Insider Secrets from a Former Commercial Agent

tv-commercials

  • You’re an actor and you just moved to LA. Now what?
  • You’re a model and you want to break into acting. What’s the first step?
  • You’re an artist with a soul-sucking day job. Isn’t there a better, more flexible way to earn a living?


  • The answer is COMMERCIALS. Acting in commercials is an effective way to make professional connections, increase your industry visibility, hone on-camera skills, and make money.

    Mike Colby, a 10-year veteran of the commercial talent agency world, is your guide to the in’s and out’s of acting for commercials. From taking headshots to enrolling in classes to getting on set, Mike has the answers to jumpstart your career. He can work with you on an a la carte basis or get you started with an introductory, 3-session package.

    Commercial Kickstart

    Session 1 Session 2 Session 3
    Introductions and overview Figuring out headshot “looks” Selecting top headshots
    Signing up for classes Exploring casting sites Finalizing casting site profiles
    Recognizing red flags in terms of representation How to attempt to get representation Pursuing extra work
    Characteristics of ideal side jobs What to look for when you watch commercials Putting together your resume & tips to keep building it


    Feel free to get in touch with Mike to inquire about packages and pricing.


    So You Think You Want to Go to Grad School?

    http://bakoheat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/mortar-board-toss-1.jpg

    http://bakoheat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/mortar-board-toss-1.jpg

    I am very lucky to teach undergraduates at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Most of my students talk about going to grad school, many as soon as they graduate. I react with horror.

    I literally shudder.

    If my student and I don’t have time for a long chat, then I tell her that it’s usually best to work first — make sure that you want to invest your time and money in that industry. When we do have time for a long chat, then I try to talk her through a series of steps (see below).

    Grad school seekers, please consider this. I only want the best for you.

    A Flowchart for Grad School Seekers

    Have you ever held a full-time job?

    If NO, go no further. No grad school for you! Go get a job, kiddo.

    If YES, proceed…

    Have you ever worked in the industry to which your graduate degree would apply?

    If NO, go no further. No grad school for you! Work in the industry, mon ami.

    If YES, proceed…

    Ask people who are working in the industry right now:

    1. How do you feel about your job? What’s your favorite thing about your job? What’s your least favorite thing about your job? What advice would you give to someone like me who’s thinking about situating her career in this industry?

    2. At what point in my career, if ever, will a graduate degree be necessary?

    3. Which graduate schools and/or degree programs, if any, do you recommend?

    Look up salary information (go to glassdoor.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc)

    Create a mock-up budget for your future self based on this salary alone (because you never know if/when a partner will enter or exit your life and if/when s/he will lose a job). Don’t forget to factor in grad school student loan repayment!

    Can you happily live on this salary?

    If NO, go no further. No grad school for you! Find a different specialty, keemosabee.

    If YES, proceed…

    Create a short list of grad schools/programs based on professionals’ advice and other priorities (e.g., location, reputation, etc).

    Look up these grad schools’ requirements (e.g., pre-requisite courses, deadlines, GRE, TOEFL, residency requirements, letters of recommendation, transcripts, essay questions, interviews, Open Houses, Visit Days, etc)

    Can you apply to grad school at this time?

    If NO, go no further. No grad school for you! Knock out some of those pre-reqs, slugger, and prepare for next year (or down the line).

    If YES, proceed…

    Look up the following:

    a. Various grad schools’ curricula (e.g., science vs. humanities courses, concentrations, applied practicums, average time to degree, average course load per semester, etc)

    b. Various grad schools’ faculty members’ profiles (e.g., the nature of their research, their specific publications, the foci of their labs, the courses they teach, etc)

    c. Various grad schools’ students’ profiles (e.g., their academic and professional backgrounds, their interests, their in-school activities (e.g., publications, committees, clubs, jobs), etc)

    Can you see yourself happily engaging in any of these schools’ communities?

    If NO, go no further. Find a different set of schools and repeat this process. If the answer keeps coming up NO, ask yourself why…

    If YES, proceed…

    Via email, introduce yourself to the professors and students whose profiles distinguished them as potential mentors and friends, respectively.

    a. To the professors, indicate your interest in working with them and ask if they have any room on their team.

    b. To the students, indicate your interest in learning about their graduate school experience and offer schedule flexibility + gratitude.

