How To Cry On Cue

You’ve landed a great dramatic role, but you have to cry on camera. What do you do? If you have trouble crying on cue, that doesn’t mean you’re not a great dramatic actor or actress. Trust me, some of your favorite celebrities who have been in the business for years still have trouble getting the tears to fall.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most of your big dramatic moment. Try a few of these and you’ll be sobbing in no time:

• Think back to a sorrowful time in your life. For some actors, simply finding a powerful impulse for crying works like a charm.

• Open your eyes wide and resist the temptation to blink. Exposing your eyes to the air using this tactic can help your eyes begin to water.

• Cut up onions or wave the fumes from eucalyptus oil near your eyes just before your scene.

• Use eye drops.

• Is there a scene in a movie that gets you every time? Bring your IPod or portable DVD player and watch a sad scene right before your big performance.

• Study other scenes where actors have cried convincingly on camera. By mimicking their body language, facial expressions, and vocal cues, it may help you to get the tears flowing when you need them to.

Be sure to practice these methods before your performance in front of a mirror to make sure you appear authentic. If you’re still unable to cry, try the scene a different way. Instead, have the character attempt to fight back tears, which can be equally compelling onscreen.

For a list of dramatic roles currently being cast, visit http://www.EliteCastingNetwork.com today!

The Cutting Room Floor

You’ve auditioned for 20 roles and you’ve finally booked one! Hooray! You show up on set to shoot your scene and when the project is released, you gather all of your friends together to watch your Hollywood debut. But wait a minute! The television episode or film comes to an end and your scene is missing. What happened? Oh no! You may have been a victim of the cutting room floor.

This happens more often than you may think. The cutting room floor is a term that refers to where footage ends up when the director and editor decide not to use it in the final edited version. (These days all editing is done using computers, so the footage doesn’t actually end up “on the floor” anymore – but you get the idea.) Many new actors who experience this are often devastated. It can be a huge letdown to have worked so hard to finally book your first role and then not have it immortalized on screen. But don’t let it get you down. Just because your scene wasn’t included doesn’t mean that the director didn’t like your performance. The project may have been running long requiring some scenes to be cut to fit within time constraints. And sometimes once all of the scenes are shot, the director may decide that some scenes are no longer as relevant to the story.

Even though your scene may have been cut, there’s still a lot that to be happy about. First off, you booked a role and not only are you now a working actor but I’m sure you probably met a lot of really great people in the process. Secondly, these days when most films are released on DVD, footage that was not included in the final edited version is often available to watch in the Extras section. So you can still see your performance and you can still use the footage on your reel!

Most experienced working actors don’t get upset if their scene gets cut. They know that it’s part of the business and they know it’s only a matter of time before they book another role. So are you ready to book your next job? Of course you are! Visit http://www.StarSearchCasting.com today and check out our casting notices. I bet there’s a role of a lifetime out there with your name on it!