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Your DD was great as Lavender! DD remembers her very well, said she was lovely will you be going to anymore workshops? They are doing Grease during the easter holiday and summer holidays is Charlie and the chocolate factory, Les Mis and Newsies (DD isn't too keen on doing newsies so may give that one a miss). Thanks for the offer of help, fingers crossed I might need to PM you one day x

pg wrote:What no-one has mentioned yet, I don't think, is that (strictly speaking) any employer should approach an actor's agent - not the actor. If your agent's details are on your profile then that should be the first point of contact: it's what would happen on Spotlight if you were represented - indeed, your contact details probably wouldn't even appear. If this happened then these problems would not arise and an agent would probably be perfectly happy for your profile (with their contact details) to be very widely publicised.

Of course, if the work is unpaid then that's a bit different. Unpaid work often won't hold a lot of appeal for an agent and they might get the actor to liaise directly with the organiser.

Kazmama - I wouldn't hesitate to change agencies if you are unhappy. If you have a decent relationship with your agent (which doesn't seem to be the case here) then it should be easy to discuss possible jobs with your agent. I would never take a paid job without discussing it with my agent - and I would in most cases discuss any unpaid work or collaborations too.

Sometimes employers contact actors directly because they hope to pay less than the going rate - if they talk to an agent they are less likely to get away with some of the ludicrous offers that come through.

Ive just realised this actually. Ds applied for commercial through CCP and got it, and agents weren't happy as it was not very well paid, and mentioned buy out thingy for a year in US, which presumably could clash with any potential projects they came up with. They advised not to do it, but ds wants to do it. Agents won't stop him, but it seems an unsatisfactory outcome. However, having said that, he has only had a couple of commercial auditions ever with them and didn't get them!

More recently people have approached ds to do short films through agent first, so I think this is the best solution.

By the way what does full buy out for TV and online mean? Also, if you advertise one product, does that mean you can't advertise another similar one?

In the "good old days" - commercials had a basic studio fee and then repeat fees. Repeat fees for commercials now seem to be a thing of the past - certainly for most people. Instead, the company will offer a "buy out" (in lieu of repeat fees) if you are featured performer. Background artists will only get the daily rate for the actual filming. The buy out can still be a lot of money - sometimes running in to the thousands or (very occasionally) tens of thousands. Most of the time it's nowhere near this amount though - fees have been going down and down for years. The buy out will give them the rights to show the commercial or use your image for a set amount of time. Sometimes it is in perpetuity for websites etc...

When you go for commercial castings you are always asked what commercials you have done in the past. I went for one today and was asked what commercials I had done in the past year - they also asked whether I had appeared in a soap or TV drama as a "recognisable or regular character" (chance would be a fine thing!). They will not use you if you have advertised a similar product in the recent past - and may not use you (in some circumstances) if you are "known" for something else - obviously some "known" faces will be highly desirable and be able to command huge fees, but that's not what they were getting at. So it is vitally important that you are properly paid for commercials - as it may well mean that you can't do future, possibly lucrative, work. If you do a job today for a couple of hundred you might miss out on the possibility of a job earning thousands next year. There are some companies who try to bypass agents and get actors "on the cheap". Some big businesses who are perfectly able to pay decent amounts of money offer ludicrously low rates via sites like CCP and Starnow.

It's one of the reasons I would always advise paid work going via your agent if you have one.

Hi Kazmama,
I'm sorry for the late reply. But I hope that you and your daughter are doing well and looking forward to Christmas
BTW did the charity shoot go ahead?
Looks like there are alot of nice workshops planned at GMC, I will have to check with my dd which if any she'd like to do. I'm sure she'd say yes to les Mis so we might see you there. My daughter remembers your daughter well too and said she was a very nice girl hope to see you again in the future x