About six weeks ago the
perennial “Pay Your Actors” argument/discussion independently came up during my
acting class shortly after one of my facebook friends had posted his opinion on
the subject. I always want to be paid
for my work but until our classroom discussion that night, I really hadn’t
thought of the concept of compensation not being equal to or synonymous with
money.
On any project compensation
consists of some combination of these three things; relationships and
networking; acting experience, Imdb credit and footage for your reel; and money.
Over the next three weeks
I’ll be sharing my thoughts on those three previously mentioned items; first
off, relationships and networking.
I think that maybe more than
any other industry I’ve ever been involved in; there is nothing more valuable
in the world of acting than relationships and networking. With the advent of social networking i.e.,
facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and etc., networking is more accessible, but not
necessarily easier.
When I returned to “acting
world” nearly six years ago, one of the first things I did was to begin a
collection of names, numbers and email addresses. I grouped the email addresses into different
categories and would send out information on projects to my friends whenever I
heard about a new project. For a time, I
thought I was aware of all the projects going on at any given time. Was I ever wrong!
There are so many film
projects going on all the time and I want my friends (well, and me too) to be
working in the field they love as much as possible. Networking and our relationships are key to
achieving the level of success I believe we’re all striving to reach.
Through this blog post today,
I’m asking each of you, my facebook friends and Twitter followers to help me be
a better and more valuable friend to you.
I’m NOT looking for an excuse or reason to “unfriend” any of you. If anything, I want to get to know you better
so that I can share information about projects with you and refer you and your
skills to the people behind those projects.
I’m asking each of you to either through a comment on this status update
or through an email or facebook private message to send me two pieces of
information; 1.) Your movie job; actor, DP, etc. and; 2.) What, if any, the
first project we ever worked on together was.
If you choose to, also please send me your email address, phone number
and Twitter information.
I’d like to ask all of you to
follow me on Twitter.
By connecting with each other
on facebook, attending the various “Meet and Greets” available to each of us
and attending screenings, film festivals, MPAU and SAG-AFTRA events; I believe that we can all
expect to work more, improve our skills, earn more money and maybe more
important than anything make and enrich relationships throughout the Utah film
and acting community. How do you use social media
to promote your acting or film career; let’s talk next time we're
on location, on set, on stage or in the studio…
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