Posts Tagged ‘Acting Career’

Since you’re reading this, you probably already realize that in Hollywood, as in many other industries (politics and contract work), networking is a very important aspect of a successful career. Strong networking skills are, in fact, more critical than great talent, by the way.

If you’re like most of the thousands of actors and screenwriters I’ve worked with, you probably agree that networking is a key to success in Hollywood, but it probably lives more as a concept in your head than as a real thing that you do. In fact, my guess is that you probably wish it were not necessary, and there’s a good chance that it feels “fake” to you. Bottomline, it may seem like networking is really just trying to sell yourself and get what you want. But if you think of it that way, you are making a big mistake. Relating to networking like that will work against you because you’re going in the wrong way. How do you do it right, you ask?

Here are the Five Golden Keys to be successful at networking.

First Key: Change your relationship to networking itself. Instead of focusing on getting what you want, focus on getting to know people.

If you go to a function, you have to get to know people before you can do business with them anyway. So simply meet people and talk with them as your initial contact. Ask them questions, find out about who they are, what they do, and what they are working on at the moment. As you listen and converse with them, things you have in common will come up naturally.

Second Key: Set a goal for what you want to accomplish before you go to the networking event.

Make a plan to fulfill a goal, such as exchange three business cards with people you could do business with. Or perhaps, introduce and pitch yourself to five people whom you will also learn about what they do. Or it could be to do something like find a potential writing partner or to find a project you can be a production assistant on or an agent whose office you could assist in for a week or a month. There are many kinds of outcomes that you can set that could forward your career – it doesn’t necessarily just have to be getting someone to read your script or getting someone to let you audition for their film. One of the powerful ways that you develop connections is to work with people in other capacities first while not hiding your real aspirations.

Key Three: Make sure you have follow up system in place once you meet someone.

Once you get home, make a strong, clear choice about how and when you will keep in touch with that person and how you will approach them. Then update your contact list and put on your calendar when you will reach them again. Also set aside time for when you will prepare what you will say to them, whether it is to pitch something to them or to offer to buy them lunch or dinner. Then when the time comes, make your call to them. Key Four: Prepare and practice your pitch in advance of the meeting. You need to craft your pitch so that you come across as interesting to whomever you’re pitching to. Don’t just tell about yourself, but sell yourself by telling them something about yourself that they could be interested in.

For example, what I do, from my perspective, is I help market actors and screenwriters. But from your perspective, if you’re an actor, I help you get more auditions that you want or I help you get an agent who can get you auditions. For screenwriters, from my perspective, I help you create a Query Letter Mailing. But from your perspective, I help you get producers and agents to read your script.

When you prepare your pitch, prepare it for what is in it for the audience that you want to do business with and that you are pitching to.

Key Five: Have a strong system for ongoingly keeping in touch with everyone you meet whom you could potentially do business with, so they remember you and they think of you at the right time.

If you’re an actor, go crazy with mailing out photo postcards and messages, update people on your latest activities – whether it’s a new headshot (or just new to them) – or a play you’re doing, a new class you started, or a Guest Star Role that you just got cast in. Get creative about what you announce. If you are taking action in your career, there is always something to announce, I promise you. For Screenwriters, be prolific in coming up with ideas. You can keep in touch letting people know about a new treatment or screenplay you have. You can also contact them to let them know you love their recent project, or congratulate them on something. One surefire way to get them to remember you (favorably) is if you have a fantastic script and they read it, they will remember you for quite some time. It is really great if you also engage in optioning other writers’ scripts because that puts you in a producer role and can give you countless things to talk about to anyone. But that is a whole other ballgame, so suffice it to say that if you are thinking about doing that, it’s a great idea.

If you only want to write or if you only want to act, then you have to get creative about how you can stay in touch or make people remember you. But you must do it. You must put effort and intention in this area of your career.

So there you go. Five Keys for Successful Hollywood Networking. If you taking on mastering these keys, demonstrate patience, and not get too worried about seeing immediate results (although you might see fast results), then over time you will be blown away by the results you produce. If you would like coaching on developing your Quick Pitch for networking events or any aspect of networking, follow up, approach contacts and making requests, check out my Melody Jackson Coaching page  and call me to arrange a time.

