Well actually yes that word is French, well it goes all the way back to Latin but the French picked it up first. Not that it is really important to this post, but I just took 15 minutes to look up the etymology of the word "Resume" so like it or not you are going to read about it...
So what is a Resume anyway? Other then a French word I mean?
So a Resume, for those who don't know, is effectively a list of your prior work as an actor. Just like a job resume, but instead of listing your time spent washing dishes at Panera Bread, you list the shows you have been in and the parts you have played. Now as a lot of you are young actors just starting out you are not going to have a ton of credits to list, that is okay, just make sure you make it neat and professional and you will be fine. Other good things to mention are basic stats, height, weight, primary voice type if you sing and have a comfortable understanding of your voice. You also want to list any special skills you might have, this might be physical talents like juggling, or gymnastics, accents you can do, literally anything that may make you stand out from the crowd. Just make sure you actually have whatever talent you say you do, I once knew an actress who padded her resume by listing surfing as a special skill because it sounded fun and out there. She was hired at a commercial audition and when she got to the set, she found out that the main reason she got hired was because of the surfing skills mentioned on her resume, she was expected to surf for the commercial... she had never surfed a day in her life, as you can imagine it was a very embarrassing shoot for her...
Okay a list of my past shows... How do I put it all together?
Resumes are hard to explain, the best way is to show you one. I originally started looking for resumes online to show you, but I figured it would be more fun if I showed you my own. A couple points I want to make before I get to that:
1. The "Theatre" section of my resume does not list all my acting credits, last time I tried counting I figured I had been in over 70 productions in my career, when you start to get enough credits, and trust me, you will, resume writing becomes a process of deciding what NOT to include, choose the stuff that makes you look the best. If at all possible keep it to one page, this serves a couple purposes, first one page just looks cleaner than a stapled packet. If you absolutely have to you can print one double sided page, but this prevents you from being able to print your resume directly on the back of your Headshot after you get them done professionally, which looks great and makes sure that neither piece gets lost in the shuffle. The other side of that is, if you don't have a ton of credits don't be afraid to list all of them no matter how small, if you were spear carrier number 7, put it on there, there is nothing wrong with a small role.
2. I put my Theatre credits first on my resume because I primarily consider myself a theatre performer and that is the work I am most interested in doing, if Film and TV are your first love, then list those credits first instead.
3. Just like Headshots you should always keep your Resume updated, and being that it doesn't cost anything other then your time it really is a no brainer. Anytime you do something new that would improve your resume, make sure you get it down before your next audition. Maybe that one credit was all the casting director needed to see to be convinced you can do something that your other credits didn't...
4. Lastly I need to apologize in advance, when I converted my resume to a pdf so it could be easily read online it somehow messed up some of the spacing, so the items on the right side of the page do not line up correctly, everything is supposed to line up by the first letter on the right side, but this should still give you a solid idea of what a resume looks like.
Mike's Resume
So that's all for this week, I think our "probably 3 part" series just became a 4 part series, but as usual feel free to ask any questions or Facebook, email, or smoke signal us with a topic you would be interest in reading about. Thanks!
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