Actor Growth

Okay, as I mentioned last time getting into IMDB is pretty simple where it seems like people on the outside think it is such a big deal. So, as I implied I figured that I would create a profile for the heck of it just to show how straight forward it is. Now remember how I said that I initially did not bother to create a profile because I didn’t really think that I have done anything yet that would really push my acting career forward? While that is still the case so far, that made me try to think of a credit that I could list that is legitimate but at the same time won’t really do much.

So, as my credit I thought back to one time that I was on TV. Now I noticed that a lot of actors have credits listed for times when they were on say talk shows as guests. Now normally to get listed on IMDB there has to be a show or production that is already listed on the site. If not, you have to get it registered first. For myself, back in 2007 I was on a local TV station here called Breakfast Television as a guest for a tech topic. The segment was for about 5 minutes or so.

So, what I did was I looked up the production and sure enough it was there. The only tricky thing was that there is actually a Toronto and Vancouver division and so the hosts that are listed are a bit inaccurate. But, in general I just added myself and in a few days I got my own page as you can see here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3595948/

I could literally do the same for a lot of independent films that I have been in by registering them and similarly adding my name to it. But what does it really do? Similar for a credit like this, I think the only time people would really care is if you are already well established and therefore this is more like a fan thing where people can keep track of everything you have been on. I even notice that a lot of people list background appearances.

There was one thing interesting for me in doing this. It appears that there is another Alan Yu listed and so my profile is listed as the “II” Alan Yu. Now IMDB has these things called a “STARmeter” which I guess is some algorithm based on who’s name has been searched the most. I was looking at the stats for fun and it was kind of surprising to see how high the number jumped for the profile I just created as you can see here:

According to this, on September 6, 2009 I was ranked 2,182,452 and on September 13, 2009 I jumped to 135,557. That just got me thinking, was there actually that much people trying to search for me? Was interesting I thought. In the next few months I’ll probably update it as that independent feature film credit will most likely get listed as I consider that a big step in my growth thus far.

But all in all, this is just to show how getting listed doesn’t exactly make you some kind of authority where you should be chasing to get an IMDB credit I’d say.