When you imagine an acting career, you probably think of theatre, film, and TV work. But the jobs actors do can be hugely varied, from adverts to voiceovers to educational projects. One strand to consider, which can provide essential income for actors early on in their journey, is industrial acting, also known as corporate jobs. Here your acting skills help display, explain, and promote products or train employees.
Read on for a guide to the ins and outs of corporate gigs.
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Industrial acting involves performing live or making filmed presentations for corporate purposes, such as training, marketing, or communication. As an umbrella term, it covers a huge number of gigs. You could end up delivering essential safety training for people in frontline jobs, hyping up a new gadget in a display at a noisy convention, spicing up a product launch, or playing dead in a safety demo. But, broadly speaking, there are two main forms of corporate gigs: filmed and live.
Industrial films are usually made for instructional, training, and promotional purposes, and they can be for internal or external use. They may be as long as a piece of string, although most are fairly short and require only a few days of shooting. There are many different kinds, including industrial commercials, corporate promotions, HR courses, safety briefings, educational videos, and e-learning courses.
Filmed corporate gigs can be further broken down into two categories: those in which you are the narrator or presenter, directly addressing the camera and ultimately the employee or customer, and those that are acted out to illustrate best practices or what not to do, or to present plausible scenarios an employee may come up against, such as nightmare customers, bullying at work, or an emergency situation.
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Live industrials usually take place either within a company or corporate setting or at an event such as a trade show or conference. Your presence may be used in an important corporate meeting to liven up the presentation of a new product or management technique. A professional actor can be used to deliver news or training in a more exciting way, adding a bit of comic relief and panache. Or you may use live role play to demonstrate different scenarios and ways of approaching problems in a training context, either alongside other actors or interacting with the staff being trained.
Live presentations often take place at events such as trade shows. You may demonstrate products and give presentations – often on repeat throughout the day – to members of an industry or to the general public. Both will likely involve following a script for the most part, but it will be your job to bring it to spontaneous and persuasive life.
Demonstrating the merits of a new air fryer or walking corporate drones through a new piece of software is probably not the kind of acting your creative soul yearns to do, but there are plenty of benefits for aspiring thesps (and their bank accounts).
Corporate acting may involve a “major mind-switch, because the work is all about other people and not about you,” Paul Clayton writes in his book, So You Want to Be a Corporate Actor?. You’re there to help someone else learn or understand, not to give your Hamlet. But, Clayton adds, “you may find that using your skills as an actor to help other people in their own personal and professional development is something you find uniquely fulfilling.”
And even if the work is not at all fulfilling, it can be a really helpful source of income for a “resting” actor. Rather than waiting tables or working in a call centre, you are at least getting paid to do your craft – to act on camera or in front of a live audience. Industrial jobs can be lucrative, and they’re often for a limited time period (a one-off event or a day’s filming), making them a very flexible source of income that can fit in between more creative projects. “How do you find something that pays the rent but is flexible enough to allow you to go to auditions and to disappear for months on end to tread the boards? For me and many other actors, the answer lies in corporate role play,” Syrus Lowe writes for The Stage.
Such roles can also provide early career actors with essential skills and experience. If you can convincingly sell a product you have no intention of using or speak fluently in technical jargon you’ve previously never encountered, most naturalistic dialogue will feel like a doddle by comparison! And live gigs often have their challenges. You may be making presentations to huge numbers of people, performing in vast and noisy venues, or competing for the attention of the crowd. Doing live events can help you hone skills in delivering a script, improvised crowd work, and interpersonal banter with employees.
Filmed work, meanwhile, can be a brilliant training ground for what it’s like to perform in front of a camera, giving you vital experience on a real set, working with crews, and understanding basics such as hitting your marks. “When you’re starting out, it’s one of your few opportunities to get onto a real live set and do real live acting in front of one-camera, two-camera, three-camera setups,” says actor Jesse Dienstag.
Take a corporate job in the spirit of curiosity and with an eye for what you can get out of it, and it could prove a valuable learning experience. On top of that, it’ll also give you an all-important reel clip.
1. Create a commercial demo reel.
A commercial showreel is a short video compilation of all your previous bookings. It shows casting directors the scope of your work and the range of your talents, and it demonstrates your suitability for other industrial acting roles.
2. Search for jobs.
Search jobs boards for corporate acting gigs. Make checking regularly part of your schedule as an actor, so you never miss an opportunity.
3. Network.
Be open and friendly on jobs and attend industry events and conventions in an effort to build up a network of contacts in the industry. A personal touch can lead to more work opportunities. It can even be worth taking the initiative and staying in contact with a company you have worked for, checking in to see if they have more work coming up. “What the companies seem to like is if you remember them and you keep in contact with them over the months or years,” says actor Victoria Broom. “After [one] job, I contacted the company every so often to see if they had any other projects they could use me in. Ninety percent of the time they did; they just needed that reminder of who I was.”
4. Be prepared.
Industrial acting will often be for a highly specialised industry, with its own jargon and technical language. Do your research into the field or specialism in advance so you can be confident and comfortable in the subject you’re presenting on or doing training in. You want to sound at home and natural in their world, able to ad-lib or engage with people, rather than like you’re desperately trying to remember a specific term.
5. Be professional.
The best way to get asked back for future work is to be professional. Arrive on time, be friendly and courteous to the people you work with, and commit wholeheartedly to whatever performance you’re giving. Chances are, you’ll get invited back.