Will YouTube affect my career?
David,
I am studying to become a professional actress at the moment.
I have a bunch of friends (who are not actors, but more entertainers) who are YouTube partners are making quite a good amount of money. I am seriously considering starting a YouTube channel, in the hopes of making some revenue off of it. It is a great creative outlet.
My only concern is that it may affect my chance of getting acting jobs in the future. If all goes well and I become a successful well-known YouTuber, will casting directors be less likely to consider me for a role? or more likely for getting my face and name out there?
Darren Criss was found off of YouTube, but he was also in online plays. If I was just being an entertainer, it seems to be a bit different.
I really need some advice.
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Answer: This answer may surprise you, and it’s akin to the answer I’d give if someone asked a similar question about whether being on a reality show would help or hurt your career. Frankly, YouTube is neither a help nor a hindrance, unless you make it one or the other.
Acting careers are born many different ways – via traditional training, stage work, on-set work with student films, web series and a hundred ways we haven’t even thought of yet. Casting directors, by and large, don’t care how you got to a particular level of recognition, just that you are recognizable. There are plenty of actors that began as singers. As talk show hosts. As DJs. As newscasters and reporters. They then made a choice to pursue a different path in entertainment.
Who would have predicted that high-pitched YouTube phenom Fred would have the representation that he has, and the opportunities that he’s currently pursuing in the world of feature films? Who would have predicted that Colby Donaldson, the host of Top Shot, would have graduated from the ranks of Survivor to do national commercials, act in television episodes (and not as a reality show star) and go on to host a popular show on the History Channel?
Online outlets like YouTube (and Funny or Die and Blip and Vimeo and Revver and so on) could, at any time, generate the Next Big Thing. I wasn’t surprised when Twitter’s popular @$#itMyDadSays was mined by CBS for a series that lasted longer than most and starred William Shatner. So, what you do on YouTube could end up enhancing your career – or what you do could become so infamous that you have to explain things forever (Friday from Rebecca Black, anyone?)
My point is that the method that transports entertainment to us, whether over-the-air broadcast, cable, satellite, internet, podcast; and the source of that entertainment, whether NBC, FOX, HBO, Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, whatever is heading for homogeneity. Our generation is rapidly losing any distinction between where, when and how actors appear in projects, how those projects make money, or what cachet the carrier of that entertainment package has. If it’s funny, it’s funny. If it’s sexy, it’s sexy. And if it’s you on YouTube or you on CBS, there may someday be no need to differentiate.
There’s no way to reasonably or repeatedly predict where the next actor’s future will take shape. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along helped solidify Felicia Day as the darling of the online web series, and The Guild made her some money as well. But neither of those projects has the standard order procedure that linear TV’s pilot/up front/new series path still dictates. No online production path has yet been identified, and no online star-making process has yet to be devised.
I say if you’re smart about it, YouTube (actually, any non-broadcast outlet) can help you make your mark. It certainly might be a problem if all you’re making is drunken videos with your girlfriends on a Friday night at the club, but even asking the question you asked for this Acting Answer shows you’re way smarter than that. Casting directors want to see you make a connection, and if you have thousands or millions of views by interested, engaged fans, that’s a plus.
I say pursue all avenues simultaneously. Say yes to every project you can knock out of the park, no matter what the outlet. Don’t worry so much about your body of work – just work. Do web series for friends, do your own, do sketch comedy, do animation, do whatever. Look at each as another opportunity to act. And pick and choose between projects based on your brand and what you want to do with your career.
And I say embrace the future. In 5 years, YouTube and Twitter and Facebook may actually be passe (MySpace, anyone?) and replaced by the next shiny butterfly that captures the attention of the public. Technology may evolve that we couldn’t have predicted would even be possible, let alone popular. Audiences may be gathered in whole new ways, forcing casting directors to re-think the resumes of actors like you. And how you come to the moment to enter their rooms may change dramatically from agents putting you up for auditions and CDs calling you in, to show runners taking a daily gander at the most popular online videos – and there you’ll be.
Hope this helps.
What’s your answer to this acting question? Let me know in the comments below.
Great advice as usual David! :-)
If you don’t know how to create your own work look into local filmmaking groups and events in your area and go along. Trust me filmmakers are always looking for good talent and a lot of them are more introverted and will much prefer working with somebody they already know and trust. Offer to help out in their projects, even if just helping with catering, transport or holding a boom. Make new friends.
Look into Kino00 Kabaret filmmaking events internationally – there’s a very active Kino cell in Manchester, UK that I’ve been a part of for a few years (Filmonik) which got me my showreel footage, and now I actually write and direct my own short films as well as acting.
Just starting to put things up on YouTube now to build an audience as I reckon I’ll be wanting to do a Kickstarter campaign in the next year or so.
I never would’ve imagined that when I first got involved! So David’s right, get started and you never know where things will come from… :-)
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