Actor Growth

I still remember paying for a membership for this site and I realized that I haven’t really been using it that much. I was just trying it today and it seems like a very chaotic message board that they have on that site. There is basically a couple of places where people are supposed to be able to find agents for representation or possible auditions to go to.

The thing is the forum seems so stone aged technology wise that the messages get cluttered up easily. As well, it seems very difficult to flesh out legitimate postings such as whether or not the agents who are advertising there are reputable or not. Basically, there just seems to be so many people trying to desperately break into the industry where one simple post can easily get dozens of replies.

I am going to try and dive into this a bit more and see what more I can get out of this service as like many times it’s what you do with it that counts.

When I was talking to the agent the other day, one pitch that he gave me was how he expressed that the difference between him and my current agent was that my current agent has a view that I work for them whereas his philosophy was that he works for the talent.

While I personally never exactly got that vibe from my current agent, that was a very good point I thought when it comes to finding an agent. I remember one actor told me once how it is so easy to forget sometimes that you are hiring these agents and so it should equally be important that when you are looking for representation that you are interviewing them as well.

Just like hiring anyone, if you are going to be working with them for a good part of your career then you owe it to yourself to make sure that the person is suitable and will do the job that you hired them to do. Just like how you shouldn’t barge into an agency thinking you are way above the agent, similarly they should not act as if they are way above you either.

What a busy day this was for me. While I knew I was going to an audition in the late evening today, it turned out that the agency that I contacted the other day was able to meet me pretty close to where I lived and so I went to meet the agent.

There were actually two of them which was a little unexpected, but overall it was a pleasant meeting. He mentioned that usually he had this entire presentation ready to pitch the agency, but since I am pretty familiar with film in general he figured there was no need.

The one thing that I liked was that he seemed very honest about how it may not be the best agency for principle work since they are still kind of entering that field as they specialize in background. It was nice not being pitched on how say the agency is the best in the world.

Aside from that, I went to the audition as planned. I can honestly say that I did very well as I seemed to click with the production team and made them laugh as intended since this was a comedy. This was a cold read with some improvisation which is great as it reminds me of doing theatre. Just a matter of time to see if I got the part or not.

So recently what came across my mind is that although I am primarily focused on acting, commercials can be a good way to get more exposure as well as meeting more people. Now usually commercial background work can give you an opportunity to land commercial roles as well.

The things is, while I have been to commercial auditions as a regular actor, the background agency I am currently with doesn’t seem to do commercial background work at all. So, what I was thinking of was discussing with my agent on whether or not the agency intends to expand into this category as I currently am pretty happy with them.

The only other alternatives would be for me to change agency all together into one of the bigger firms which is something that I am not too keen on. I’m the type of person who is usually pretty loyal to people unless they did something wrong to me and so in this case just changing agency would kind of bother me. We’ll see how this goes.

So yesterday I attended the reunion event and one person that was there happened to be my old drama instructor who is apparently back in the film industry more. After catching up, he asked me about agency representation and immediately offered to send my package to two agencies in particular as he knew those agents personally. His reasoning too is that he felt I should be with a bigger agency.

They are fairly established agencies too and the interesting thing is I submitted my package to one of them way back and got no response. The other one I actually did get a response and the agent mentioned that he wanted to set up an interview with me. However, he never got around to doing it nor had he responded to my inquiries in trying to find out what was going on afterwards

This made me wonder if it would be kind of strange if I was submitted again to the same two agencies and whether or not that could be a positive or negative. For example, it could be like a job resume where you would say “Oh, that guy again” or maybe on the flip side it could be now that I have a strong referral it could be a “Hmm, let’s take a more serious second look”.

He told me to phone him back in a week or so to catch up some more, so well see where it goes from there.

Well here was something interesting. Recently while researching about agencies there was one in particular where it had a pretty good reputation as a whole. However, one person was complaining that most of the other agents in the agency were actually actors themselves and as a result they would be at auditions too at times.

Because of that, they think that is a key reason why they aren’t called that much for auditions and instead the agent uses that as a way to try and propel their own careers as an actor. I’ve seen this before personally. Guess there is not much you can do other than if you feel that they are not giving you the necessary dedication as a result then you should find a new agent.

I suppose that is an important point too as a lot of times actors are so caught up in trying to get into the biggest agencies in town when really a small agency with a good agent can be just as good if not better for your career I’d say. That’s why even for myself in my new search I am more focused on the person themselves and what type of reputation he/she has.