    Do the scholars’ replies both excite you and confirm your suitability for the program?

    If NO, go no further. Find a different set of schools and repeat this process. If the answer keeps coming up NO, ask yourself why…

    If YES, apply!

    I wish you good luck and encourage you to stay strong and true to yourself. Grad school can be a phenomenal investment. I’m thrilled that you’re taking this seriously and are setting yourself up for success.

     

    Circles: Healing Through Restorative Justice

    re-posted from http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/restorative-justice/restorative-justice-circles.html

    By  | March 5, 2014

    This is part of a series examining Restorative Justice in schools and communities, produced in partnership with the California Endowment.

     
     
    circles02
    “Who or what inspires you to be your best self?”

    This is hardly the question that most Angelenos would ask at 9:30 in the morning on a gray, rainy Saturday. But for the 80+ adults and youth who gathered on March 2 at Mendez Learning Center in Boyle Heights, this introspective query kicked off “Circles,” a rich, daylong exploration of Restorative Justice.

    Restorative Justice (RJ) seeks to cultivate both peacemaking and healing by facilitating meaningful dialogue. Practiced through conversation circles, whose norms include “listen with respect” and “speak from the heart,” RJ provides contexts for sharing feelings and perspectives related to community issues and conflicts. Individuals directly engaged in altercations, as well as bystanders and other community members, gather to discuss inciting incidents, understandings, preferences, past experiences, ideas, and advice.

    According to one Circles participant, a senior at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, RJ works. He and a peer had a falling out this past fall — he had criticized the peer and then they began fighting. Both were invited to a RJ circle to work it out. The circle, populated by fellow students and facilitated by a trained RJ counselor, gave the two young men a space to air their grievances and, importantly, get to know each other. In Aceves’s opinion, this was critical. Now the former combatants are good friends, hanging out together practically every weekend.

    While this rosy outcome isn’t typical, RJ increases the likelihood of such a relational development. Compared to traditional responses, like turning a blind eye, assigning short-term mediation, or sentencing wrong-doers with detention, suspension, or expulsion, RJ’s odds of building interpersonal bridges is infinitely superior.

    Traditional justice systems use punishment, such as zero-tolerance, to deter students from breaking rules, whereas RJ assumes that strong relationships and community investment function as deterrence. Traditional justice systems are reactive and atomistic, meting out consequences to perpetrators of discrete, forbidden acts — for instance, suspending the student who threw the first punch. But RJ is proactive and collectivistic, engaging a network of students before and during negotiations of conflict. RJ is also restorative, aiming to support participants in healing, problem-solving, and making amends.

     

     

    Omar Ramirez, a visual artist with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and who served as a Circles small group leader, frames RJ as a means to shut down the “school to prison pipeline.” RJ might help to do this in several ways.

    Because RJ is a dialogic alternative to suspension and expulsion, it breaks the cycle of disproportionately meting out punitive disciplinary consequences to students with disabilities and students of color. This stops the implicit messaging that these students are unwelcome in school, and helps to keep them off the streets. According to The California Conference for Equality and Justice, a suspension at any point during high school makes a student three times more likely to drop out than a peer who has never been suspended.

    Additionally, it’s possible that RJ participants who acquire tools for communicating and managing emotions will find it easier to resist criminal activity. Participating in RJ also might help youths to engage in perspective-taking and practice empathy, both of which boost negatively predict bullying and boost students’ social and emotional competence. This is critical, since researchers from Sonoma State University have contended that “deficits in emotional competence skills appear to leave young people ill-equipped to cope effectively with interpersonal challenges.” 1

    Due to RJ’s capacity to both support students’ social-emotional health and contribute to school climate change, members of the Building Healthy Communities – Boyle Heights (BHC-BH) collaborative have championed its practice. Building Healthy Communities is an effort of The California Endowment to support 14 communities’ holistic health; Boyle Heights, as well as Long Beach and South Los Angeles, are among these communities. Forty non-profits and community-based organizations comprise the BHC-BH collaborative. Its mission, according to BHC-BH’s campaign literature, is to “meet with resident and youth leaders to establish efforts that will improve the health narrative of Boyle Heights.”

