If you're in the entertainment business then you know how hard it is to get things done. People are always needing help or extra hands to get their projects done. When it comes to offering people free services, then that can be a good thing or sometimes can be a bad thing. Lots of times the free stuff always comes with a price. For instance, we need people for our film but we can't pay so here's what we are offering...so forth and so on, you all know the drill for this. What really gets on my nerves is when they offer you free copies of the film to everyone and then they never get it to you. Now you're begging and doing everything you can to get this piece of footage that you were told you were going to get. By the time it's all over with, the film never got edited or either it did get edited and they forgot all about you and you never get your free copy. What do they care, they got you for free and never paid a dime plus now they have a film that they didn't have to send out to everyone. Now you have nothing to show on your reel to let people see your acting.
How about this.....the free no cost to you just come and get pictures done and I'll give you everything plus edited pictures for you to have as well all so I can update my portfolio. So you say, ok, sure...I haven't got a lot of money to spend so this will be great and will help me out plus it will help this photographer out as well. Not always the case but hey, it's free so what do you expect. Sometimes you get lucky and you get your pictures mailed out to you on CD/DVD along with a few edited pictures as well. Then there are sometimes that you get a few pictures edited but you still haven't gotten all of them. You start to wonder, what's wrong with these people? Did they forget about me? am I going to get any of my pictures mailed out to me so I can have them?
In the long run overall, Free is not always free. Doesn't mean you will get what you were told you were going to get, it just means free for them, not so much for you the actor or model etc. My gripe on all this is, when you offer people the chance to be in your film or offer them a free photo shoot, you need to actually follow through with what you said you were actually going to do. No need to get ill with the actors or models when they try to contact you. Remember, you were the one that was offering the free stuff in return for their time. Don't get other people to do your dirty work and tell them that he/she will get back to you when they have free time to work on your stuff. That they have a paid gig that they are trying to get done and will get back to you when they get a free moment. Look you offered this for free to the actor/model and you gave them an estimate of when to expect the film copy or the photo's. Why not follow through with what you tell people.
It's not fair to the models or the actors to take time to spend and work for free on your project if you're just going to ignore them or never get back in touch with them. Oh, and if you got that much paid stuff going on, then why did you offer the free photo shoot or the free film copy to the actors in the first place? Doesn't make sense to me and I've been in this bizz for over 7 years. I can only imagine how the newbies feel when they just get started in this bizz and get this kind of treatment. No wonder people don't trust anything anyone says in the entertainment bizz. Too many of the negative people in it that are out weighing the positive people who are really wanting to try and make this work. That's just my opinion I could be wrong...... :-)
