Sometimes it pays to work with amateurs.

I just finished shooting a job in New Brunswick.

A lot of people I work with couldn't find New Brunswick on a map, which isn't to say anything negative about the place, just that it's not exactly giving Hollywood a run for its money as a hotbed of film production. Let's just put it this way: Ambitious filmmakers in New Brunswick generally move to the big city, and by that I mean Halifax.

I've worked in New Brunswick before, so I know how to adjust. The crews are great. But most of the people who come in for an audition don't bother putting together an acting resume because the only experience on it would be 'Football Player 3' in their high school production of 'Grease' twenty years ago. 

If that.

The spot I was working on called for four roles: a father, mother, son, and daughter.

The father I cast was an absolute pro. He'd worked in larger markets and moved back to New Brunswick because he preferred the lifestyle. But the rest? Two of them hadn't even been to an audition before.

For the son I cast a brash 11-year-old who tagged along to his brother's audition. He talked the casting director into letting him read –– sold her, really –– telling her that even though he was too young for the part, he'd work really hard and do a great job. Our mom had been on one shoot as an extra and thought acting might be fun. And the daughter had taken a few acting classes at the community theater.

Not that there weren't plenty of other, more "qualified" people. Actors with a ton of professional experience, some of it in huge markets like New York and LA. But what I saw in these three was magic. The boy's confidence; the girl's awkward innocence; the sparkle in the mom's eye. Of course, I'd have to work that much harder –– not just in directing each of them, but in educating them to the process.

But I was creating a family and a family –– at least a family of my creation –– is made up individuals who have personality.

Sure, there are times when a line needs to be delivered in 3.2 seconds or a mark hit precisely. But if I have a choice between personality and perfection, I'll take personality, thank you very much.

As it turns out, I got lots of both.

Casting trick #8. Treat your actors like professionals.

I read somewhere that the average cost to make a television commercial is well over $400,000.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a lot of money. Although it goes pretty quickly when you have to scout locations, build sets, get permits, hire crews, rent equipment, and all the other stuff that goes into a shoot.

But when you think about it, most commercials come down to actors interacting. All the other stuff is there to support the interaction. And putting it that way, you'd think the actors would be the most important factor.

Only they're not treated that way.

It's not unusual for actors to get a phone call or email at midnight telling them they have an audition the next morning. They're given a scheduled time for their audition that's totally arbitrary, without any regard for the fact that they might have jobs or children, and even when they show up on time, they're often forced to wait for an hour or more for a chance to read for a part.

That waiting time is usually a good thing because many casting directors don't feel the need to provide any information the actors can use to prepare for the audition.

What's remarkable is that the same people who give the actors no notice, no information, and no time to prepare are often the ones who deride the actors as flaky when they don't show up and talentless when they don't have the script memorized. And not just behind their backs, either.

It never occurs to them that acting, by its very nature, requires an incredible ability to compartmentalize: Actors need to be able to respond with full emotion while performing, yet deal with the daily rejection that comes with the pursuit of work.

You want to be a better director? Of course you do. Well, take some acting classes. Go on some auditions. If you're lucky enough to land a gig, pay attention to the way you're treated. Walk a mile in your actors' shoes.

Trust me, you'll never take your actors for granted again. And your work will be much, much better.

Another reason it matters what order you see people in.

Remember, oh, about three weeks ago when I went on about how actors who come in early in the day are at a disadvantage, while those that come in toward the end have an advantage? (If you don't, click here.)

There's a mitigating factor, but before I get to it I have to talk a little bit about what you're looking at when you're evaluating an actor's audition.

There are two parts to an actor. There's who the actor is. And there's what the actor does.

Who an actor is involves not just his looks, but the way he carries himself, how he connects, how he moves, and that weird, undefinable thing, charisma. Who an actor is comes from genetics and habit and upbringing and instinct and while some actors actually work on developing this stuff a bit, you can only make yourself so tall, thin, good-looking, or charismatic.

What an actor does means the choices he makes. Is he angry or sad? Interested or bored? Turned on or turned off? A lot of actors give less thought to these decisions than they really should, trusting that their instincts will lead them to the most interesting performances, but I like the actors who take apart a scene and figure out what's really going on. These are the people who can perform a conversation with their mothers about where to park the car, but make you understand that what's really going on is a seething resentment over Mom's not intervening when Dad molested Sis twenty years ago.

In actor-speak, what an actor does is called making a choice. And when the Academy gives out awards, a lot of the praise you'll hear is about the "interesting," "brave," or "powerful" choices made by the nominees.

You don't have to see an Oscar-nominated film, though, to see choices. Actors make them in auditions. Sometimes, you'll see a really neat choice in an audition. Even in, yes, commercial auditions. Auditions where the housewife has to decide which paper towel will clean up the spill or the pizza delivery guy gets a door slammed in his face.

Which brings me back to the point I started this blog to make:

Sometimes, two actors will make the same unusual choice in an audition. When that happens, it's easy to give the first person you see doing it more credit than the second. The first time you see it, it's new. The second time, your tendency is to feel that the actor is copying somebody else's good idea.

