Building Your Dream Career in Entertainment (eBook)

A Handbook for Getting It and Keeping It

David C. Holman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
144 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798350960167 (ISBN)

Infos

Discover the four steps to reach success in the entertainment industry from a production expert with 35+ years of experience.

David C. Holman worked in film, TV, and stage productions for over 35 years in New York and Hollywood. He served as the VP of Production Operations with Columbia Pictures TV covering scores of sitcoms, game shows, and soaps. He's won a TV Emmy Award and served as Unit Manager with ABC Sports; Producer & Associate Producer with Jim Henson and the Muppets; and Production Administrator with ABC-TV including The Dick Cavett Show, the Tony Awards and the Grammy Awards. During his long career, Mr. Holman was an active member of the Producers Guild of America, the Academy of TV Arts & Sciences, and the co-founder of Women In Film, Palm Springs Chapter. During his retirement, he published an essay about his experiences with The Muppets in the 2004 issue of Palm Springs Life Magazine and co-wrote two screenplays with author Joyce Foy.

---

Are you passionate about building a career in entertainment-film, radio, TV, or stage-in front of the camera, on stage, or behind the scenes? Mr. Holman reveals how to get started in "e;Building Your Dream Career in Entertainment."e; Discover the four steps to success as you secure your career choice through professional advice and guidance. Learn how to go the distance in your career and realize your dreams!

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1
Getting Started

They say that that the hardest part of trying to build a dream career in stage, film, radio, television, animation, or even advertising, is getting started. Here’s how to make it easy.

You say you are passionate about something. Then why haven’t you gotten started on it? While in high school or college you are, I hope, already involved with several related extra-curricular activities, perhaps choir, school plays, writing for the school newspaper or website, studying dance, participating in sports, playing in the band, and even volunteering to be in the talent shows. You need to get involved with anything at school that expresses YOU!

But is that as far as it goes? What are you doing the summer before your junior year? And before your senior year? Will you spend it in the sun with your friends, getting in those last few weeks of “freedom” before classes start again? Not if you want to have success in entertainment.

Forget the sun. Forget hanging out with your friends! You’ll find time for your family and friends, but something else is important to you, and it’s already getting late to start preparing for your future career in entertainment. If that’s what you want—if you’re serious about that career, then you need to get to work. It won’t be easy. Nothing in life worth working hard for is easy. People say that a lot, but it tends to be true. Whatever your goal in the entertainment field, whether in front of the camera or behind, it’s time to go for it!

I fell in love with movies when I was about six years old and went to see my first one with my older brother, Terry. The Ritz Theater was one of the two movie houses just a couple of stores apart in our little southern Texas border town of Weslaco, and the Ritz was the largest. Television had not yet arrived in the lower Rio Grande Valley—talk about the “old days.” TV was in its infancy elsewhere but not in South Texas.

The first film that I saw starred one of the original singing cowboys, Roy Rogers. It was a B&W western, shown with a newsreel, a color cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and even a 13-minute installment of a serial, known as a cliff hanger, all for 25 cents. The serials were designed to make us want to return the following week to see if the hero escaped from the danger. I was hooked and insisted that I be allowed to return to that wonderful, air-conditioned movie palace, just three city blocks from my home. Little did I know then that I would be working at both of those theaters less than a decade later.

The following are my FOUR STEPS to prepare yourself for success in a career in entertainment:

STEP 1: Read! Watch Films and TV! See Theater!

The goal is to take in as much entertainment as possible to broaden your experience. You’re probably a master at viewing video via various devices, but if you’re not much of a reader, it’s time to start. Besides your school textbooks, you want to be reading all types of books based on your interest, both fiction and nonfiction. Books on history, biographies and autobiographies, animation, technical information, and novels all qualify, as do audio books and e-books.

I got the reading bug at age 10. My first book was John Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony” (long before it was made into a motion picture). I continued to read novels and eventually a great many biographies, and more of the writing of Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, who were among the top published writers of the 1940s through the 1960s. The books of Steinbeck and Hemmingway are still in print and taught in colleges and universities. Classics like these should be on your reading list, along with viewing the movies that were adapted from them. It’s a great way to learn story structure and basic principles that have prevailed through movies and TV of every era.

