Sorry this post has taken so long folks...but just like Kate and Mitch, all must stop until Adam "Speasalicious" Speas sends his post. Here it is (wishing it was in glorious Technicolor). This has been edited for content because Speas was born with a "Mature Content Warning":
Speas is dishing out the advice! Take heed lil chillens!
To make the move to LA successful first get pliers, a 6' piece of floss, gummi bears, and plastic explosive. Then McGuyver together a RED camera and editing bay! It's as simple as that. Well maybe not as simple as that, and most likely you'll be sitting in your new apartment surrounded by empty Mickey's bottles, using storage tubs as furniture, and drying your tears with 99 cent store toilet paper. Or maybe that was just me...
Anyway, so you wanna join the ranks of UGA alum out in LA? You wanna throw passion to the wind, let down your hair, and drive route 66 west till you see blue waters (by route 66 I mean I-40 which runs right beside 66 and lets you drive oh so much faster, and by blue waters I mean the nasty trash ridden black waters of South Cali)! Welcome to the club. We are a select few, and we stick together. Which is one of the most important things for me out here. I don't know if I would be as sane (by sane I mean only wetting myself once a week!) without the likes of Jared, Blade, Chatter, Flippo, Pike, Ashley, Mitch, and Kate. In the long run, I know my friends in LA will be the biggest asset I have in the industry. We've helped each other hunt for jobs and keep motivation high. This goes for everyone you meet out in LA too. Keep up contacts. Email, call, text everyone you've met once in a while to let them know you're still alive and needing work. Lesson #1: Don't be an a-hole, be friendly.
Once you have a friend or two to make spoons with on those cold dark nights, the next step is find work. Lesson #2: Be an eager whore. Hunt for any work you can. Any type of work to meet new people and take a step closer to your final job goal is a worthy job. Talk to everyone you can. Walk up to shoots on the street to pass out your card, get your name out there. No one knows you, and no one cares what short you made for a class project. But what you can do is take the talents you learned from Biddle and Smith and meld them with an undying need to whore yourself out. This industry-prostitution is most potent in forms of interning. We all have to do it - free work. To really show people the hunger for the film industry you have, you need to get out there and prove that you deserve to get paid. Graduating from college with a degree in production doesn't prove you deserve money. Soaking up every little morsel of information in your field helps, late hours help, and asking questions help. If you get turned down on a job you really want, then offer to come in and help for free. Do whatever you have to do to learn what you need. And if that doesn't work, my pimp Angelo knows the best street corners in Thai-town to get a little extra income.
Now you have learned the ways of the elegant LA film industry whore. This is not a cake walk. Moving across the country to pursue a dream is not for everyone. If you really believe you have the marbles to move out here, then pack up and I wanna see you at my door asking to crash on the couch by next week. All of us rebels are more than happy to help. Time for the final lesson (because only 2 lessons is a jip, and I've learned everything in film should come in threes). Lesson #3: Luck be a lady tonight (hopefully a lady that looks like Bea Arthur, mmmmmm, Bea Arthur). Pray to whatever deity you believe in, eat enough fortune cookies at panda express until you get the right one, or try to be at the right place in the right time. Hope for luck. That's all anyone can really do out here. No one knows there will be another job after the first. This is easily the least important lesson of the day. If you work hard enough on lessons 1 and 2 then you'll need very little luck to get where you need. But if you dick around and wait, then you'll be needing a lot of luck to get where you want to be. So with any real ingenuity, luck will be a minor (but can definitely be important) factor out in LA. As a representative of UGA and Tele Arts, I'd expect luck to be the slimmest aid in your journey. You've been taught better than that, so prove it. Or don't take it from me. There may be a good reason Mander's pet name for me is Royal F&%$-up.
Speas
