Course Description: “Want to work in movies and tv-shows?? So do we! That’s why we’ve been helping train actors to master the act of auditioning for over 6 years.
Auditioning is a necessary component to being a professional actor. But stepping into the audition room, preparing for a self tape, and feeling comfortable in the dreaded zoom auditions can very easily reveal challenges that are otherwise non-existent when on set. Training skills suited for the audition environment is invaluable to being an actor today. And guess what – this kind of practice easily transfers over to real sets! In fact, being on set is even easier!
We will start off with answering any questions about the industry, agents, casting, etc, but our main focus will be on how to make your scenes come alive. We will discuss how to establish scene environments and adapt audition scenes to offer more room for exploration, covering everything from eye-lines and actions to scene changes and challenging settings, as well as how to discover stakes, relationships, and needs for the character.
We will also cover how to create your own professional audition space and adapt it to any environment. This will include tips on framing, lighting, sound, and equipment. Participants will also learn the changes between in-person, self tape, and zoom auditions.
The format will have a somewhat rigid structure, but there will be plenty of room for Q&A. This course is open to beginners looking to try out film and TV acting as well as for seasoned professionals looking to brush up on skills. We guarantee we will give you something to work on.” Alex & Maxine
About the Instructors:
Alex (he/him) has been acting professionally since 2015 and has been on stage and quite smaller screens well before that. Originally from Virginia, he moved to Montreal to study mechanical engineering and psychology at McGill. It was during these years that he fell even more in love with the craft of acting. Since 2016 he’s also worked on and off in casting agencies in Montreal (responsible for movies like X-Men and Transformers), where he was a reader, ran camera, processed scripts, and more. He was in the room for hundreds of auditions and also helped process over 1000 self tapes from around the world. He started looking at what the audition process truly was and how actors would easily trap their own freedoms and creativity. This led him to pursue and develop workshops to help actors break out of that box and get the fun back into storytelling. As an actor, he has been in an assortment of feature films, tv shows, video games, and more: most recently appearing in Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall and starring as Eric King in the video game House Of Ashes. Other productions include Plan B, Mrs. America, Blood & Treasure, The Detectives, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and more.
Maxine Denis (she/her) is a Lebanese/Canadian actor and creative artist working in the film and television industry. She moved from Dubai, U.A.E. where she was born and raised, to Montreal to pursue higher education and a career as a professional actor. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University. Her most recent acting credits include a lead role in the Hallmark movie Holiday Mismatch, the feature film Polarized, and other large roles in Party of Five, Bell Media/Crave’s Pillow Talk and more. She speaks four languages fluently: English, Arabic, French & Spanish. In between acting gigs, Maxine has dabbled as a casting assistant and a reader for auditions in order to gain insight into the behind the scenes of the casting world. She is co-founder and coach of isolACTION, an online audition workshop for actors, by actors, open internationally. The aim of this workshop is to provide actors with a safe and stimulating environment to train their self-taping and audition skills. In her spare time, Maxine enjoys improving her special skills. She focuses her time on boxing, rock-climbing, dance, stunts, accents and singing.
Location: University Centre (in-person) Room 203
Required Materials: A notebook and your favourite writing instrument!
Required Knowledge: None!