On Agents

On Agents,

For more information, visit: Actors Listen Up, Filmmakers Listen In: 5 Things You Need To Know About Your Agent and Manager

It's more on the DIY model. Very clean sound advice here for actors and for emerging writer-director-producers who speak to them.

The other day I was approached at a coffee shop by someone who had a 200 p. script for a sweeping love story set in Egypt [I'm a film student]. She's an actress working at a conservatory that has not had nearly enough experience to know or understand what it's going to take. She's still in the "let the right person find me and I'll live happily ever after" portion of her creative growth. I told her to audition for thesis films and build her network. All she heard was "become an extra on big sets." I repeated myself but I'm not quite sure she understood that claims are nice but sadly lose their value as we get older. The business needs product to function.

If you are a filmmaker and you have a great experience with an actor, you can decide to foster them and help write material that will reveal their suited types and explore their range. These performances can give their agents more to work with and sell to casting directors and at the same time give your rising star a chance to gain purchase with a fan base.

No money, review everything else I've been saying: Shoot what you own. Come to terms with your constraints in production values and set some some rules about how you write your scenes. Focus on what you can control like performance, camera movement and the efficiency of your shot list and how many hours you should ask for your crew to work for free each day. Find a way that fits with your wallet and then practice those guidelines while EXECUTING a compelling story.

Agents want to sell. Casting directors want people who've put the work in. If you are focused enough you can either learn to do more with less or build a community to help you find more resources, or build a small but adequate team and do both. But by God, lean in and settle for nothing less then everything you've got to give.

Let's get what we came for,
C.M. Sanchez III