Once the strike is officially over, I want all the auditions I can get.” She added: “Because the audition rate accelerated, the booking rate went down dramatically for everybody. It’s harder to know what they want, and you don’t have the luxury to work with a casting director in a physical space to get adjustments, which was personally my favorite part of the process - that collaboration.” The onus is on us to create our auditions. “All the financial responsibilities have fallen on us.
“We don’t go into casting offices anymore,” Jones said. Cadden Jones, an actor based in New York “‘This was the first year I did not qualify for health insurance in decades.’ ” I, for one, am very glad that we’re striking.”īut Jones said that, with the auditioning process taking place mostly online since the onset of the pandemic, casting agents - who work for producers - are able to see more people for a given role, making the competition for roles even more intense. It’s not like any of us lost our talent overnight. “We’re in trouble as a community of actors who used to make a good living doing what we do. “Most if not all of my actor friends have had to supplement their income since the pandemic,” she said. Jones and her partner, Michael Schantz, an actor who works mostly in theater, are starting a communications consulting company to increase their income. hovers at around $57,000, based on the weekly median as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To put that into perspective: Members of SAG-AFTRA must earn $26,470 in a 12-month base period to qualify for health insurance. “This was the first year I did not qualify for health insurance in decades,” she told MarketWatch.
“Unfortunately, it’s been going in this direction for some time now,” said Cadden Jones, an actor based in New York who has credits on shows including Showtime’s There are currently no regulations on the amount of pages a casting director can send to a candidate, and actors say there’s often not enough time to properly prepare. Then the actor has to edit the audition to highlight their strongest take and upload it.
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They need to arrange good lighting and a clean backdrop - Gage’s TV set became a distraction for the producer during his audition - set up the camera, and scramble to find a “reader” - someone to read the other roles in the scene, preferably another actor. The onus is on us to create our auditions.” When the opportunity to audition arrives, actors typically have to drop everything they’re doing - whether they’re working a side hustle or taking time off or even enjoying a vacation.Ĭadden Jones: “All the financial responsibilities have fallen on us. But several actors told MarketWatch that it’s become harder to make a living in recent years, and that it all starts with the audition tape, which has now become standard in the industry.īy the time Gage got in front of producers, for instance, he had likely either already delivered a tape and was put on a shortlist to read in front of a producer, or the casting director was already familiar with his work and wanted him to read for the part.īut an audition tape can often take up an entire day to put together, actors say. In the days of live auditions, actors would read for a role with a casting director. Knight cited the need to address artificial intelligence, pay, benefits, reduced residuals in streaming and “unregulated and burdensome self-taped auditions.” In May, Ezra Knight, New York local president of SAG-AFTRA, asked members to authorize strike action, saying contracts needed to be renegotiated to reflect dramatic changes in the industry. This has come to symbolize the uphill struggle actors face from the moment they hear about a role. And since the start of the pandemic, the nature of auditions has changed dramatically. Meanwhile, Gage’s 2020 online audition is resonating again.įor a working actor - who, like the majority of SAG-AFTRA members who may not be an A-list star - simply getting in front of a producer as Gage did can be a long and difficult process. It’s three years later, and members of the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild are on strike, looking for more pay, better working conditions and stricter rules around things like the use of actors’ images in the age of artificial intelligence and the lack of residuals from streaming networks.
Gage kept his sense of humor, but he also decided to post the video on his Twitter account to show how actors are sometimes treated from the moment they audition for a role - and perhaps to remind people to make sure you’re on mute if you’re trash-talking someone on a Zoom
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