In addition to classic novels, you want to read as much about your chosen field as possible, and not just your immediate interest. For example, if you want to act, start with books on actors and acting, but don’t stop there. Books on directing, writing, lighting, stagecraft, animation, and more—what you’ll learn about every facet of entertainment will inspire you and serve you well as you build your career.

Where to find books? Your local library is a good place to start. Do a browser search and look also at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Baby Bookshop and other online booksellers.

Here are just a few books about film, television, sports TV, theater, and actors that I recommend. I hope you find time to check out at least a few that are of interest to you. A few are new and some are out of print but are easily found online, in local libraries, or in many film and TV school libraries. Just by searching for them, through the wonders of the internet, you’ll be bombarded with suggestions for other books to read.

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (2022), by Isaac Butler

Cinematography: Theory and Practice for Cinematographers and Directors, 4th edition (2021), by Blain Brown

The Filmmaker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age, 5th edition (2012), by Steve Ascher

Making Movies (1996), by Sidney Lumet

BFI Film Classics: Sunset Boulevard (2022), by Steven Cohan

Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films (1999), by Jeff Young and Elia Kazan

Sanford Meisner On Acting, (1987), by Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell with an Introduction by Sydney Pollack

On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (1998), by Ed Sikov

The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports (1998), by Jim McKay with Foreword by Peter Jennings

Up Close and Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television Sports (1988), by Jim Spence

The Animator’s Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators (2012), by Richard Williams

Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair, Revised Edition: Learn techniques for Drawing and Animating Cartoon Characters (Collector’s Series, 2020), by Preston Blair

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming, 3rd edition (2018), by Marijn Haverbeke

Another good reason to get the habit of reading: It will be very important to you when you start building your career. It’s amazing how many books, scripts, and documents that you’ll have to read over your career, starting with your first job.

STEP 2: Make a List!

It’s never too early to start looking for your first job in entertainment. That search begins with a list. Make a list of attributes that reflects who you are. It should include your assets, and I don’t mean how much money you have. I mean your talents, your interests, your dreams including anything and everything to do involving show business: radio, TV, film, stage, advertising, writing, singing, dancing, modeling, fashion design, set design, still photography, making videos—and don’t forget your hobbies, which may include reading (I hope), piano or some other instrument, ballroom dancing (a hobby that opened a major door for me), and any activity that makes you happy. Include as much about yourself on paper as you can. Don’t be shy. Look deep into yourself and get that list started. When you finish your list, it should look something like this (using a fictitious high school junior as an example):

My Talents and Interests

As of (Current Date)

1. Enjoy math.
2. Sing in school & church choirs.
3. Acted in a one-act play at school.
4. Play (at) guitar.
5. Studied piano for 10 years.
6. Enjoy video games.
7. Love watching sports on TV.
8. Use a video camera a lot, shooting outings with my family and friends.
9. Work part-time at a local florist.
10. Like reading biographies.
11. Love seeing all types of movies.
12. Enjoy playing most sports.
13. Volunteer reading to children at our local library.
14. Favorite subjects in school: English, math, American history & computer science.

Keep your list and update it from time to time. And re-read it often to remind yourself of your known talents and interests. I finally did my own list when I was in college, and then I slipped the list into a plastic sleeve to protect it. The idea is to try and remain active with as many of your known interests and hobbies as possible, because you will never know when one or more of these talents will become handy in pursuing your future career.

The reason I said your “known” talents is that you will find as you go through life that you have other talents and interests you haven’t discovered yet. When you start growing creatively, your talents and interests will multiply and help open doors in your pursuit of your dreams. Believe in yourself and the talents that you were born with, and never let anyone tell you that you can’t move forward with your dreams. How else can any of your dreams come true unless you keep working toward them?

For instance, one of my long-time hobbies came in very handy later in my career when I was working for Jim Henson and the Muppets in New York in the mid1970s. The opportunity came when Mr. Henson asked the staff to suggest ideas for a board game based upon the very successful “The Muppet Show” TV series. I had always loved board...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.9.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-13: 9798350960167 / 9798350960167