Kate McClanaghan - How To Get An Agent for Acting & Voice Over

www.voiceoverinfo.com

Acting is the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept.

Laurette Taylor

Copyright 2013 by Kate McClanaghan

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781483512808

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Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Samuel Johnson

At Sound Advice were often asked, Whats it take to go the distance in this business?

Theres no single answer. There are four: pursue, persist, prepare, and promote. These four components are absolutely vital to succeed at ANYTHING, let alone an acting or voice-over career. Its your responsibility to ensure these elements are continually in play as they are required of you no matter how far along you may beregardless of whether you are just beginning, or if you have been established and are aiming to raise your game to the next level. They are a constant.

Whatever you accomplish in this business, youll succeed only if you pursue it. Nothing will come to you, no matter how much talent you may have. Even with the benefit of nepotism, its ultimately up to you to run your career. This is your business and no one elses. Own it. Opportunities are what you make of them.

You have to set your sights on your immediate goals, and then persist at them, and often beyond what you might first consider a comfortable margin. Additionally, developing and then maintaining your skills requires persistent dedication. This element only increases with success, not the other way aroundcontrary to what many novices may think.

So, if you find youre easily frustrated or simply give up after a few months of training or even after only a year or two of promotion, then you may never honestly know for yourself what you could have created without real, long-term persistence.

Preparation means continually developing your abilities, and along with ongoing promotion, this requires patience. Allow yourself to continue to develop your skills. Agility is not naturally intuitive and talent can atrophy with lack of use. It takes attention. Otherwise your skills wont be sharp when called upon at a moments notice, and they will be tested. Without persistence you will serve only to undermine your own confidence. Your confidence is directly related to your integrity as an artist. Regardless of your position, no matter how affluent you may be, no one can afford to lose his or her integrity. Even natural talent will degrade and weaken if not continually honed.

To add to this, your success is contingent on continual and repeated promotion far more than anyone in this business has previously ever lead you to believe. Consider it your staple from this point forward. Its up to you to drive attention to yourself through your very best promotional efforts. And with that thought in mind, as a rule: never set your sights on securing just one audition, or one big break, or wait until the time is just right. If so, you will secure only ONE audition, ONE break, and the time will never arrive because you never took the time to properly promote yourself. The time is right when you decide it is, so make that NOW. Make a decision as to what you want in your life and work toward those goals. In doing so youll accomplish far more than you ever imagined possible.

Every audition is a form of promotion, yet so many artists repel the idea of promotion that this could easily account for the scores of talented souls who have fallen into oblivion. If you leave your career alone I promise nothing will happen. It will slip through your fingers.

No one who has ever scored an Oscar accepted it saying, This was so easy. I dont know why you guys dont all have one. It was a piece of cake!

Nope. Anything worthwhile is accomplished from hard work and lots of it. And a good deal of that work comes from consistent and constant promotion. Consider it as much of your job as the performance itself. This is how we make ourselves known and familiar. Promotion comes with the territory and cant be ignored if you intend to succeed as a working talent.

The fact remains that talent who persist at promotion, while honing their performance skills, will make themselves known and valuable. What they may lack performance-wise at the onset of their careers will strengthen and develop from experience, but not from a single coaching once every eight to ten months, or a half-hearted promotional blitz once or twice a year.

Those who become consummate professionals make it their business to run their own careers rather than leave it to chance.

However, keep in mind from the moment you decide to commit completely to establish (or further) your career it will seem as if all the forces in the universe will set out to thwart you. Not because you shouldnt be pursuing this field, but rather the complete and utter opposite. Its an occupational hazard that will test your mettle at every turn. And while you may be a strong sprinter at the onset of your career, aim to go the distance. Its far more rewarding if you do.

And even with a thorough road map to follow, as weve laid out for you here at Sound Advice, youre the one who has to dedicate yourself to the task of getting it done. Certainly your odds are far greater with us than without us, but its still work and youre the one who has to do it. No one will give it to you, or create it for you. You cant purchase it, but you can invest in yourself effectively and prepare to deliver whats needed and wanted of you so youre ready at a moments notice. And that is extremely rewarding on many, many levels.

So, when you find yourself losing patience, and no doubt everyone does in every small business from time to time, rather than dwell on being frustrated, put your attention into your pursuits, in your preparation, and in your promotion. Theres always something you could be doing RIGHT NOW to forward your goals.

In other words, just do it! And procrastinate tomorrow.

Down through the ages, every would-be talent has said to himself at the start (or possibly even somewhere in the middle of his career), I need an agent. What often followed was typically a series of humiliations that would have tried the patience of Job and would explain why so many talent pack it in after only a few months and often drift away from their dreams and goals.

Securing proper representation is key to building your career and achieving your goals as a professional talent and all the more reason why I wrote, How To Get An Agent for Acting & Voice Over. And while its important to listen and heed the professional preferences your agent may require of you, its important to exercise your own common sense, good judgment, and courteous professional behavior. These skills will serve you far greater than anything else. Ultimately it is your career, therefore its imperative you own it and own up to it. You must also run it. Contrary to what you may have dreamed, imagined, assumed, or been told.

Considering its likely that youre only just starting out as a talent and may lack the benefits experience brings, or youre starting over and at a loss as to what may be required of you in the industry today, we offer you the keys to running your career in the following pages. May you be wiser and better prepared from what you learn in this chapter, and may your career benefit greatly from applying these promotional processes.