    Pilot RJ programs launched in Long Beach and at Boyle Heights’s Roosevelt High School this 2013-2014 academic year. But to scale up RJ and implement it in every school in Boyle Heights (not to mention every Los Angeles Unified School District institution), funding is necessary — specifically, funding to support the salary of each school’s full-time RJ counselor.

    In this context of state-wide budget deficits, locating any money at all requires creative activism. BHC-BH has identified as its RJ funding solution the Local Control Funding Formula(LCFF). Introduced in California’s 2013-2014 budget, the LCFF provides grants for schools that serve foster youth, English Language Learners, and/or youths eligible to receive a free or reduced-price meal. This describes many of Boyle Heights’ students.

     

     

    Las Fotos Project presented the Circles workshop, in partnership with several community-based organizations: The Greenlining Institute, the California Conference for Equality and Justice, InnerCity Struggle, Khmer Girls in Action, Violence Prevention Coalition, and Alliance for California Traditional Arts. 2 Together, they defined the workshop’s objectives, which included raising attendees’ awareness of the BCH-BH, educating them about LCFF, and inviting them to urge officials to direct local LCFF funds towards RJ. According to Eric Ibarra, founder of Las Fotos Project, the March 2 workshop also was inspired by his pride in his students’ photo essays.

    Ibarra’s Las Fotos Project seeks to empower Latina youth through photography, mentorship, and self-expression. Whereas five of Ibarra’s students last year premiered their photo essays online, this year Ibarra yearned to share his students’ projects with live audiences as well. Moreover, since this year’s photo essays examined RJ, Ibarra wanted audiences to explore RJ hands-on, learn about how RJ can be funded locally, and access pathways to activism.

    That’s precisely what the Circles workshop offered. After attendees shared who or what inspired them to be their best selves, they watched a photo essay created by Las Fotos Project participant Lorena Arroyo. A 17-year-old Roosevelt High School student, Arroyo documented cheerleader Gaby’s explorations of RJ within her squad. Following the photo essay presentation, Arroyo proudly bowed to Circles attendees’ thunderous applause. Four more of these media projects, highlighting the respective RJ journeys of two students, a parent, and a school staff member, will be forthcoming from Las Fotos Project participants.

    Explained Ibarra, Circles represents “the efforts of a lot of really passionate people … We believe in the importance of collaboration and sharing resources to work together for a common cause.”

    Rich in geographic, ethnic, and occupational diversity, Circles attendees seemed to share that collaborative ethos. For example, Circle #3, facilitated by Ramirez, included three high school students, a community organizer, a nun, a PhD candidate [myself], a high school teacher, and an editor [of KCET Departures], all of whom eagerly embraced RJ’s community spirit. Establishing our own dialogic circle gave us a space to learn about RJ and each other. We shared and, more importantly, deeply listened to personal stories about a Native American grandmother, a growing daughter, an insensitive coworker, a resilient student, and a passion for ’80s fashion. We also discussed RJ definitions and how to conduct circles for addressing teacher-student conflicts.

    To close the workshop, each Circle group practiced and promoted RJ through the use of a different art form, e.g., collage, journaling, breakdancing. Articulated members of the spoken word circle, “I am a beautiful dreamer, I am a strong fighter.” Members of the songwriting circle entitled their tune, “We Want to Restore Justice.” Together they sang the refrain, “This is ours/People power.”

    In the view of 20-year-old Anaheim community organizer Carlos Becerra, the implications of this people power can be revolutionary. Stated Becerra, “Restorative Justice, when implemented in our global community, has the potential to create world wide peace and prosperity.”

     

    Reporting on Impacts of Youth Media Literacy

    "Home Is Where the Heart Is," a silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

    “Home Is Where the Heart Is,” silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

    I’ve recently come full circle in more ways than one.

    During high school and college, I had the privilege of reporting features stories for such publications as Glenbrook South High School’s The Oracle and Northwestern University’s The Daily Northwestern, The Summer Northwestern, and arts + performance magazine. 

