 Hi, you guys. Welcome back to my channel. If you don't know me, my name is my channel's name. My name is Belhika. I've been feeling just weird. I've been in a bad mood. I mean, there's a pandemic. I'm feeling the way that so many of us are feeling and I thought let me just, you know, go on a little drive, maybe go on a walk, and I can talk to you about my experience when I used to and I will soon in the future. But what it used to be like or what it is like when you submit online, so if you do self-submissions, I have been acting for a while and I have an agent in San Francisco and I'm looking for an agent in LA. I'm across the board with MDT in San Francisco. If you don't know what a across-the-board agent is, is somebody who represents you in everything. So for example, MDT in San Francisco is a boutique agency and they offered to represent me across the board a few years ago. So they represent me in fit modeling because there's a decent amount of fit modeling in San Francisco. In the San Francisco Bay area, print, theatrical, so like on camera, voiceover. I do get a few voiceovers and it's Pixar. It's really close to San Francisco. It's in Emeryville. So I wanted to tell you about the part where I self-submit. So usually when there's not a pandemic happening in the world, I will have paid accounts with anything I can get my hands on. So SF Casting, LA Casting, I've dabbled with Actors Access Casting Frontier. So let me just tell you about how that went. You know how many submissions you actually have to do when you are self-submitting in order to book some kind of audition and then after that, of course, actually book the job. I want to get out of the house. So I'm going to go on a drive and talk to you guys and also try and go on a walk. Maybe we'll get something from Starbucks, like the drive-through or something. If it seems like I wear this sweater all of the time, it's because I absolutely do. I don't actually know where I'm going but I do know that getting a little drink as a snack isn't as a treat is always really, really fun. And I've actually been struggling a lot with filming videos the last week and a half. I've been filming them but I've felt like I want to vlog more. I want to be more just me and my personality and still give you acting advice but also be able to vlog because during vlogmas, and I did try a vlogmas, I didn't upload every single day, but I think I uploaded around 18 to 20 videos. I really enjoy just talking and feeling like I'm communicating with a lot of people, especially right now that I don't actually get to communicate with a lot of people. It's fun to just talk about my feelings because that brings me so much sanity and so much joy is talking about my feelings, talking to other people about their feelings because that honestly helps me feel normal and I think that's why other people like talking about their feelings because it makes them feel normal when they feel validated that something is something that other people have gone through and whenever I go through something mentally difficult, I think okay somebody else must have gone through this as well and they likely got through it or you know it's it's gonna be okay. So yes I want to continue doing acting related videos but whenever I try and give you information about a specific thing that's acting related, I have a list of things that I want to make sure that I am telling you so then I feel like a robot and I want to be more judgmental in my advice not so cautious so I want to give you my actual opinion that might sound kind of funny but I want to give you my opinion so if I tell you like that's that's in my opinion that's stupid then I want to be able to tell you I don't want to just be cautious. I got my Starbucks actually I've had it for around 30 minutes and I can't find anywhere to walk around but there are some streets here that are offices and they're all closed and then I'm going to talk to you guys about what I was saying. The reason why I was inspired to film this video is because somebody commented that they had submitted to 14 casting calls and backstage and hadn't heard back from any of them how long should it be before they hear back. I want to talk about that and I want to talk about my experiences with those numbers and what you can expect. I just tried to talk and nothing came out. It feels so good to just be out of the house for more than a couple of minutes and if you are new to acting just if you're an actor in general I want to tell you about the amount of feedback and response you're going to can expect to get in casting websites based off of my experience. When I was doing a lot of submissions on my own on SF casting this is going to be so different for everybody so I'm just going to tell you mine and then you can feel a little more normal if this is what happens to you but I will read every single description of all of the opportunities that are available to me. I get emails for pretty much every you can filter it but I get emails for everything that I might qualify for so and all of those emails sometimes it's not at all what I am like. I don't qualify for any of that because I am not 5'2". I am not a size zero. I'm not a guitar player. When they give you a breakdown of what they're looking for they're looking for something so so very specific and if you aren't perfect for that your chances are of even getting a self-tape audition request are very slim so essentially let me tell you the numbers that I'm going to give you an estimate. So let's say 200 casting calls are posted on SF casting this month I will be really close to perfect to maybe 20 of those and out of those 20 I