it’s really not enough anymore to have a tidy resume and a striking headshot
As 2015 hurries along, I think it’s probably safe to say that we live in a world dominated by the internet. And as actors making our way and our careers in this brave new digital era, it’s really not enough anymore to have a tidy resume and a striking headshot…now, one must have a web presence, as well! There are multiple ways one might go about carving out a space for himself on the internet as an actor (hint: www.CastItTalent.com is a great one!), but today I’d like to specifically discuss the often-perplexing creature known as…the actor’s website.
1. Domain name
The first thing you’ll need to do, in creating your website, is to check the status of your preferred domain name. If your own name is John Doe, is www.johndoe.com already owned and taken by another user? (Hopefully your name is not actually John Doe, because I’m pretty sure that site was taken a long time ago. Sorry.) If you find that you can not have johndoe.com, you might try fiddling around a bit with different additions. Middle name? (www.johnbdoe.com or www.johnbriandoe.com) Extra words? (www.johndoeactor.com, www.actorjohndoe.com, www.johndoetheactor.com, or maybe something like www.johndoenyc.com) When you find a domain name that you like and that is not yet taken, nab it! There are many, many tutorials and sites online that will explain this process better and in far greater detail that I can here, so if website building is not something with which you’ve already had past experience, read and learn! The remaining tips in this article will concern what to do once you’ve successfully secured your domain and hosting and all that fun stuff (and – if you’re like me and that whole process didn’t quite come naturally- had a nice drink or three to celebrate being done with that part!!)
2. Website pages
Once you’re ready to actually design your site itself, the first thing you’ll want to do is sit down and carefully sketch out the various components. Common pages on an actor’s website include: homepage, photos, resume, multimedia (where you’ll have your demo reel and possibly a vocal demo or voiceover demo, if you’re also a singer or voiceover artist), contact page, and perhaps a page where you write a career-related blog, or post news to keep your visitors up to date on the happenings of your career and its related shoots and shows. There are no hard and fast rules dictating what you must have as part of your website, but it’s best to keep it relevant (pictures of your dog, your children, or your vacation belong on your personal Facebook page, not here), professional, and on-brand.
3. Homepage
Your homepage is the first thing a visitor sees when he or she lands on your site. As such, it is important that this page make a strong and favorable first impression. Clear navigation and less clutter is pleasing to the eye, and ensures that the viewer is able to – heck, bothers to stick around to – browse through the rest of your site. When designing this page, it’s best to think in terms of your image- or type, or brand- as an actor, and build everything around that. Are you a smoldering siren? A doe-eyed college girl? A laid-back good ol’ boy? A sinister thug? Naturally, these specific types give off strikingly different vibes, and you’ll want to incorporate your personal type- whatever that might be, for you- into every aspect of your website. If you aren’t already sure of and familiar with your own personal brand, I’d like to emphatically suggest that you go back and do that work before embarking on creating your website. I really can not overstate the critical importance of knowing your type when it comes to marketing yourself as an actor; it goes far beyond any one specific tool- like a headshot or a web site- and in fact permeates every single thing you will do in the pursuit of your career, down to the clothes you wear and the way you style your hair. Assuming that actor branding is already a working part of your daily life, though, we’ll turn our attention back to the site. Use your brand/image/type to help you choose the color scheme of your website, and the font. Bright tones and a casual font may be perfect if you play the teenage guy who clowns around and cuts up in class. A vixenish, 25-year-old femme fatale may opt for darker, moody colors and a more formal script. Play around with any possible combination you can think of and see what comes together to best sell the product that is you. You will want to make sure your name is prominently displayed on your homepage, as well as the photo of you (likely, your headshot) that also best embodies your brand. In short, if the viewer saw this page alone and never ventured any further, would she immediately be able to tell what you’re all about?
4. Photos
Pictures are, naturally, a very important component of your actor’s website. And unlike an audition where you’re limited to being represented by a single 8”x10” headshot, your site is the place that allows you to show off far more. There is an endless variety of different types of galleries and albums available to you when you build a site, so you can play around with the photos you’ve got to see what manner of showcasing them looks and feels the best. If you do any modeling work, you may use some of those shots here. You might also post photos – if they are of a high enough quality to share professionally – taken from various stage performances or behind-the-scenes on a film set. And of course, at bare minimum, you’ll want to have a good, high-resolution version of at least one of your headshots – more if you’ve got them. Whatever photos you opt to include, take the time and effort to make sure they are the highest resolution versions you can get your hands on. The last thing you want is for a visitor to have his interest piqued by an interesting thumbnail, click on it to bring up the full size version, and then find himself staring at a fuzzy or grainy large photo of you.
5. Resume
Just like in real life, as an actor, your resume is going to be something important to include when marketing yourself on your website. Make sure that the formatting is crisp and attractively clean; if you’ve not gone over your resume with a critical eye in the recent past, this might be a good time to do a little housekeeping. Purge from your resume any credits that are out of date (36-year-old-man-still-clinging-to-his-turn-as-Oliver-Twist, I’m looking at you), irrelevant (that lone student film in the midst of a healthy collection of indie features), or potentially more harmful than useful (the mix of under-5s and guest starring roles, when you’re at the point in your career to be consistently reaching for guest starring and beyond). Keep in mind that more credits doesn’t necessarily mean better; it’s more important to have a well-crafted resume that’s been shaped and honed to showcase your greatest strengths as a performer, and pave the way for where you’re going, not simply rattle off a laundry list of where you’ve been.
