The Talented Cafe
Recognise this Scenario?
There are so many books extoling the virtue of "How to become a writer,", or "How to gain the attention of a Talent Scout" but, what is never said is that most of it is down to just four things:-
Talent
Hard Work
Contacts
Mountains of Luck
We at the Talented Cafe can help by giving you three of the above four, the Talent Category remains with you to sort out.
Right... How does this website help?
The Talented Cafe have done a lot of the Hard Work, the email addresses of anyone who counts are to be found, this hopefully also helps cover the Contacs phase in getting through to the decision makers. That's where Mountains of Luck come in but, do not despair because without available Talent those greedy Agents would not make their lucrative living. They need you and as you will find, are always on the lookout.
So where better to advertise your wares, exchange ideas, moan and whinge and most importantly reach those who can help without submitting directly to the casting couch?
The Talented Cafe website has a BLOG for you to show your talent and share experiences, good or bad with similarly like mind folk, a BULLETIN BOARD for you to advertise your capabilities or reach thousands of hungry executives, and a direct email contact area with the hope that if first you don't suceed, go directly to them approach.
It's a Win / Win situation for you, so don't be disheartened. All you have to do is place yourself in position, advertise your wares and then tell the executives where to have a look at you and your Talent.
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Becoming a Rock Star
Becoming a rock star has never been easy. For an artist with no contacts, getting discovered has traditionally meant hard work and a lot of luck - basically, playing in various bars until someone from a major label walks through the door.
The Internet offers an opportunity to bypass that someone. Because the Web lets artists spread the word and sell music more cheaply, bands can "break" without the backing of a major label.
Or so it seems. But it hasn't happened yet, and the sheer volume of material available on the Web plays into the hands of the labels. Overwhelmed consumers don't have time to sort through hundreds of songs they may not like.
New sites are jockeying to perform some of the kingmaking functions usually left to major labels. Unexpectedly, however, the Web is helping the labels do what they've always done "find more talent" through a new breed of middleman.
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Cracking the Publishing Code
To the cigar-chomping studio executives good authors are like gold dust. No sooner is a new British literary sensation announced than they are being tracked by Hollywood talent scouts.
However, in recent years, the call from Hollywood has become an almost inevitable rite of passage for a succession of young British literary sensations of whom Monica Ali (Brick Lane) is merely the latest. Alex Garland's The Beach, Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and three out of the four novels thus far by Nick Hornby have all been turned into successful movies. For some it has even gone on to provide a new, and lucrative, career. Garland, who stopped writing novels following lukewarm reviews for his second book, The Tesseract, is now on the verge of becoming a major Hollywood screenwriter on the back of his script for the apocalyptic low-budget British sleeper hit 28 Days Later.
While the UK publishing industry is eager to embrace the attention lavished on its rising literary stars by the major film studios, not everyone is so happy. This week sees the presentation of the first Saga Award for Wit, a new book prize aimed solely at writers over the age of 50. It has been conceived as a riposte to what its organisers regard as the unfair bias of other prizes towards youthful, photogenic authors.
Steven Gaydos, the executive editor of Variety, said that, like Fielding, Garland and Hornby before her, Ali had almost certainly been "tracked" by Hollywood for months. "Knowing about new talent first is one of the most important activities in Hollywood, whether that's directing, acting or novel-writing talent," he said. "Hollywood executives know everything that's going on in London, and they normally know about it at the time of the original deal. If a London publisher signed a deal with a writer today and the story they were writing sounded like great movie material, that information would be in Hollywood's hands before the ink was dry."
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Breaking a Music Mould
About 700 are expected to swarm into town for Nashville Entertainment Association's Extravaganza '98, touted as Nashville's premier music conference. They are being attracted to the area because of the 400-plus bands, mostly unsigned, scheduled to play in the city from Feb. 18-21.
This is the event's 13th year, but the first year daytime conference and business education sessions have been offered. About 80 are expected to attend the manager's forum, which has recruited some of the nation's best artist managers to participate in interactive panel discussions and forums with up-and-coming artist managers such as Stephen Norris, manager for Nashville's The Honeyrods.
"I'm definitely going to go, I think it's going to be a really good thing. I don't think it ever hurts to be surrounded by successful people and to hear what they're doing and how they're doing it," says Norris. The Honeyrods is the first band the 25-year-old Norris has managed.
"In order to strengthen and grow Extravaganza, we felt it was important to have a successful daytime event ... but we wanted to do something unique and different," says Nashville attorney Jim Zumwalt. "We saw a void in the market."
Zumwalt, who helped start Extravaganza and is still involved in its evolution, says it is the goal of Extravaganza organizers to grow the event into a convention in the next five years. By then, he says he would like to have 400-500 managers coming to town for the business seminars and workshops, not just for the music.
