<p>My son will be auditioning soon for BFA programs and will need to provide headshots. I understand that color headshots are the norm these days. I have a couple of questions: how many should he bring to each audition (i.e. does each auditioner get one or is one per audition sufficient)? What information should be on the headshots (i.e. name on the front and physical statistics on the back -- height, weight, etc.)? Thanks.</p>
<p>Only one is needed at each audition, though it never hurts to have extras along with you. Typically, a headshot has a white border on all four sides and the actor’s name is printed at the bottom on the white border (name only). </p>
<p>Things like physical stats and contact information would be on the actor’s resume itself, which is often attached to the back of the headshot.</p>
<p>Many people put their name on the front of the 8 x 10 headshot. Professionally it is pretty standard, many do this in college auditions as well.</p>
<p>He should attach his resume to the back of the 8 x 10. name, physical statistics, and contact information should go at the top of the resume. </p>
<p>If you go to the websites from some of the schools that do showcases… Julliard, CMU, Syracuse, Yale, etc… you can find resumes to help understand the theatrical format. NYU and James Madison (MT) post sample resumes and templates on their audition sites for incoming students.</p>
<p>Generally speaking each school will ask for one headshot and resume, BUT bringing additional copies with you (5 - 10) s a good idea, that way you will be prepared for anything. 
Good luck to your S!</p>
<p>Sooze and I cross posted…</p>
<p>Is the r</p>
<p>Stapled. Either at a top corner, or at all four corners. (The resume should be the same size as the headshot.)</p>
<p>It’s probably a good idea to take some unstapled copies to college auditions, just in case they want the headshot and resume separate.</p>
<p>We used a photo from my daughter’s senior pictures, not an official head shot, but an 8 by 10, and attached a resume, I glued a small piece of paper with her name and address to the rear of the photos.
At CMU auditions they took poloroids of each student too.</p>
<p>Do your best , I could not afford to spend more on the Head shot ,and we did a home spun version, and she got in some places and did not get in others. </p>
<p>My sense is , it is still all about the audition.</p>
<p>Having all the ducks in a row, photo, resume, monologues ready, nice outfit, being early to auditions,
bringing food and drink along,
helped us enjoy the process.</p>
<p>I agree with Mother of GG. We only spent about $100 on my son’s headshots. They were done by somebody my son had heard about through the grapevine…a young alum of a college where he has friends.</p>
<p>In addition, we did not have them printed professionally. We just printed them at home on 8 1/2 X 11 photo paper, which meant we didn’t have to trim down the edges of the resumes to fit.</p>
<p>Someone seeking to be cast in a professional production should have a headshot/resume that is prepared just right (generally, the actor is called in to audition…or not…based on the headshot/resume they have sent in), but at the college audition or community theatre level the audition is what is paramount.</p>
<p>I agree not to “obsess” over the headshot for college auditions… all of the routes taken above fit he bill of what colleges are looking for.</p>
<p>If you choose to print your headshots yourself you can cut them down to 8x10 on a paper cutter pretty easily. The same with cutting down the resumes to 8x10. I am not sure why (from a historical standpoint ;)) 8x10 headshots is standard… anyone out there know or want to hazard a guess? </p>
<p>All that being said – everyone is absolutely correct (your headshot size, etc…) is not going to make or break your chances of being accepted to a program. It is a small part of the package. Break a leg!</p>
<p>KatMT, I am far from being the tech savvy one in our household, but I was told that the headshots we received on a CD from the non-professional photographer (with my son’s name in the bottom margin) could NOT be trimmed down to an acceptable 8 x 10 because of the proportions of the image, the need to retain the border, etc.</p>
<p>It is my impression that obtaining a nice image, whether via a school photo, an amateur photographer, or a professional, is not the main challenge. Getting the image printed in an acceptable manner at an acceptable cost is what you want to make sure you have figured out before you need the prints.</p>
<p>On a lighter note, when you are getting headshots that you are going to be submitting for casting auditions, you will probably have different versions in which you look a little younger, a little older, a little more glamorous, a little more fierce, etc.</p>
<p>My son’s favorite headshot out of the series we had done was one he nicknamed “Romeo.”</p>
<p>When we were waiting with other people for my son to be called in for one of his college auditions, I heard a girl say to her father, “Dad! We brought the wrong headshot! This one makes me look weird. I wanted ‘Hair’. I always want ‘Hair’!!”</p>
<p>It’s very easy to get headshots printed at a low cost: take the CD with the image on it to your local Kinko’s and ask them to print it out (however many copies you want) on white cardstock that they trim ahead of time to the required 8 x 10". The people at Kinko’s know how to size the image so it works in that format. Then, at home, you trim regular computer paper to 8 x 10" and stick that paper into your home printer and print out the resume, making sure, of course, that the printed portion fits within the smaller, 8 x 10" format. My D did that for all her auditions (and is still doing it) and it is a relatively inexpensive way to get a small number of headshots printed out.</p>
<p>Thanks all for your helpful advice.</p>
<p>NMR – the studios I spoke to all quote a price per 8"x10" print. The lowest price I could find was $10 per print. No one mentioned providing a CD that we could take to get our own prints made. Is this typical? What is a reasonable price to pay for the CD? Thanks.</p>
<p>WMDad, it’s pretty standard to get a cd/dvd of your shots now. A Broadway actor friend of ours is also a photographer and he charges $300 for a two hour shoot, all shots on a dvd and two shots touched up, just to give you an idea of price.</p>
