Monday, April 16, 2012
Week 13-14- Got an agent?
Many of you have already identified and agent and have started to go out on professional auditions. Others have started to go out on local auditions on campus.
If you have an agent, how do much are you engaged in your career? Do you check in with your agent once a week? Do you let them know when you have shows going on so that they can come and watch? Do you have a vision plan that you have shared with your representations? If not, you must. For those of you about to cross over to a professional agent, have you thought about these questions?
What do you want your agent to do for you that you cannot do for yourself? What are you trying to achieve. Your agent will have a listening for what you can and want to do by sharing this information with him/her and then showing them that you are capable of achieving it. Make a list of what you would like to accomplish in the next three years as a performer. Once you have a vision plan, ask yourself how much of it depends on your agent? How much depends on you making it happen for yourself. You might be shocked at the results. In order to have a manager, you need to have something, even a vision plan, to manage...
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At this time in my acting career I've decided not to focus on an agency, I have been auditioning for small independent and student films in the Kansas City area on my own. I am not planning on being in the area for very long so I do not feel like I would benefit from that kind of commitment. I am in a place where i am trying to build my resume in the film department as well as trying to be involved with straight plays that are not associated with a school.
ReplyDeleteDuring the next couple of years I plan on building my resume, getting a taste for a professional theatre life-style as well as working on the other side of theatre as a technician, director and educator. I want to focus on theatre for children and then put my own performances second. However I do not want to give up performing.
I do not have an agent right now due to NCAA, but other wise I think I would. I'm not actually sure what I want from my agent as I don't know what an agent does besides getting me auditions. I would tell my agent that I want to do theater stage work and films as well. After listening to our guest last week I guess I would get into commercials if I could to get noticed. But ultimately I would like to stick with theater and film. Something that I would also like to dable in is wrestling, like the WWE. I have no idea how to get into that market so I guess I would like my agent to give me information about that so I can bring them a fully developed product before auditioning. I never felt like my career would depend on an agent, but I do feel like having an agent would be a useful tool to get information and help get my foot in the door on auditions, but ultimately I know its my responsibility to bring a sound product to the auditions.
ReplyDeleteI do not have an agent as of yet, but I think I want one soon. I think having an agent will give me more opportunities and get me excited about working and ultimately keep me more engaged as I try to become a professional actor. I need to make myself a vision plan for the next few years, but I realize that my agent could only help get me there and that most all of the time and effort will be from me. I want to find out which agents/agencies can do the most for me in terms of getting me a number of auditions. I feel like when I start going out professionally and consistently that I will quickly learn how communicate my questions, concerns, and needs to an agent.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I love having an agent, but I am still about 75% dependent on myself. All my theatrical work and film work has still come from seeking out auditions myself and from networking. My agents have secured me a lot of auditions for commercial work but that has only accounted for about 1/4 of my professional work throughout the year. Since most of what I do is stage related, I am very self-dependent. I do, however, check in on my agent 1 - 2 times a week. We have become good friends since I have been booking so we talk often. I keep up on what he is sending me out on, etc. and make sure we are always on the same page work wise. I invite them to my shows and they have done a pretty great job of supporting my work away from what they have sent me out on. They know that my needs are purely for them to send me out on work and to (hopefully) connect me with their connections outside of Kansas City. Both of my agents have a lot of connections with Modeling in NYC and Acting in LA so I hope that I can capitalize on that later on. So, I work hard for them and make sure that I am always on my A game so as to always be on their good graces. They are my agents, after all.
ReplyDeleteI do not have an agent right now but I’m going to get one next semester. I have thought about this decision a fair amount and talking about agents and how to pick them in class has certainly helped me feel more comfortable with this decision. The benefits of having an agent that I can see are that your agent gets a lot more information about casting calls and auditions than the average person could, so your agent can save you time by seeking out auditions so that you don’t have to do that yourself. From what I understand, agents also have a great deal of connections (at least you hope so) and can find more audition opportunities that way. Apparently you want to pick a somewhat small agency so that a) there aren’t many people who are your same type with whom to compete for jobs and b) so that your agent knows you personally and knows your skills and type in order to send you out on jobs that would be right for you. The one question I have about managers concerns how many you’re supposed to have. I know there are commercial agents, but what about theatre agents? Are there some agents who do both or should you have two separate agents?
ReplyDeleteIt’s difficult to make a list of what I want to accomplish in the next three years because I am still am exploring what’s out there and available. I may discover some avenue of performance in a year that I know nothing about now but suddenly will want to get involved in. That being said, in the next three years, I want to be a steadily working actor in Kansas City. I want to have worked at many of the major theatres in Kansas City: the Coterie, the Unicorn, the Rep, etc. and the smaller ones, too. I hope to also be working on side projects with other actors and artists – putting on independent shows wherever there’s space (Nicole says: if you aren’t working, you can make your own work). In the next three years I also plan to be in several commercials casting out of Kansas City. Honestly, I don’t know precisely how my agent will help me achieve these goals. I know an agent could certainly help when it comes to commercials, but I don’t know about theatre. Again, that’s something I need to explore.