Actors often ask me about the best way to note certain credits on their acting resumes, meaning what type of role it should be called, so I want to give you a few notes here. 

Believe it or not, after reviewing and redoing thousands of acting resumes, I can tell you that there’s a 90% chance that your resume is not selling you as well as it could.  Even experienced actors who have worked in TV for years are playing down their credits and not making them look as good as they could.  I know dozens of ways to improve the way your credits and training are listed on your resume, and if you’re working, you need it to sell you in the best way possible.

Given that this is a blog post, I’m just going to cover one topic here, and that has to do with the billing, or the way the role is listed on your resume.  And I’ll cover tips for whether you have just a few credits or you’re someone who is very experienced.

The term “billing”  refers to how the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) credits you when you play a given role in a SAG film or TV project.  For TV, the main billing types are Series Regular, Guest Star, and Co-Star.  You also can get what’s called an Under-5.  There are also other billings like “Special Guest Star” and so on.

When it comes to your resume, you should use whatever your actual credit was per SAG, if you even know. Sometimes actors don’t really know what their billing was, they just know they had two lines on CSI or something to that effect. So for one, if it’s a SAG job, you need to find out what your billing was.  After you’ve worked for a while, you’ll start to understand why billing is so important.

On the other hand, you may not always know what your billing was, and if it were not a SAG job, then you may not even have any official billing, so you have to come up with something.  Whatever you do, you should make it sound as good as you can as long as you are still comfortable with it.  You don’t want to lie about something and then go into a meeting all pent-up and worried that someone might call you on your lie.  So just make it sound only as good as you are comfortable with.  Think of it like politics and “spinning” the truth.  You bring the focus to the good part not the bad part.

For example, say you have a line or two, and you want to make it sound as good as possible.  SAG likes you to use “Under-5,” meaning under 5 lines.  But instead, you could use something like “Guest Role.”  It just sounds better.

One of the tips that actors who have been working in television roles for quite a while miss out on is when they play a Recurring Role (not “Reoccuring,” by the way) on a TV series.  For example, let’s say you work 2 days one week, none the next, one the next, and so on, the idea being that you are Recurring but you don’t know exactly when.  You can jazz that credit up by putting (1 year) or (2 Years) beside the name of the credit.  This shows that you were on it for a while, not just for 2 appearances.  When you put Recurring with no note of years, you miss out on showing your experience if you worked on it for 6 months or a year.

If you are someone who is newer and doing extra work, you may wonder how to note that. It’s fine to put a few extra jobs on your resume while building your “real” credits.  In that case, if you were one of the extras clearly seen in the movie or TV show, then you might put “Featured” for your role if you don’t want to list it as extra work.

As to whether you should put extra work on it, if you haven’t done much other work, then go on and pick out a few of your extra jobs that you were singled out for and list it as Featured.  But don’t try to make it look like you were a Guest Star or something big.  Just put “Featured” and nothing bigger.  If an agent you’re meeting with gets mad that you put extra work on your resume and listed it as Featured, just tell them that you heard “somewhere” that that was how you were supposed to list it but that you are happy to take it off if they want you to.

This way, it gets you in the door, but you play just a tiny bit naïve about it to get away with it. When you get to a point where you have four or five speaking credits in the Television category, remove all of your extra work entirely.   Until then, be ready to tell a good story about each of your credits when they ask.

So that’s a quick tip for jazzing up your TV credits.  Film credits is a whole other story.

Keep in mind that if you have done a few plays, independent films, short films, student films, hosting, and so on that there are probably quite a few tweaks that will help your resume show you in the best light possible. 

If you think you might need a Resume Make-Over, go to Smart Girls Productions and they’ll redo it for you for a reasonable price.  They also do “Day Job” resumes and Day Job Cover Letters should you be in the market for a new “day” job.  Also, check back here for an upcoming ebook that will reveal to you dozens of hot tips like this one to make your resume show you off the best way possible, as well as have lots of sample resumes.

