the company) wrote the show ‘For Black Boys who have considered suicide when the hue gets too heavy’. I saw it at the Garrick Theatre a couple of years ago and it has impacted me heavily to this day. The play is based off Ntozake Shange’s 1975 choreopoem ‘For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf’ and I think his version was a beutiful adaptation of it, highlighting how the mental health of people of colour often gets overlooked. Nouveau Riche’s motif is to ‘break down barriers for the black and global majority community by forming long-term relationships with major theatre venues to establish a safe and welcoming space for the community’. I think its so important now to tell the stories of people who have been silenced for far too long and right now, the industry is certainly doing more of that. However, theres always room for improvement.
I wasnt suprised to learn that this was an independant theatre company as the show I saw fit the stereotypes such as being shown at a small venue, all the actors were fairly new, emerging talent and the show had alot of artistic freedom.
I would be interested in working for an independant theatre company because I love the idea of having the freedom to work with new material and i know that alot of these theatre companies are interested in new artists to be in their productions. This company in particular aligns with the types of messages I want to send out into the world and I am a big fan of their work.
After the lesson with Ruth about starting your own theatre company, I would definitely want to do something similar to this where I share the stories of people who may not have been able to themselves.
Recorded Media- Voice Acting
As well as stage and screen, I also have also taken an interest in voice acting and i think this would be a fun area of the industry to go into. Previously, I have narrowed voice acting down to cartoons and animated shows/films but I didn’t consider the voice acting that goes alongside working in radio, commercials etc.
My biggest struggle this year has been finding range in my voice and using it to my fullest potential. I know that if I want to get into the voice acting industry, this is something I need to work and develop on. After doing my research, I think I’d prefer to take the manual, cheaper route into the voice acting industry by purchasing my own microphone and finding scripts online I can use. This means I can work at my own pace and build on my vocal skills as and when I please.
One of my favourite TV shows growing up was My Little Pony and I found it so interesting how alot of the different ponies were actually voiced by the same voice actor. A good example is Andrea Libman who plays both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, both of which have very opposing vocal qualities. You can see in Figure 4 that Pinkie Pie has a much higher and sharper vocal range whereas Fluttershy is more rounded and her speech drags on alot more and is significantly lower. Id like to be able to get to a stage like this where I am able to voice two characters who are completely different. Andrea started her voice career doing radio ads and this built up her ability to assign different voices to different styles of ads.
Over the summer, I plan to look into some voice acting workshops to work on previous notes I’ve recieved in class/past projects about my voice. Royal Central school runs a voice acting course with one of their voice artists, Jane Perry. It consists of sixteen 2.5 hour lessons with her and then one full day of studio time where you are able to apply everything you’ve learnt and professionally record some voice reels. This sounds really intriguing to me as I know Royal Central has a good cohort of teachers and I’d be interested to develop my skills there.
FIGURE 4
Agents/Casting Directors
As a class, we made a spreadsheet of which agents and casting directors we would want to be invited to showcase and this allowed me to do some research into which agencies I want to be apart of and which casting directors I am hoping to get noticed by.
I chose Rosalie Clayton because she was the casting director for the BBC show ‘Boarders’. I admired that show because of the diversity that was kept in mind when chosing the actors. The show centers around 4 black students who go to spend a term at a predominately white school. It was nice to see some familiar faces who had been on other BBC shows when they were younger but seeing the new, upcoming black talent for the four students was really special to see. She is also based in London which is ideal for me.
Similarly to Rosalie, I chose Sarmad Masud because he was the director of the show. He was born in Bradford and studied filmaking at Hull School of Art and Design. His film ‘my pure land’ was the first film in Urdu to be nominated by the UK for a foreign language Oscar. I think this is such an incredible achievement and a good step in the right direction for representation when it comes to awards shows. I think the show ‘boarders’ was directed in a way that was palatable for understanding the impact of micro-aggressiveness in the school system and I think more shows with similar messages are starting to become more popular and it is directors like him that make those things possible.