This semester I have auditioned for more projects than I have during any other semester at KU (possibly combined…) These include one voice-over job, four KU FilmWorks productions, and I have also officially signed up to audition for the Unicorn and Coterie theatres in late May. All of these projects have been within the safety bubble of the university, and as a graduating senior this is probably behind schedule, but they have been successful attempts and excellent experience and they have given me not only the confidence to pursue outside auditions but they have given me the motivation as well.
ReplyDeleteI clearly do not have an agent as of yet, and have not contacted one. Something I have been doing a lot of however is looking over agent websites, and I’ve been discovering a lot of things not only about what kind of agency I would be looking for, but even about what kind of career I would want to pursue. The information that draws me in is looking at what kind of clients they represent (commercial, theatrical, comedians, etc.) and what companies they have done business with (which is a factor I naively did not consider when thinking about Kansas City agencies). Looking over a number of websites, I have realized that I would want management that could represent me as an actor, voice actor, and standup comedian, the latter of which I had…for whatever reason…never considered could be represented by an acting agency.
Anyway, though I haven’t actually pursued an agency, the research has not only helped me decide what kind of management I want, but also helped me construct what kind of jobs I am interested in, and has forced me realize that if you want specific kinds of jobs, whether they are commercials or children’s theatre or whatever, you have to do the research on what’s out there. So the next step is to just do it.
Okay, okay, the next step is obviously headshots. Drag queen hair or no drag queen hair, the next step is headshots. THEN the inspirationy-part.
As of right now I do not have an agent. This semester I have been doing a lot of self work and trying to figure out what I want from life and I have just recently decided that I can not live with out acting I just have to have the confidence that I can do it and that has been what has been keeping me from deciding. Now that I have decided that this is what I have to do with my life (well, I always knew, even as a child but was just too scared and embarrassed to admit it to anyone) I think it will be a good idea for me to begin my search for an agent. As far as what I want my agent to do for, I know that I still have to do the work looking for auditions and finding my own work so I guess that I would like them to maybe help me with the ones that are a less publicized or something along those lines. I haven’t planned on staying in Kansas City long but I have recently decided to stay here at least a two more years just to try and save the money to move somewhere else and I think making the connection with an agent will look good when I move on and hopefully they will be a good resource for me later. What I want for myself as a performer in the next three years is to build my resume with stuff out of Kansas City because right now my resume is still very light and has I think it would be beneficial for me to try to build that up and get more experience here close to home where I have a support system. Getting an agent I hope that this can help me find more opportunities for this than I may be able to. I also would like to look outside of KU for more training, as I have said in other blogs I felt that my training until this year has been very mediocre and disappointing. Not that I haven’t learned anything but I want to learn more. I do not really know how my agent can help me with this though. A lot of the things I would like to do the next few years with my acting profession is to explore a little more what this life has to offer such as getting improv training and other forms of acting method training. Mostly I just want to become more confident in myself. Most of this has nothing to do with an agent and is going to be something I do on my own.
ReplyDeleteI got an agent as soon as I cut a professional voiceover reel. I keep in contact with them--they know me--but I sense that they don't want to hear every detail of auditions. They're not quite as one-on-one; I think the ladies at TU are concerned with booking or not booking and they don't really want to hear from their talent once a week. I do feel comfortable calling and asking things like, do you have any suggestion on how to dress for this one, etc. It never even occurred to me to invite them to shows, since they don't do much in the world of theatre.
ReplyDeleteI'm honestly not sure when to tell them about my semester of study abroad... I hope they continue to fulfill their end of the contract on my return.
I haven’t thought about getting an agent here because I don’t plan on staying in Kansas for very much longer. My plans from now until I graduate are simply to audition for whatever I can and build up my skills and resume. I’m definitely still working on my “vision plan.” The basic outline is to graduate, work like crazy until I have some financial security, and then figure out where I want to move.
ReplyDeleteVenturing into the acting world was kind of an accident for me, but it has been very difficult but fun! I had only talked with one other agency before signing with TU and I didnt know much about agents, casting, and the whole process of booking a job at all. I had to figure things out. TU is definitely very big and sometimes I wonder how they decide who to send out for auditions. At first I was getting a ton of auditions, some which I couldn't it make it to because it was ALWAYS during the school day. A couple auditions, I had to skip Audition Techniques class for and ending up getting the job. I hate missing class though. Hopefully I can keep working in the KC area, and then find an agent in New York if I choose to move there and pursue my acting career. Obviously I need to figure out how to go out on auditions while working as a Nurse in the daytime but I feel like that will all fall into place.
ReplyDelete