Mike Fenton’s Actors Workshop is a comprehensive five and a half hour DVD set that takes viewers from the basic principles of audition technique to an understanding of the casting director’s thought process. The goal of the series is to deliver the information that actors need to maximize their chances for successfully obtaining work in the entertainment industry.
Actor’s Workshop is not an instructional video meant to teach actor’s how to act; rather it is an instructional video that teaches an actor how to get acting jobs. There has never been any person more qualified to convey this advice than Mike Fenton, a co-founder of the Casting Society of America, and the preeminent casting director of all time. For the majority of his illustrious career Mike Fenton cast over fifty percent of all the motion pictures made in Hollywood. It is from this incredible experience that Mike Fenton’s Actors Workshop draws upon to impart the broadest and most useful information ever made available to actors at all levels.
Actors Workshop was a real class that spanned a thirty day period which included lectures, question and answer sessions, and finally the casting and performances of scenes. The class was shot on a real sound stage and features forty of the most talented performers in Hollywood. The authenticity derived from this style of production is simply unequalled. None of the instructional portion of the content was scripted, there were no second takes. Mr. Fenton sugar coats nothing and simply tell it how it is. The viewers of the Mike Fenton’s Actors Workshop DVD are truly experiencing the next best thing to being there.
In Disc One Mr. Fenton offers an introduction that explains clearly who he is and what as a casting director it is his job to do. He does this as he often does through the telling of numerous stories that not only explain the facts, but put them into a relevant context. Even just a few minutes into the introduction the viewer becomes quickly aware that Mike Fenton is a great story teller. By the end of disk one the viewer has not only been entertained, but educated in the workings of the entertainment business to a degree that would take several years of practical experience on one’s own.
Disc Two offers the first question and answer session of the series. Again the questions are unscripted and are asked on camera as opposed to having been submitted in writing prior to taping. Real questions by real actors are asked of the greatest casting director of all time. Mr. Fenton fields each and every one of them giving the viewer a sense of incredible interactivity with the series. Disk two ends with what is perhaps the best description ever given of what a casting director is looking for from a head shot and demo reel.
Disc Three begins with Mr. Fenton’s explanation of the role of agents and managers in an actor’s career. Finding the proper representation is certainly one of the most difficult challenges an actor faces in the process of obtaining work on a regular basis. Mr. Fenton offers what would normally be considered off the record advice on how to get an agent, but our cameras were rolling. If an actor does not have an agent this is an absolute must see. When this discussion is completed, Mr. Fenton next offers a text book discussion of auditioning technique. This is pure class work and should be viewed fresh with notebook in hand. There is however sometimes no substitute for hard work and in this series this is where it takes place.
Disc Four is the grand finale. The sound stage is converted into a set and Mike Fenton casts scenes for the actors from the class to perform for him. Each scene utilizes two actors who have the opportunity to use all that they have learned from the previous days. At the end of each scene the actors are individually pulled aside, given instruction by Mr. Fenton on how to make their performance better, and then reunited with their counterpart to perform again. Upon conclusion an audience of their peers provides feedback and Mr. Fenton let’s them know if they were good, or good enough to get the job.
Mike Fenton’s Actors Workshop, is for every actor who wishes to further their understanding of how to obtain work in the entertainment industry regardless of age and or experience. The concentration of so much of this type of valuable information into a four DVD set has never been achieved before and it with great pride and pleasure that we offer it to you. We look forward to your enjoyment of this series and the education that you will receive from it. Most of all we look forward to hearing about your success and hopefully that we played some small part in it through what you learned have from Mike Fenton’s Actors Workshop
Good Luck
Stan Lerner
Executive Producer