Access Riders
At first, I was sceptical to make an access rider as I think its a common misconception in the industry that its wrong to ‘make a fuss’ about yourself or communicate your needs out of a fear of being to ‘pushy’ or ‘needy’. Upon further research, I realised that access riders are actually really important for an actors safety and mental/ physical wellbeing. Everyone learns differently and approaches things in ways that suit them personally and this document simply just outlines that in a way that is easily accessible for the people who need to know these things. I reflected back on times where I didn’t use an access rider and realised how beneficial it would’ve been so that I didn’t feel uncomfortable or have a bad experience. I felt as though I would have been putting my own feelings over professionalism when in reality, communicating how you feel in a space is professionalism.
Before I start year 3, I am going to work on advocating for myself and speaking up when I feel uncomfortable or where I need to take a moment outside. My access rider (see figure 5) will help me do that in a way that is clear and concise.
I will be using my access rider for my upcoming projects and I plan to expand on it as my career progresses and I discover more things that help me to work at my best. This helps me feel less stressed as I know that my mental health doesn’t have to feel like a burden I carry or something i am too afraid to speak up about.
FIGURE 5
Summative Statement/ Key moments
During second year, a big learning point for me was realising that I am allowed to change and alter my process to suit different characters I am playing. In first year I had developed a process whilst playing the character of Joyce in ‘Ruffian on the stair’. My process aided me in that and all the way through to ‘Our Town’ last term. Whilst playing Cesario in ‘Twelfth Night’ I found that Uta Hagens 9 questions (which I usually use when playing a character) weren’t serving me as Cesario because I felt like most of the answers were already in the text rather than it being new things I could learn or make up about the character. I think this also may have been due to me playing a character impersonating someone else and I’ve learnt that perhaps Shakespeare characters simply need their own process as I already find Shakespeare difficult to tackle. I learnt that its is okay for me to write and rewrite my process as my career progresses whilst knowing there’s always things that do work for me such as music and mood boards.
As I mentioned before, a big struggle for me this year has been my voice technique and my ability to venture outside my comfortable vocal range. We had a mock audition with Suzy Catliffe where I played the character of Kaa the snake from ‘The Jungle Book’. As it is written for children, alot of the characters are purposefully meant to be overdramatic and everything about them is supposed to be over enunciated, especially when it comes to voice. The script had written every word that had an ‘s’ in it to be lengthened (eg: snake = ssssssnake) so I made sure to do this on all those words and I made my voice a little bit lower.
In her redirection she said I could go further with that to make me sound more cunning and sly. I then imagined that I was a predator and my scene partner was my prey and this helped aid my voice to sound more conniving. In her feedback she said my vocal energy was still down but i took the redirection well and was an interesting performer. I ended up getting a recall for this.
This feedback has really stuck with me because I know that when i may think I’m going above and beyond ( eg: enunciating the ‘s’ sounds and making my voice lower) it actually isnt as bold as I think. Even though, I got recalled I know that my voice definitely brought me down and I need to work on initially taking it upon myself to make bolder choices rather than waiting to be redirected to do so. I will definitely be looking for some summer voice workshops like I mentioned in my research so this doesn’t continue to be an issue for me in third year.
Another area I am thinking about is my casting type and the roles I could play that would give me the best chance of showcasing my naturalistic talent. During Matt Lewnys monologue classses, I performed Isobels monologue from ‘Bull’ and Matt said this was perfect for me as it shows a vulnerable side (even if its fake i can still play into the fact that she thinks she is being sincere) and also shows a mean, bitchy, patronising side to me.
He said my casting type would be someone chill and nonchalant and this monologue could definitely be played in this way. Its difficult for me to settle on one distinct casting type as I think its quite subjective depending on who you ask and I have been told different things. I think it comes down to asking for honesty from my peers and the people who work with me most and being honest with myself about differentiating between what kind of performer I am percieved as vs what kind of performer i want to be percieved as.
Looking forward, I am working on reading as many plays as possible to generally expand my playtext knowledge but also to find a scene for showcase that is within my casting type whilst showing my range. I know there is plenty I need to work on before I am at a stage where I am confident that I will make it in the industry but these are things I will take the time to work on during my next block of projects where I can give myself a good test before third year. Second year has helped me become more confident and highlight my weaknesses and I am looking forward to see how I take these and challenge myself this term and in the future.
