Jessica Pettyjohn on dropping dollars:

Actors commonly mis-spend their money on various things they think they need verses what they actually need. Here is a guide on what an actor needs, starting from the very basic to the more detailed.

HEADSHOTS

Any actor needs great headshots. This is what you need to provide to your agent. They are submitted to casting directors, and you need to take them in with you to auditions. Being your primary marketing piece, this is one area you do not want to be cheap on. You need great shots. Spend what you can scrape together for a great photographer.

But here is where actors waste money….. THE PRINTING!!!! You Do NOT need to print your commercial shots. 99% of all commercial auditions do not require a printed 8×10. If they ask for them, simply order what you need at Costco or give them your theatrical shot.

What I do is take the strongest 2 theatrical shots and print those in sets of 10. When I run low I do another run. Think about it. The average actor goes on two auditions a week. Half of those are generally commercial (especially if you are just starting up the ladder of success). That is 52 shots on average per year. Yet actors spend loads getting 250 of 4 different shots printed and end up tossing them when their next set of headshots are done.

Most agents only need about 10 or 20 on file. For the most part they use digital headshots and do not often require actual printed copies of your headshots.

SUBMISSION SERVICE WEBSITES

These are ActorsAccess.com, LAcasting.com, and castingfrontier.com. Your agent may ask you to use an additional site here and there. However these are the top 3.

Actors Access is the most vital for theatrical. So, put your top 3 theatrical shots and 1 commercial shot there. And upload reels as you have them.

LA Casting is your 2nd priority, and if you do not have an agent yet, this will be your most important until you have agent. Use your top 6 shots, half commercial and half theatrical. You can pay a low monthly fee to submit yourself on open call auditions until you have an agent. Upload any reels you may have here as well.

Casting Frontier is only used on the commercial front. Unless your agent says otherwise, you only need one shot on here. Don’t bother with the “premium account” or putting reels up here.

PERSONAL ACTING WEBSITE

This is a website that is all about you. It should have your personal web address, i.e., yourname.com. Use myactingsite.com. They genuinely are the best service out there for actors websites. So many actors hire “friends” to do their sites and usually spend about $500 for a crap site that they can’t easily add to or change. This requires them to pay more and more over time for a site that never quite meets the bar of what they need. The only time you need a super custom bells and whistles site, which costs several thousand dollars, is when you have a rather large fan base. So be smart and use myactingsite.com. It is a small monthly fee and so easy to customize.

REELS

There are several services out there for you. But lets start with the basics. If you have something airing on TV, there are services that will record it for you so that you can have a digital copy that you can use. Most of these places will slap together a reel for you. And if you are not tech savvy then this may be a solution for you. However if you have a Mac, then you have a perfectly wonderful and easy-to-use software program that you can use to put together the reel yourself and this will save you a lot of money. If you look at some of the other blog posts I have written, you will see one called ‘The Actors Bane’ which goes over exactly what a reel is. Read that so that you do not waste money putting together ineffective reels.

PUBLIC RELATIONS OR MEDIA SERVICES

Once you have a major role coming out, you need to be able to get a press agent. A good one. The price on these vary quite a bit, But a good one is worth its weight in gold. Had it not been for the PR person we hired for my daughter’s film, there would not have been much of a press kit at all for her. And as you climb up the ladder of success, you need that in order to expand your name and your value.

Outside of these 5 things, you have other things that pop up.

Acting classes: which help you exercise and improve your skills and networking.

Post cards and business cards: These are a colossal waste of money. But if you do a business card, keep it simple with your agent’s number and your personal website. Never just mail out postcards for the sake of mailing them out. If you are doing a mailer, it is only to announce something coming out that you have a decent part in. Otherwise you are really throwing your money out the window.

Union dues: These happen biannually with SAG/Aftra, and if you aren’t union, set aside money so that when you become a “must-join,” you can join. Do not join until you need to. At the beginning, you want to be open for a few non union gigs; though they don’t pay much, it is the process of climbing up that ladder.

-Jess