Once you’ve ensured that your resume is in its best possible shape, you’ll want to have it on your website in two forms: displayed on the site for the visitor to see, and in a clickable link, for the visitor to download, if he should choose. An interested casting director may wish to download your resume to send as an attachment, or even to print out- so you’ll want to be sure that there’s a version that will be readily readable by the average computer user’s programs (.pdf ought to be a safe bet), and then load and print as a clean, single page document.
6. Multimedia
Here’s one really great part about having an actor’s website: you now have a place to house all of your video clips! To backtrack a little, please don’t misunderstand “all.” You want to showcase videos that are both top quality and relevant to you as an actor; this is certainly not the place for the home video of you cuddling Mr. Mittens the cat, or drunkenly singing karaoke with your friends. Furthermore, any taped performances (of not-karaoke!) should be, if not fully professionally recorded, at least clear in picture and in sound, and edited to show only the best parts of specifically your performance. About each video, ask yourself: Would I want this performance to serve as my one and only audition for a role? You never know who will wind up browsing your site, and if there’s any material that showcases your talent in anything but the best possible light, it has no place here. You want to use your site as a way to build yourself up-not demonstrate the 42 times you sang a verse of a song passably well, or walked through the background of some film. If you have a demo reel, this is where you’ll put it. If you have a good role in a short film, commercial, or music video and it’s posted somewhere like YouTube or Vimeo, go ahead and have that embedded on the multimedia page of your site, as well. If you do work as a voiceover artist, have your voiceover reel available here. And if you’re a singer and you have a few high-quality recordings of yourself singing, you can add an audio player to your site that will allow a visitor to browse through and listen to your music.
7. Contact page
If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating this wonderful, well-branded site that shows off who you are as a performer, and just begs someone to want to turn around and call you in for a meeting or even hire you…then for goodness sake, make sure you include your contact information! It sounds too obvious, but if you managed to forget and leave it off entirely, you certainly wouldn’t be the first actor to do so (nor would you be the last…though those had better not be any actors reading this article!). The contact info you provide will depend on how you typically do business in your everyday actor’s life. If you have an agent, you’ll want to list his or her name and info. If you represent yourself, your contact info can be your professional email address. Post your personal telephone number at your own risk- I think the reasons here should be plenty clear-and please don’t even think of posting your physical home address. On the contrary- or, if you’d like, in addition- you can post on your page a contact form, which a visitor will fill out with his name, email address, and a message, click the ‘send’ button, and it will be forwarded to your email box to reply to (“oh hello, Mr. Casting Director!”) or discard (“oh goodbye, Mr. Random Creeper…”) as you see fit.
7. Links
The other links you may choose to have displayed on your web site will be up to you, and depend on where else you-as-an-actor live on the web. Possibilities include links to your IMDb page (the Internet Movie Database, where you’ll have a listing if you’ve done any professional tv or film work with entries on the site), your Cast It Talent profile page (a no-brainer for any serious actor, as it contains your headshot, resume, and reel in one neat and easily accessible package that you may then mail to casting directors, agents, or other professionals), and links to any social media sites (twitter, facebook, and the like) where you maintain a dedicated actor profile. On this last part, especially, please take note: your actor’s website should more than likely not link to the same social media profiles you use to communicate with your bff and your old high school friends and your mom. These profiles should remain private, and if you’re interested in the idea of using social media to further your acting career but haven’t yet created a dedicated professional version of your profile(s), now might be a good time to do that. I’ll reiterate that you really have NO way of knowing or controlling who will be stumbling upon and browsing your website, so directly linking them to the page where you share personal information and post pictures of yourself at home is just not a good idea. A professional account on these sites, however, can be a great resource, and give you the unique opportunity to both further market your unique brand image, and connect and interact with performer colleagues past and present, potential employers, and even “fans.”
8. Updates
One important thing to remember- and something I’ve noticed actors flubbing time and time again- is that if you’re going to have a blog on your actor’s website, or a special space that proclaims: “Check out what I’m up to now!”, please don’t update once or twice and then not again for another three years. If you’re going to post this sort of upkeep-intensive idea, you’ve really got to commit to keeping it going! It’d be pretty embarrassing to have an interested casting director perusing your page, liking everything she sees, then make it to the “What I am Currently Doing” part and be met with…*crickets*. At worst, it’ll look like you have been languishing in a severe professional dry spell and haven’t had work in ages. And even at best, if the viewer gives you the benefit of the doubt and assumes that you simply haven’t been back to update your page in a while, you’ve made the impression that you’re someone who isn’t committed, lacks discipline/professionalism, and fails to follow through. Ouch. So post those updates if you wish, but treat it like any other part of your professional work life: schedule regular times to post, keep it entered on your calendar if need be, and commit to following through. If done right, this kind of added personal touch can be a real bonus way to further strengthen and develop your image as you connect with fans and colleagues. If you have a talent for writing and an awesome sense of humor, you could use a blog on your site to highlight this fact, potentially even giving yourself a lucrative way to cross-promote things like your self-produced comedy web series, or your live stand-up routines.
In the end, your actor’s website is an exciting blend of professional nuts ‘n bolts, held together and flavored with a potent helping of your unique personality and style. At its most mundane and utilitarian, your website is a great tool to have, and tells the world that you are serious about your craft and career as an actor. From there, though, the sky really is the limit, and there’s no end to the quantity and variety of ways in which you can put your website to work for you. So use this tool wisely and use it well, and be excited that we are living and pursuing our careers in a time when such a resource is ours for the creating!