But remember, each actor made the choice independent of the other. If what the actors do is more or less equal, then you can always make your decision based on who the actor is.

When your actor is talking to the camera, don't use a dolly move.

When a character is talking to the camera, the camera is meant to be me, the viewer. So if you go and put a move on the camera, it gets freaky. Like I'm sliding across the living room or something.

Don't do that.

I'm serious. It makes me uncomfortable.

Not to mention how hard you make it for the actor, talking to a moving target.

Casting trick #4. Look at the resumes.

There's a story kicking around about Steven Spielberg which might be true, but even if it's not, it's pretty informative. The way I heard it, a woman approached him in a restaurant and told him he should audition her kids for his next film. He asked if they'd ever been in movies, and she said no. And he said, "I don't put people in their first movie, but I might put them in their second."

Welcome to Hollywood. You can't get work unless you have experience and you can't get experience unless you get work.

There's so much at stake when it comes to making any kind of production that most people are reluctant to take a chance with an unknown. This is true in every department, but today we're talking about actors.

I guess my standards aren't as high as Mr. Spielberg's because I will actually hire actors for their first job. But only on a couple of conditions. One is that they really do their homework, meaning they need to know how to act. The other is that they don't lie about it.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. Insist on your actors submitting resumes. And read them. Even if your actor doesn't have a ton of experience, a resume can tell you a lot about how to work with him or her.

So how do you read a resume?

First, I give it an overview. Just a glance will tell you not only how experienced your actor is, but what kind of acting he or she tends to do. There's a huge difference between the grammar of the stage and the grammar of a film, and stage actors generally need a little special care to make the adjustment to film. People with improv experience can usually improvise, but those who do it almost exclusively might not be as comfortable following a script verbatim. I don't care –– in fact, I prefer that my actors find the line that makes the most sense to them –– but there are some situations where a script has been through so many revisions, tests, animatics, and levels of approval that you can't change a single syllable.

Then I read. Usually from the bottom up.

The bottom is where actors put special skills. Someone who has a black belt in taekwando is probably pretty dedicated, whereas listing "likes cats" might mean he or she doesn't really commit to much. If I see a special skill that I know something about, it gives me an opportunity feel them out, to see how much their resume might be padded.

Just above special skills, most actors put their training. There are a lot of acting schools, each of which has a slightly different take on both the business and the appropriate approach to acting. I like seeing actors who have attended a variety of schools because it means they're probably looking for what works best for them. Call me a cynic, but I think finding the perfect acting school right off the bat is about as likely has finding true love with your high school sweetheart.

Of course, once an actor has done enough work to fill out a resume, he or she has probably learned the rhythms of an actual set and the shorthand we use to communicate, so that stuff is a little less critical.

Right above training, actors put their experience. They usually break it up into film, television, stage, and commercial, with the more experienced actors (or the ones who want to appear more experienced –– remember what I said about using special skills to see how much they might be padding their resumes?) putting the line "conflicts available upon request," which means, "I've done too many to list here."

It also means, "I'll audition for your Burger King commercial even though I shot a McDonald's commercial last month and if you want me I'm going to hope that nobody notices." This, by the way, is a really bad move.

One of the things I look for in the experience section is anything that might be interesting or relevant. Believe it or not, there are some directors whose work I really admire. If someone's worked for one of them, it means that he or she impressed that director enough to get the job. I give points for that.

I never take off points for working for a director whose work I loathe, by the way. Work is work, and it's certainly not the actor's fault if the director who hires him or her happens to suck.

All this takes me maybe a minute, by the way.

And what if your actor has absolutely no experience and absolutely no training? Well, unless you're dealing with a kid –– and I'm talking a kid under five or six –– that person has been up to something, right? Whatever that something is can tell you a lot about how to work with him or her.

A lawyer can't be a lawyer without learning to think a certain way. Just as a mother can't be a mother without learning how to deal with kids. Those things are relevant because they tell you how to communicate with them. If I find the perfect person for the role, I'm not going to make a silly detail like lack of acting experience keep me from working with them.

Spielberg has every right to hire only people who have worked before. But if we all did that, he would never have been hired for his first job.

It's not a symphony if you only play one note.

I just rented 'Reservation Road'.

Bo-ring.

You'd think the story would have affected me. It's about a guy whose kid is accidentally killed by another guy. I have kids. I should care.

I didn't. There are plenty of reasons why I didn't, but the one that I feel like blathering on about today is the acting. 

Not that the acting was bad. It just didn't go anywhere. Mark Ruffalo, playing the guy who kills the kid, goes from being contrite in one scene to being contrite in the next. I'm not a huge fan of Mark Ruffalo, but he did a decent job with it. 

Same goes for all the leads. Four of Hollywood's most lauded actors, each of whom played the same emotion for the entire film. The only one that seemed to progress at all was Joaquin Phoenix's character, who goes from angry to vengeful. 

Ooh! Such a huge range. 

If you can play a spectacular F# on the bassoon, good for you. But don't make me listen to 102 minutes of it.