and Employed!

So I went on a few print auditions these past few weeks and it looks like I'm "on avail" for two jobs: Yahoo! and IBM. What sucks is that they kind of overlap. The IBM avail is for the 25th. Yahoo! is for either the 25th or 26th. Since nothing is confirmed, I'm on avail for both. Unfortunately, this is considered unethical, or whatever word they'll use. But money is money, and my agency will always go for the bigger paycheck, as well as leverage my new "in-demand" status to confirm my hiring.

You gotta love agents. They do the dirty work so you don't have to. That's actually one reason why I signed with my agents. I used to work at an Asian advertising agency where I did some casting and agency producing. There was a series of old commercials that the client wanted to renew for another year of airing. So, I was in the position of offering money to people.

Some of these folks I got to deal with directly. And consequently, these guys were told, by me, that our budget was small and that we'd be happy to offer $300 for one-year rights, knowing exactly that our budget would allow for up to $1500 per person. But when I got to speaking with folks who only had an agency for their contact numbers, the agents generally played hardball with me, getting me to shell out anywhere from $500 to $1000. They also wanted a "plus 10%" clause, but that wasn't going to happen, I told them. So, they just accepted this unforeseen gift and signed the contracts.

Of course I made notes of which agents dealt with me the best, from professionalism to working to get their clients the best possible deal. My agency came out one of the best. One agency was a pain in the ass. And another was a total loser. In fact, they're no longer in business. Who were they? An Asian American agency, and that's all I'll say about that.

As it is, I'm juggling freelance jobs, doing one job while in the office of another client. Next week, I'll have to say I'm sort of booked on Monday and/or Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll have two bookings back-to-back.

That would be nice indeed.