I have added this section as I have a commitment to expanding consciousness on the planet, and in particular in the world around me.  Even though this is a Hollywood blog, mostly aimed at Actors and Screenwriters, this section is really for anyone who is commited to expanding consciousness.  I am not addressing a moral concern, but more of a spiritual matter.  What I mean by this is that I believe the reason “we” are here is to become more conscious of our true connection to the Universe while liviing in this human body — and, I might add — enjoying the pleasures of being in this human body.  The more we become conscious, the more we can actually enjoy what is otherwise a rather painful episode of life.

Given that, I will be writing of the patterns that run us.  Much like in The Matrix.  However, to be clear, this is not something I got the idea about from The Matrix.  This is a way of seeing things that I have developed over the last 20 years, and the last 12 years in particular.

As a matter of fact, it was in my first acting class that I suddenly had an experience of being outside of my patterns — or shall we say, an experience of consciousness.  I was doing a monologue, getting coaching from Sebastian Brook, and after a moment, I suddenly burst into tears and started sobbing.  (How embarrassing it was at first.)  But I had connected with emotion inside of myself that I had never felt before.  As it turns out, I was crying about some guy that I had been hurt about, but the important thing is that I connected with emotions inside myself that I had simply repressed.  That was a major opening into self-inquiry … and my own consciousness.

In that same class, there was this classy upscale broad by the name of Myers Bartlett.  She was an actress from Queens, New York, with lips that would challenge Angelina Jolie’s in a beauty contest. She had earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre from Boston University, which she told me was a very good school, and she was very charismatic.  Myers had already been a New-Age, consciousness-seeking person, shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joes, for quite some time.  And even though we were the same age, she was way more advanced in the arena of consciousness.

After class with Sebastian that day, Myers came over to me and handed me a piece of paper with her phone number on it and said, “If you want to talk, call me.”  And she strolled away with her classy New York walk.  I just stared at her.  I had already admired her because she just seemed to know what she was doing in the world.  She seemed very sophisticated.  So when she gave me that note, I thought, “Yeah, I might just do that.”

A day or two later, I did, in fact, call her.  I discussed my whole situation and the guy problem I was having.  I had a broken heart at the time.  When we began to talk, she would tell me about her relationships and say phrases like, “… meant to be,” and, “we connected on a soul level,” and “soulmates,” and “He was a Leo and I was…”  I had never heard anyone talk like this (who actually believed it) — talking about this airy-fairy stuff like it was real.  She was completely different from anyone I had ever been around… and I liked this other language.

As I hung out with Myers over the next few years and also attended my classes with Sebastian Brook and did my homework, I got firmly set on a path of seeking awareness.  Both of them made a major difference in my life in setting me on this path.  Later, I became a Seminar Leader at Landmark Education, which profoundly altered my consciousness.  And I also earned my Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute.  Mythological Studies is a program that covers all of the humanities and how they express the human experience.  It also covers in depth the study of stories, aka myths — our own personal stories, as well as cultural stories. 

To come back to The Matrix, the point is this.  We are all born caught in a web, a pattern of stories, a set of myths.  As we grow up, those patterns get carved more and more deeply into our belief system, and we don’t even realize that we are in it.  We just think that how we see things is how life is.  We react to the pull of the pattern and think we are in love, or we think we are in hate.  And all the while, we are simply playing out a pattern.

The gauntlet which has been thrown down for us as human beings is to notice that we are acting inside a pattern and then to stop that — and simply make a conscious choice of what to do in a given situation.  This does NOT mean do the opposite — which many people get confused about — it is to stop and choose one way or the other.  If you do the Opposite to get out of the Pattern, you are still IN the pattern and your actions are still being given by it.  Like someone who goes against authority on purpose thinking that they are being powerful or unique.  No, they are still acting in response to authority and trying to prove something, they are not acting freely.

So… this area of this blog will address the Matrix of patterns that we are born into.  I hope that you may find some inner peace and freedom from my posts.

Thank you for engaging.