Things That Make You Go Hmmm

I ran into an old friend recently. Someone that really helped me begin to navigate the shark infested waters of LA when I first moved here. As always, he had some interesting information regarding the casting process. There is a point to all of this, so just bear with me...he recently helped cast an independent feature that had a decent budget. Decent enough that they were talking to some big name actors. Because of his role as CD (short for casting director for those of you that don't know the lingo) the production company set up an account on Breakdown Services for him. Breakdown Services is an electronic submission service for agents, managers and actors. Basically, they list all the roles for a project, with a description of each character and the agents and managers can send the headshot/resume of actors that fit those roles for consideration. Sometimes these roles are released to actors, but a majority of the time only the agents and managers have access to that information. A local casting director once figured out the average number of submissions for any one role. That number came to roughly 2,000. TWO THOUSAND PER ROLE. And that's just the electronic submissions. That doesn't even take into consideration the actors who don't have someone submitting for them and have to do it themselves. When the agents/managers submit, casting sees a thumbnail of your headshot. There is an option to click yes or no under each photo.
That information I already knew. Cut back to the old friend I ran into. He told me that when the agents submit, a folder is created for that agency and casting also has the option to click yes or no to the whole folder. What does this mean? You can have an entire team of people submitting you for a role and if you're not with an agent or manager that that particular office likes working with, you're not getting seen. Period. I couldn't understand for the longest time why people who gave up their entire lives to move here and do this would give up so easily. But, when you start getting information like this, it shows you that they really do everything they can to stack the odds against you. Unfortunately for Hollywood, all it does is make me even more determined to find the loophole in the system. And there's always a loophole : )

Crayons Please

These brilliant words were written by Hugh Macleod (who was introduced to me by a friend). You can read more of his writting at gapingvoid.com

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I�d like my crayons back, please."

So you've got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don't know where the itch came from, it's almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person...

Until now.

You don't know if you're any good or not, but you'd think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don't know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who's got a cousin in California who's into this kind of stuff, but you haven't talked to your friend for over two years...

Besides, if you write a book, what if you can't find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can't find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You've always worked hard your whole life, you'll be damned if you'll put all that effort into something if there ain't no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow...

Heh. That's not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That's your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.

Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There's a big difference. Your wee voice doesn't give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

The wee voice didn't show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There's something you haven't said, something you haven't done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.

So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die... taking a big chunk of you along with it.

They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

AWOL

Ok, ok, I suck at this. Honestly, I completely forgot I had a blog until I was redoing my website the other day and remembered that I needed to add a link to it (which I haven't done). So, we're into 2008 now, almost 3 months in, wow. Things have been weird here, as I'm sure anyone in the industry in LA knows. Since my last blog, we had a writer's strike which brought everything to a grinding hault. Thankfully it's over now and hopefully the writer's got a deal they're happy with. I was certainly backing them! So, casting is now slowly but surely opening back up. It's been quite dead for me and making me rethink whether or not I need new headshots. I read somewhere though to NOT change up your headshots too often because casting actually does start to recognize it if you're persistent enough with it. I am nothing if not persistant so I'm hanging on with the current headshot right now, hoping there's recognition soon. I've also updated my demo reel so fingers crossed that gets me some calls. I did some more workshops but I'm really tired of throwing money into them and not seeing a return. I've been doing them consistently for about a year now and nothing. I'm at a loss. Time to sit down and rethink my game plan. I think a LOT of it has to do with my agent. I've been with them for a year now and can you believe that last week was the FIRST time they've called me for an audition? Ridiculous. Time for them to go. So I've started researching new agencies and sending out packets to them. From what I've heard, all the agencies are scared to bring on new people right now as noone is sure what's going to happen with the industry from here on out. The writer's strike really threw things in an uproar. For example, there's no pilot season this year. But when have I ever followed the rules? : )

Ok, I'm off to prep for an audition I'm completely terrified of. Wish me luck!