If you are an actor friend who reads my blog, definitely check out Bonnie's article. It is long...very long. But a good read. It really lays out the pros and cons of the law and I feel like we are going to benefit from it. Mostly it affects "talent searches" and "talent competitions" that charge actors thousands of dollars to participate in. One of the big issues with these types of venues is that many child actors participate in them hoping for their chance at stardom. Oddly enough, I did a talent competition my senior year of high school and I have a feeling that Bonnie talks about the same place I went. She says,
One of the major targets of the new law is the "talent convention" model. I was approached in 2003--just three months after my first casting gig--to do one of those "talent conventions" in Florida for a few grand. Yup. All-expenses-paid trip and five-star resort accommodations, plus a few grand cash in exchange for a few hours of watching several hundred actors (mostly kids, whose parents had paid thousands of dollars for the opportunity) as long as I pledged to "call back" a dozen or so of the kids, so they could say their program works. "No, thank you," I said.
When I went to the talent convention, it was held in Hilton Head, SC but I know soon after that the convention was held twice a year in Orlando only. I did well at the competition, winning in the categories I competed in and placing in the Top Ten Overall Talent out of 500+ people there. I got called back by several agents and casting directors in NYC but I decided to go to college instead of NY. When I graduated I headed straight to the Big Apple and contacted the people who had called me back. In light of Bonnie's info, it is disheartening to think that they may have called me back as part of their contract. But three years after the competition (I graduated early), I still was able to get meetings with these agents and even booked my first commercial through one of the casting directors I had met.
Now, I definitely recognize that that was probably a fluke. I met a girl last year - at a casting workshop - who happened to be from the same area of Florida as me. She had gone to the same talent competition as me, I think about a year later. She was called back by the same exact people. And she went to NY to pursue the opportunity. She was only there for a short time before she felt like she had been scammed. It did not work out as well for her and she went back to FL. Now she's in LA giving it a shot. But here we were - meeting each other at a casting workshop, where we are still paying good money to meet with casting directors in the hope that someone will recognize our talent and bring us in.
I'm not saying that casting workshops don't work. I have a few success stories from them and know friends who have similar stories. But I am saying that the times they work are far less often than the times they do. So we continue to shell out our money - which is hard to come by as an actor - because we want to be in the "far less often" percentage. The pool is so large and it is so hard to get into a room if you don't have some sort of connection to the CD - or the EXACT look that they need (which may be more rare than when casting workshops work out). Even my agent has recommended I do casting workshops and send them the list of people I meet. This helps when pitching me: "You met Meagan a few weeks back at such-and-such workshop." It helps with creating a brand when you don't have an extensive resume to get you in the door.
Bonnie mentions in her article about some of the free casting workshops that the SAG Foundation puts together that are woefully under attended. My little ears perked up - free?? I should be ashamed for not doing my research more and finding out where the free workshops are because I didn't realize that they existed. Or, I should say, I didn't realize that they were legit. That is how warped the casting workshop world has gotten! You assume that you have to "pay to play" or it's not worth your time. That is not the way it should be - if we were more confident and less desperate to get a chance, we would realize that these casting directors should be paying to see US. Because we are going to make their job easier. We are what they have been looking for. There has been such a shift in the balance so that there isn't a balance anymore. We're desperate to be seen by agents, managers, casting directors - "please, please, please just give me a chance" - when in reality, they work for us in the end. We put money in their pockets.
Phew. This post has taken quite the turn and has gotten quite long and I'm not sure where its going (what am I? A writer from Season 4 of LOST?), so I'm going to close up with this thought:
Read AB 1319 - ADVANCE FEE TALENT SERVICES: SCAM PREVENTION. Read Bonnie's article. Weigh in with a comment. Let's do what we can to make this a more balanced pursuit. Because following this dream is already hard enough.
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