Who Was There?
It's been a really busy 7 days since the Actor's Expo. If we met there, and I haven't said hello to you yet, please send me an email, I've been trying to get back to everyone, both actors who signed up for our service and other event attendees. Speaking of other attendees, let's see if we can do some shout outs right now, so in case you weren't there, or quickly breezed through the room, here's a recap for you.
Web For Actors - yes, duh, we were there. We have a lot of new services planned for the next few months, hopefully a lot of you will be able to take advantage of them. Some of these services are already live, like youbackstage.com, reels.link and link.actor, but don't worry, if you're a premium member of the site, we will make sure you don't miss out on any of these goodies.
We said hello to Rich Cassone - I must say that there's a lot of people out there who try to take advantage of actors, but Rich obviously does not belong in that category. Why can I be so sure? He is giving out first month free at his acting workshop in Burbank. So if you live in Burbank area, and you are looking to improve your craft, here's his listing on our website: Cassone Scene Study. But please, serious inquiries only and you must be 18 to attend this scene study classes.
It was great seeing David H. Lawrence XVII from VO Heroes. David was THE FIRST person in the industry that I spoke to when I landed in LA 6 years ago. Brilliant mind, and he has put it to a good use with his training program that will help you establish a profitable voice over practice. It ain't cheap, but David and Trevor give you access to all of their training forever for a one time fee. Dozens of courses, workouts and the coaches will show you how to get you started. So if you want to make money in voice over, this might be a perfect opportunity for you. P.S. David was the Puppet Master in Heroes... Remember Heroes? He was my favorite character in that show. :)
Kym Jackson was there giving out her book "The Hollywood Survival Guide" to EVERYONE (I like capitalizing that word, makes me think of Gary Oldman in Leon), and introducing us to the Secret Actor Society. I have yet to create a listing on our system for this service as I want to watch some of these videos first. What would be the category for this? Education I suppose. Gain access to hundreds (perhaps 1000s) of short video clips categorized by topic. Wow, someone spent a lot of time putting this together. Experts include Ajarae Coleman and Ben Whitehair - we all know and love these two, right? Darren Darnborough from WeAudition is on there, David H. Lawrence XVII, of course, and a few others whom I don't quite recognize, but I'm looking forward to see what they have to offer.
Let's not forget about my two favorite ladies in that room, Camille and Jen from SpeakLA who were giving away agent guides. Don't we all need those? Well, if you weren't there, you can still get it from their website, and please, do sign up to their newsletter, they have mountains of information sent right to your mailbox. If you're one of those Facebook people (one of those) then definitely join their Facebook Group. You probably won't find me there, because... well it's Facebook (me and Zuckerberg have beef), but I'm so tempted to just scrape their group to get all of the info from there into my regular stream. So tempted it might just happen.
Last but not least, Casting Networks was giving out something... what? I think a month free membership? Not sure, I threw it out. Obviously if you're planning to get into commercial work, there's no doubt in my mind that you need to be on Casting Networks, month free or not, they'll get you to sign up.
The jury is still out on the other presenters, and I will keep you posted... :)
Actors Connection was there and their founder said he would stop by our booth and chat. He didn't, nor did he respond to my email... perhaps just really busy with all of his new clients... I get that. :) But I'd love to learn more about their reel services and see if it's a something I would recommend.
I've met with TSMA rep in New York the month before. If I had to describe the service in one word it would be "pricey"... perhaps "too pricey" but that's two words. If you can afford that, by all means, give them a try and let me know how it worked out. I'm trying their much cheaper Spanish competitor right now Instaboom - sorry TSMA, if my Spanish proves to be too rusty I might swing back to you, but $550 a month on the cheapest package... I dunno. Do you know how many new tech toys I can buy with that? At least two.
I gave Actors Guru software a try as well. I saw their interface which looks really neat and clean, so I was very excited to see that someone has rebuilt Performer Track (which is much needed), but to be totally honest, I found the system a bit buggy and lacking. Just my humble opinion, BUT, I'm rooting for them and I will keep my eye on this tool. Perhaps it's just a beginning of something amazing.
Well, that's about it. I'm excited to build some new actor website designs for my new clients and I'm itching to watch some of these videos on Secret Actor Society. I'll probably start with the Instagram topic... looks like it's a guy from TSMA. Perhaps I'll learn what monthly subscription of $2,550 gets me. Do you know how many actor websites I gotta build to afford that? Oh, man... a lot!