    A dozen-plus years later, I’m reporting features stories once again; appropriately, my first subject was a workshop entitled “Circles.” On Saturday, March 1, 2014, I engaged in participant-observation by joining fabulously motivated peers, jotting notes, and conducting informal interviews at this day-long exploration of Restorative Justice.

    Restorative Justice (RJ) seeks to cultivate both peacemaking and healing by facilitating meaningful dialogue. Practiced through conversation circles, whose norms include “listen with respect” and “speak from the heart,” RJ provides contexts for sharing feelings and perspectives related to community issues and conflicts. Individuals directly engaged in altercations, as well as bystanders and other community members, gather to discuss inciting incidents, understandings, preferences, past experiences, ideas, and advice (Felt, 2014, para. 3).

    This workshop also was irresistible from a scholarly standpoint as it situated itself squarely within my research interests: youths, social and emotional competence, communication proficiency, arts and media, and community-building. I became acquainted with the phenomenal work of partner organizations, including Las Fotos Project, and am eager to cultivate professional relationships in this space.

    My publisher is Departures, a transmedia resource hosted by the largest independent public television station in the United States, KCET. Departures uniquely cultivates southern Californians’ civic pride and sociological imaginations through reporting on community-level stories in such areas as activism, immigration, art, gentrification, food, city planning, small businesses, murals, history, and politics. The Departures site also offers multiple participation points, from opportunities to engage with interactive maps and multimedia installations to invitations to help solve civic challenges (e.g., How would you improve the 710 corridor? How can an empty lot in Cypress Park become a community asset?).

    This wasn’t my first brush with Departures. Back in 2011, Rubi Fregoso of Departures Youth Voices facilitated a workshop for graduates of the PLAY! program, a multi-part professional development + research project designed and evaluated by USC Annenberg Innovation Lab colleagues and myself. On January 22, 2014, Rubi again lent her expertise to a USC Annenberg endeavor by participating in a webinar entitled “Spreading Your Story.”  This webinar was sponsored by my friends/associates in the Media, Activism and Participatory Politics project, an entity that bridges the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC School of Cinematic Arts Media + Practice Division, and the Connected Learning Research Network. Kat Primeau, one of my co-conspirators at non-profit Laughter for a Change, also participated in the webinar. With so many friends gathered simultaneously at the same online spot, discussing one of my favorite subjects — how to spread youth civic engagement stories — I couldn’t stop myself from posting to the webinar’s real-time backchannel chat.

    Here’s the webinar:

    Watch live streaming video from connectedlearningtv at livestream.com

     

    In light of all of this journalistic activity and online communication, I have applied to the UCD Clinton Institute’s 2014 Summer Seminar, a week-long deep-dive into how to be an academic AND a journalist. Should I be accepted, I hope to expand on my recent article on Restorative Justice (RJ). I wonder how, if at all, international youth-produced media has supported RJ movements and/or exemplified RJ processes? Which effects, if any, have these youth productions had on knowledge, attitudes, practices, or policies?

    Meanwhile, I’m loving the opportunity to interview trailblazing media literacy organizations and share their important work with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)’s 2000+ recipients of its online newsletter. My first piece featured the Center for Media Literacy (CML), an assignment for which I interviewed CML’s accomplished President and CEO Tessa Jolls.

    Since 1989, when media literacy pioneer Elizabeth Thoman established CML, this organization has served as a global resource for media literacy education. CML has worked with overseas partners in such far-flung nations as Peru, South Korea, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, while simultaneously continuing to produce original curricula that meet the United States’s diverse education standards (Felt, 2014, para. 2).

    Reflected Jolls, “It’s not so much about the technology, it’s about critical thinking, and having the process skills, whether you’re producing or consuming. So that’s what we’ve been trying to focus on — what’s timeless, what’s a systematic way of looking at media, and how media operate as a system” (Felt, 2014, para. 12).

    Reconnecting with my journalism roots and networking with people/organizations whose work supports youths’ cultivation of vital 21st century skills is deeply rewarding both personally and professionally. I look forward to continuing to enjoy this synergy as the District 4 delegate to City Councilmember Tom La Bonge for Los Angeles ArtsDay 2014.

    Thanks to everyone who helped to make these developments possible!