Industry Landmines — And How to Avoid Them
One-day class: Sunday, June 7th
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM (Pacific time)
1:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Eastern time)
Learn what pitfalls to avoid.
Award-winning writer-producer-directors Elaine and Marc Zicree have written hundreds of hours of produced TV shows and movies for most of the major studios and networks – and now have their own studio! Let them share what they know with you!
In this eye-opening day-long class, Hollywood Insiders Marc and Elaine Zicree guide you through the soul-crushing, career destroying mistakes that many beginners and even long-term pros often make – and which YOU can now avoid:
Some of the many career disasters covered (and super-solutions given) include:
Representation:
- How to waste time seeking it out – and make sure they’re lacking a pulse.
- How to provide inadequate evidence and be sure to fail.
- How to hand over power to folks who don’t give a damn.
- How to mangle a potentially good relationship.
- How to confuse the roles of agents, managers and attorneys.
The Script:
- Sure-fire ways to make the script you write fail!
- Great ways to find bad scripts by writers who will give you grief.
- How actors can create characters ranging from invisible to actively annoying.
Cold Calls, Meetings, Pitches and Auditions:
- How to come off like an amateur.
- How to bore and confuse.
- How to blow a meeting – or, better still, trample one that’s going well.
- How to be under-prepared
- How to bring in the wrong allies
- How to alienate potential, long-term connections
- Stuff you can do wrong in a pitch.
- Auditioning so you lose you the role and any possibility of ever being invited back.
- Failing to sell a series using great material.
- Having no clue how the system works.
Teams:
- How to be sure you mismatch your director to your script.
- Creating a budget that assures your project will never sell – or is never finished.
- How to cast to assure the above.
- How to staff up with terrible people.
- How to staff up with wonderful people – and then alienate every one of them.
- How to write up agreements that you will regret to your grave.
- Presenting yourself & your project in ways that send alliances running for the hills.
Money:
- How to solicit funds in ways that will get you into really big trouble.
- How to do a crowd funding campaign – that will sink!
- How to be so grasping about credits and points you have nothing to deal with.
- How to be so generous about the above you end up with zip.
- Ways to rationalize not thinking about complex stuff like in-kind, trade agreements, incentives, banks and pre-sales (or other methods that may otherwise save your project).
The Sale:
- How to fail at festivals.
- How to never find a distributor.
- How to find a distributor who will rob you blind and bury your project.
- How to sign a contract that will allow you no recourse for the above.
- How to burn through resources to not only deny promotional materials, but the deliverables which would allow the sale.
- How to convince yourself the benefit of avoiding alternate platforms which may result in more money, larger audiences and an actual career.
Strategy:
- How to embrace the defeatist and the negative.
- Being sure your mentors have failed at what you’re attempting.
- How to suck all the energy out of a room.
- How to stand around waiting to be picked until you die.
Class is JUST $25 and SEATING IS LIMITED – but you can also listen to the entire class via live streaming and downloadable content!
To sign up, log onto www.paypal.com and indicate you want to pay marc@zicree.com
Feel free to email us at Send me an email marczicree@gmail.com or call (323) 363-1259 with any questions.
Don’t wait to be picked — it can all happen NOW.
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