<p>$10 per print is VERY high if that means that they send you the hard copy prints and are going to charge you $10 per hard copy. If you are auditioning for 12 schools that could add up to $120 just for 12 prints. If you mean $10 per retouched digital image that they you would make prints from, that is more in range… most professionals charge $10 - $30 per retouched digital image (outside of the ones included in the package). </p>
<p>Generally, the photographer gives you your touched up image (or images depending on the package) on a CD (or sometimes through email or in an online gallery). </p>
<p>Professional headshot photographer friends of mine generally charge between $250 - $600 (some photographers charge even more than this) depending on length of shoot, # of retouched images, etc, and give the client a CD of the shots. Some will also send hard copy prints at about $2.00 per print if you want them to print some out for you with borders, your name on the front, etc… </p>
<p>If you have the image on CD it is easy to put your name on the front yourself in photoshop or even using office publisher, add borders if you want them, and crop the image so that the photo with the borders and the name on the front is 8x10. </p>
<p>There are also reproduction services that will do this for you and print out multiple copies of your shot for you. For example – “Precision Photos” charges $59 for 25 prints on a first time order. They take the digital image you send them put on the borders, your name on the front, crop to 8x10, and actually have a system where you can design your headshot format online. I played around with it… pretty cool. The price per print goes down depending on the number of prints you order, and on later re-orders of the same shot. </p>
<p>There are other places that will make multiple headshot reproductions for you… “Reproductions” is one that a lot of professionals use as well… </p>
<p>“Reproductions” also maintains an online gallery with links to professional photographer websites. Even if you do not intend to get professional headshots any time soon, the information on rates, and the onlines galleries are a terrific resource to see what is currently professional industry standard. It is fun to see what is out there! ;)</p>
<p>Again – none of this is going to make or break your chances of admission to college programs, and PROFESSIONAL headshots generally ARE NOT a requirement for admission to most college programs… While some students who audition do have professional headshots, many do not. As many have said above – the audition (and other factors… grades, essays, recommendations, interviews, etc…) are key. :)</p>
<p>WellMeaningDad, has your son asked everyone he knows (local theatre people, students from your area who are already in acting programs, etc) how they got their headshots done and who they used? I should think you could find a good photographer to do them who is not necessarily associated with a pricey studio.</p>
<p>One consideration, if you use an amateur like we did – tell the photographer that the images have to be croppable to 8 x 10 dimensions. My son’s headshots featured images that were so large that if we had cropped, too much would have been lost. We’ll know better next time!</p>
<p>The guy we used took a couple hundred shots of my son and then let us choose six that we wanted retouched digital images of. It was weeks before we received the CD with our final retouched images, but they were beautiful. Probably professional studios do the retouching a great deal faster. You need to take the time frame into consideration, especially if your son has auditions coming up as early as January.</p>
<p>NJ – you’re right; time is of the essence… First audition is 12/12. The studio session is Tuesday – they say they can turn around re-touched images in a week and a half… I’ll ask about the CD tomorrow…</p>
<p>Once you have your photos, you may want to see if there is a Costco in the area and check into having your copies made there. I uploaded my D’s headshot to their online photo processing center and picked up beautiful copies in a few hours. The price was VERY reasonable (about $1.50 per copy) and they offer the lustre and gloss finishes. Very nice way to get lots of copies made quickly.</p>
<p>Good luck, WellMeaningDad. Maybe you can pay for a couple of prints for the first audition and then follow some of the advice given here about getting future ones made from the CD.</p>
<p>Let us know how everything works out.</p>
<p>I posted this on another thread a while back, but to get more bang for the buck we used a pose from her headshots as my D’s senior picture to give to family and friends. The printer cropped her name off so it looked like a regular photo and also printed some in 5 x 7 size. So we could better justify spending money on the headshot knowing we did not also have to pay for the high school senior photographer.</p>
<p>DD just got her headshot copies back yesterday from Reproductions in LA. Instead of senior pictures DD had an hour and a half with a headshot photographer here in town and we received 4 retouched photos for $300. Reproductions put the white border and her name on the headshots. I think with the set up and everything including the shipping it was around $120 for 100 headshots. She asked for these since she is using them for college auditions.</p>
<p>In the past my husband always did her headshots and would have them printed at CostCo for about $1.50 each.</p>
<p>Some of the relatively inexpensive photo quality inkjet printers out there can do a great job of printing professional quality head shots. Our photographer gave us a cd with all the shots as well as the selected head shots in “touched up final finish” form. The biggest problem I have is that it is extremely tough to find the paper size used for a standard 8x10 head shot so I usually use 8 1/2 x 11 paper, tell the software to print the correct image size and then cut the borders down. Even easier, if you have a multi purpose photo quality inkjet that includes a flat bed scanner/copier function, you can just take one of the professionally printed head shots, pop it on the scanner bed and hit “copy”. Technically very easy to do, but you do have to check to make sure the scanner has the capability to accurately read the color tones of the original. Either way, after the initial investment, you have a source of head shots at pennies a copy.</p>