I think that acting students should work as much as they can outside of class to get the feeling of doing things in a product versus a process oriented way. Here in Prague, there are a few options for acting students to get into student films.

Student films in Prague usually pay something in the neighborhood of 500 – 1,500 Kc per day. Usually you will be able to get a copy of the film afterward, but you may need to go directly to the school as many of the film students are here only for the semester and may leave before being able to give you a copy.

Prague Film School has about 40-50 film students per semester and each semester they do 3-5 projects where they need actors. The students are mostly foreign (non-Czech) and the age ranges from 18ish to mid 20s. Acting students can register to get information about auditions by either going to their office (PÅ¡strossova 19) and leaving a CV and Photo for their book, or they can send an email to info@filmstudies.cz and ask to be invited to the auditions. Often the projects are cast simply by being in the right place at the right time amongst the film students, but it does help to have a headshot in the book and to come to the open call auditions.

FAMU and FAMU International are the other major student film producers in Prague. I’m less familiar with them, but I know that their students also are looking for actors to act in their projects. The best thing would be to send an email to FAMU or visit the FAMU International office with a headshot and resume and ask to get on their audition notice distribution.

There are also some casting agencies around town that will occasionally work with students, but usually this is a long-shot as students don’t want to pay a casting agency to look for actors unless they need something very specific.

So, what to expect when you go to act in a student film? The first thing to realize is that they are students, too. Things will not be as well organized as you’d like. The director will not be as attentive as you’d like (they have a ton of other things to deal with). The conditions will most likely be worse than ideal and the hours will be very long. The scripts will be less polished or mature than you may hope. This won’t be the case with all of the student films, but if this is what you expect, then when you experience something better than this, you will be pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around!

It is extremely beneficial for an acting student to be able to go on auditions and work with a camera and make mistakes and get used to being on set where the stakes are much lower than a professional job. Being on a student film set means that the student actor will have to do much of the work that an actor should be doing by his or herself, without an experienced director to give guidance. The student actor will need to come up with strong reasons for being in the scene, come up with how to make the scene active instead of passive, come up with their own way to measure how they’re doing take to take and most importantly how to focus on the their partner take after take, listening every time and letting their response come naturally. Do 10-15 student projects with this kind of work in mind and you’ll be ready to step onto any set.