Self- Producing part II in a ??? part series…

So, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, if you like this blog or subscribe to it or whatever, that we’ve been away for many months. You may have even thought that it had died. Au contraire mon frere! (Just googled how to actually spell that correctly.) We’ve just been busy creating, producing and acting in a web series called Secret Millionaires. ( Secretmillionairestv.com ) That earlier post that we wrote about self-producing not only got us thinking about self-producing, it got us doing it!
You will be able to see the fruits of our labor on November 17, 2010!
It was very empowering! It can be easy for an actor to sit around and ask, “Why am I not getting bites from representation? Why don’t I get called in by casting directors? Why am I spending all my money on my career with nothing to show for it?” Sometimes, the answers to these questions are enough to make you give up on your dreams… but that’s because they are the wrong questions. Instead, you should be asking, “Am I doing the right things for my career? Am I spending my money, time and energy wisely? Am I taking initiative in my career or am I waiting for it to happen to me?”
We felt that creating quality content for our reels and becoming SAG-eligible was a wise investment of time and resources as well as a plain, good strategic move for our careers. We’re now just that much more marketable to the “decision makers” in our industry.
But before you launch off into self-producing web content, we can share a little wisdom from our experiences.
I think first and foremost that every actor, writer, director or producer needs to understand that each career is unique from anyone else’s career. It’s just as unique as you. You can watch E! True Hollywood Story until you’re blue in the face, trying to copy Reese Witherspoon’s or Tom Hanks’ career, but the people featured on those shows seem to shoot to stardom in a matter of minutes. If you were to actually look at the span of their careers, you’d find most of the consistent working actors went through 7 or 8 years of ‘slogging’ before they were recognized. You’d also find that they usually forged their own path to career success. They contended for each opportunity and subsequent success. You can learn from their stories and follow recommended industry means & methods, but at some point you’ll have to find your own path. There is no “One size fits all (or even most)”. Industry means and methods are changing every day! By the time you’re ready, it may be a whole new set of rules!
Also, if you end up producing web content like a web series strictly to take advantage of the SAG New Media contract, it’s not worth it. There are far too many actors out here that are making series by which you can become SAG eligible. Get into one of those. How? (I’ll tell you in a minute.) Create because you have a story to tell and you want to do it well. Create because you simply must create. Create with passion!
Actors get into the acting mindset and don’t realize every aspect that goes into making quality content. You need to respect your fellow artists who are sacrificing time and donating their resources to help you succeed. You need lights, a camera and someone to operate it, hair/make-up/wardrobe and set dec, just to start. (We didn’t have a dedicated hair/make-up person on our shoot and I regret it because I don’t feel like I looked my best….) Then there is food! If your crew and cast are working for free or close to it, then you NEED to feed them. (Simply throwing sub sandwiches and juiceboxes at them isn’t going to cut it). With digital media, you can afford to have a bigger portion of your budget going toward food anyway. You have to make sure that everyone knows what their job is and which scenes you’re going to shoot and when everyone is expected to be on set. The list goes on and on. I tell you, produce something well and you will learn to respect all those faceless names that scroll too quickly after your favorite show.
We hired our cast and crew mostly from relationships that we had established in our acting class and on… wait for it… TWITTER! (It’s not just to announce your favorite starbucks beverage or the cute thing your cat did anymore). Most of the actors are from our acting class. We see their work consistently and knew that they fit into the script that we had already written. Yet another good reason why it is so important to be training!
As for our twitter friends, we met them at an actors “tweet-up” and saw some of the work that they had done or read reviews of it online. Our team was awesome! By the end, we had a real family. This was REAL networking! We were able to help a few of our friends become SAG eligible, get credits toward other unions and material for their reels.
SAG seems to have become wary of the “New Media loophole”. They were very careful to make sure we had a good ratio of full SAG members to Taft-Hartleys. They also have changed the rules a bit and I have noticed a tendency to try to close these loopholes, so what you hear on Monday may not be the case by Friday. Two of our cast became SAG “must joins” because they joined the project with the understanding that if you are currently eligible and you work a SAG New Media job, you will still remain eligible and not forced to join. That was apparently the case… a year ago, but wasn’t by the time our paperwork was turned into SAG.
I guess all of this is to say sorry that we’ve been silent for so long. I guess I more than made up for it in this post. Also, please watch our show, Secret Millionaires that will begin airing November 17, 2010 at secretmillionairestv.com You can go there right now and watch the trailer!