might get 10 auditions or less likely less likely I'll get five auditions okay so after those five auditions I won't book any maybe I will have to audition five more times before I book one so essentially I'm what I'm saying is if you submit to as many casting calls as you can as many casting calls as you actually are qualified for you might get 10 auditions a month and then from those 10 auditions you might book one. If you want to improve your chances and you want to make sure you're doing everything correctly make sure you have a good updated headshot that looks like you that your resume is updated all of your information is updated if you did a new project put it on there and that you have a reel if you don't have all of these then your chances go way down because in most of these casting websites the people that are looking for actors to audition can filter it to only show people that have everything and of course if you don't have a photo like they're not even going to consider you because that's stupid it's just a name that they want to audition and you know like they can only see your name essentially and even if they can see your name and resume that's still strange if they can't see your photo and you're real your reel gives them an idea of what you look like what you act like on camera and then your photo is what you look like hopefully not over edited and you know just just allow them to see who you are in those auditions and then if you have casting websites that allow you to upload a slate make sure you're just friendly and you're you because think about if you were an employer you would want to hire somebody that seems cool to work with right so don't be crazy and slate in I don't know really aggressively or really tired just be yourself be calm be happy how would you introduce yourself to somebody if you actually introduce yourself to somebody in real life in normal everyday life really aggressively that's interesting so if you are submitting a bunch to different websites backstage actors access casting networks whatever know that if they don't get back to you that's normal that's completely normal they will only get back to you if they want you to film a self-tape audition or if they're interested in working with you otherwise you're not going to hear from them even if you do send them a self-tape audition and you never hear back from them after you sent it don't follow up they 99.9 percent got the audition watched it and aren't interested in uh working with you right now does that mean you should not audition for them again absolutely no I have auditioned so many times for different casting offices that have never booked me and I don't care because I probably wasn't right for that specific role and they are still inviting me to audition so I am still coming because obviously they like me if they didn't like me they would never ask me to audition I know it can be really easy to procrastinate except especially for people who are either new to acting or hate self-tape auditions hate editing themselves which for me at this point I don't remember when it happened but somewhere in the last 10 years I stopped hating my voice and I stopped hating the way I look like on camera for obvious reasons and I've also been editing my youtube videos for so long my self-tape auditions so like I don't care about editing myself um I know a lot of people hate their voice but uh yeah don't procrastinate on doing your self-tape auditions and sending them in so keep submitting two casting calls that are appropriate for you make sure that you have at least your headshot resume and some kind of reel on your casting websites and um don't don't think about the numbers just keep auditioning I always say this people always ask me about um you know when am I gonna hear back or should I follow up all of those things I always say submit it and forget it submit to it and then continue with your day I also have a video from 2018 or 19 where I have an audition tracker and I talk about everywhere that I got my auditions that year I got 82 auditions I think that's what it was the videos I'll link the video and essentially I go through and show you guys everywhere that I got my auditions because that year I did get a lot of auditions and hopefully I'll be able to get a decent amount this year but I I don't keep track of which ones I submit to because that would be absolutely insane maybe I will do a everything I submitted to this month or this week in the future but there's no way I could keep track of what I submit to in an entire year especially because I can't count what my agents submit me to because I have no idea what they submit me for I only know what I actually get a request for a self-tape audition but I'm sure I can ask them for some kind of spreadsheet that shows everything they have booked me for but I don't want to waste their time I don't really need that unless I want to investigate more you know if a certain type of casting company or casting call isn't asking me to audition and maybe I could you know get a new headshot or something to uh market myself more towards that but other than that I I mean I just do my best to whenever I get a self-tape audition to do it and send it quickly and professionally and then wait and see if I get booked because after I audition there's nothing I can do about it I hope you guys enjoyed this video I definitely liked getting out of my house and walking around and just talking at the end of every video I feature another channel this is today's feature if you would like to be featured on my next video make sure you're subscribed like this video and leave me a comment