So I happen to stumble upon an online competition site called Indi.com. They hold competitions for artist such as film makers, singer/songwriters, and of course, actors. What is cool is that winners get cash prizes and some sort of meeting with a "somebody" in the industry. It was very interesting experience, ultimately for the better.
The submission process is quite easy. You click on the contest you wish to participate in and look at all the info. For the acting ones, you download the sides in which they want you to read from. Then you self tape and upload your video (or song or movie) to the site. The site is pretty straight forward and easy to navigate. I had issues with my first two videos from my end. The support people were very nice and took them down so that I can resubmit better quality ones. I had an issue with the quality of video; it didn't convert right so it was very pixelated and choppy. It wasn't that I hated my acting and asked to do it over and resubmit, I don't think that is allowed at all. So it wasn't anything like that.
Once the voting period begins, you have a link to your video that you can post on all the social sites to tell your friends to vote. This is the part of the whole thing that kinda bothered me. The problem with a voter based competition like this is that it's not based on the talent of the artist. So first prize can go to the most horrible actor/singer in the world because they had enough friends to vote them in. However, there is usually a Judges' Pick that IS talent based. The judges pick is usually the prize you really want to win. For this, I guess you really don't need to have all the votes. The most recent one I entered was for the Indi "Small Time" competition. The judges pick winners received a meeting with top casting director Marcia Ross and "Manager to the Stars" John Carrabino. So this was a big one!
So just like any competition (or audition for that matter) there are so many variables as to why the winners are chosen. So, I entered these competitions with the mentality of practice. Yeah, I want to win, but who doesn't. Here, I got to see how I did, in a type of audition scenario (more of a home self-tape type), compared to others. We actors almost never get to see another person's audition for the same role you auditioned for. With these Indi.com ones, I looked at the judges pick winners and the other videos that I thought were excellent, and compared them to how I did and how I can maybe improve my auditions. I looked at them and examined as to why they won and what I thought was better than mine. I looked at these to see how I can do better. When we submit a self-taped audition or for a real in room audition, we never really can compare or study the outstanding ones so that we can learn from them. I would say this; use this as a learning tool. Don't try to put yourself down and say "They did better than me cause I suck!" No, learn from it. It's not that you sucked, but maybe they were more natural, more energetic, read better, or didn't look down so much. I didn't win any of the competitions, but I never felt that my talent was lacking and made me lose. In fact, one of my videos was awarded Best of Indi! So that was cool. But maybe you blinked a lot or did something that you don't realize you do on tape. One thing I learned when I studied my self on tape was that I held my mouth in a weird-sideways-talk type way. It was something that I didn't realize I did and it looked weird. I made note and the next time I did a video, I didn't do it and it looked better. When I compared mine to the Judge's pick winners, I did see some things that may have made theirs stand out more than mine and I recognized it and will note it for next time. It's these things that we never get to see when we audition and we rarely get feedback from Casting Directors about the auditions. Aside from an on-camera auditioning class, this can be another way you can learn about how you look and act for an audition. And certainly don't copy what other people are doing. ALWAYS be yourself and make things your own. That's what makes you stand out, no matter if you win, book the part, or don't book the part.
I had fun doing these little competitions and you should too. I would recommend this site to all aspiring artist for many reasons. It is a way to get your work up, get seen, learn, and keeps you on your feet. Remember that this isn't an "end all, be all" auditioning scenario. It's mainly voter based, so hopefully you have a lot of friends or you win the Judge's prize based on the talent. Take advantage and do a little learning about yourself and how you look and read on tape, it doesn't hurt.
You are welcome to view my Indi.com videos that I submitted, so you can have an idea of the site, here: http://indi.com/artist/703648fe-cc29-4b59-8863-ec18bf26959f
