Does Your Body Lie?
Acting for an audition sucks.
It is completely different to working on set. On set you have props, costume, set dressing, other actors to work off, a director, extras - all opportunities to create a real life environment for you to do your best work.
In an audition you have a blank wall, maybe a chair (if you choose to use it...)
And now we're all self taping? Well, you can kiss that blue screen goodbye unless you want to buy one (here), and you're probably shooting it in your bedroom with all your dirty laundry piled up next to you, and you've asked your housemate to turn down the volume on his fourth re-watch of Pulp Fiction this week, and the guy next door has just turned on his whipper-snipper, punctuated by the odd pebble pinging off your window (which happens to be the only source of light for your tape).
And what happens?
You feel stressed out! How you feel determines what you see, and character is a way of seeing the world, so you now have a stressed out character. Good in some situations, not so good in most.
When you're stressed, you go into fight or flight mode. You tense up, your body and mind lock into a way of being that is purely focussed on survival - you don't even care about the scene because all you can think of is finishing the take, exporting it to your computer, slapping a title card on it, sending it off and then reminding your housemate that yes Pulp Fiction is good, but it's not THAT good.
Your body is not only your access point to the scene, the character and their emotional journey, but also a viewers access point!
Shut off body = bored Casting Director = better luck next time.
Instead of leaving it to chance, figure out where your character is emotionally before the scene begins. Understand that feeling in your body. Then, when everything starts to unwind around you, you can be conscious of your body, and you will have the confidence that at the very least, you can put your body back in that state so that your tape can start strong.
Because if your body lies, you lie.
