Came across this website after giving in to the pressure from my 10 year old who is insistent it is time for her to get a agent !!! Something I had hoped would be quite a straight forward task but oh so wrong and am now feeling slightly overwhelmed by it all. I see there are numerous threads on here that cover the whole topic in great length and plenty of recommendations but still struggling. At the moment we have narrowed it down to a few agencies to apply to and am hoping that some one on here has a bit more insight on the selected ones. So far we have come up with Byron's Management, Mark Jermin, Top Talent and PD Management. We are ideally looking for something not too large and it does look like a few of these have 100's of kids on their books not sure if beneficial or not.
Anyway, any help, thoughts, ideas etc would be gratefully appreciated.
Many thanks
Hi
We have just been through this, all I can say really is don't give up! My daughter is in the " not much work for you" age bracket of over 13 and under16.
So your experience may be different. It has taken us six months to find an agent, having sent off about 20-30 CV's etc. we were advised to send out no more than two at a time as agents talk to each other and if they think you are applying to lots and that they are not special then you won't get a look in! Also be prepared to hear absolutely nothing at all from most of them! Good luck!
Thanks so much lynne and congratulations on getting a agent for your daughter. I guess I better get to work on it looks like it is going to be a very time consuming task and a endurance of patience.
Hi
Good luck, I hope you find someone quickly. We had better luck with postal applications than E mail although it is more costly, but probably harder to discard something physical than drop an E mail in the bin! Best of luck
As far as I know, all the agents you have mentioned have good reputations.
I think Top Talent and Daisy and Dukes are auditioning right now. So if you send your DD's details to them, there's every chance she'll be seen.
But don't be disheartened if she doesn't get an offer of representation straight away. Just treat the auditions as a good experience in themselves and have fun
And if you read through the threads on this forum you'll also find out about lots of opportunities that she can be considered for, without an agent.
Thank you all for the replies, there is certainly a lot to consider. We did look at Daisy & Dukes and sadly looks like we missed the boat there as they are not accepting anymore applications at the moment also they seem like one of the larger agencies does this mean there is a lot of internal competition between clients for castings ? Madfish is one we didn't come across in our search so will certainly look into that one and we have heard good things about PD Management but seems they very selective !!!!
So our quest begins, it is lovely to find somewhere like this website full of support and valued comments and information.
So after mailing out what felt like 100’s of copies of daughters cv and headshot and numerous phone calls we were rather surprised to find out she has been offered a agency audition already ( next Monday ) and needs to prepare a short monologue and song to perform which is all fine, though feeling extremely nervous as when I had a chat on the phone to the agency it was indicated they are only looking to take on a very small number of new clients this time round - so the pressures on !!!
Trying to get a little more info on what kind of small number this would be was told that at their last auditions out of 60 children only 5 contracts were offered - is this norm ????
I would imagine that this will depend entirely on the cohort of people they see. They might take none, or they might offer representation to them all. There's very unlikely to be a set number of "places" available.
A decent agent will only offer representation to those they assess have a reasonable chance of getting work via their agency. Different agents suit different clients, so just because someone is turned down by one, doesn't mean they will necessarily be turned down by another.
It's also well worth trying to manage your daughter's expectations if you can, trying to keep it casual and fun - but also explaining that just because an agent takes her on it doesn't necessarily mean that she will get jobs, or even auditions. Agents don't have jobs to offer - it depends what's casting and of course that is out of your control and out of the agent's control.
Thanks pg for such sound advise.
We have just returned from this mornings audition and no matter what comes from it she seemed to enjoy the whole experience of meeting new people and showing off her skills during the prepared monologue and song. From what I can gather from her several of the children turned up unprepared, even though we had clearly been told the children would need to perform their pieces, so she is feeling very pleased with herself as apparently was praised for being so prepared and was kept back with another child to do some script reading.
I guess now we just wait to hear. They did say we would hear either way but even if it's a no we can put it down to experience and hopefully move on to the next opportunity.
