Artist Management: What It Entails?

The talent manager is the one in charge of guiding and overseeing the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry, whether its in music, television, movies, and/or publishing. This person is in charge of overseeing that the day-to-day affairs of the artist get carried out. This individual is in charge of exposing the artist to different career opportunities, it involves marketing the artist and/or product. What most of us don’t know, until now, is that talent managers take also the role of friend to their artists. They become the advisors, almost to the point of counseling or psychology.

Some little-known facts about talent managers are that artists are subject to exclusivity for their managers. The managers on the other hand can represent as many artists as they want or are able to. The perfect example to this is Mr. Johnny Wright, manager to stars like New Kids on the Block, the Jonas Brothers, Menudo, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Stevie Brock, and Ciara.

But his most notable talents are the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. Something that these artists forget is that this is a business deal. Johnny Wright is one of the most important and successful talent managers in the business. Wright was hired by the BSB prior to *NSYNC even considering to hire him. Lou Pearlman was the mastermind behind these two extremely successful boy bands, and later was fired by *NSYNC for being declared guilty to conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding, in 2008 Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to (up to) 25 years and proceeded to hire Wright.

Now this “it’s a business deal” deal has come to some particular blows in this case specifically. These two artists were on top of their game at the time. And when it eventually came to them having the same manager it enforced even more the long-standing battle of the boy-bands. In their post- Lou Pearlman years they went on to become the hottest acts in the business. They toured the world, and their fan base is as strong as the beginning.

For the Backstreet Boys though, it wasn’t always peaches and cream. At one point they felt like there was a compromise between their band and their affairs and *NSYNC and their affairs. They, at one point, felt like Wright was paying more attention to *NSYNC than to them, and eventually went their separate ways. That situation created tension between Wright and the Backstreet Boys for quite some time, until they eventually came back together again and the Backstreet Boys launched their new album called “Incomplete”.

The rest is history really, *NSYNC decided to “take a break” and focus on their personal interests, majorly being Justin Timberlake’s try at a solo career. They emphasized many times that they weren’t breaking up, and for official matters, they weren’t, they just haven’t decided to get back together.

The Backstreet Boys merged with the New Kids on the Block and went on tour creating the new and improved NKOTBSB. And they’ve been on tour ever since.

Johnny Wright is successful because he has believed in his talents. He gave his all to all his artists and still is. In the case of these two bands, you could say that they were successful, but once they got together with Johnny Wright, it was impossible to miss what these boys were doing at that moment in time. He’s an example to follow, if you ever decided to go on the artist management career path.

What are your comments regarding this management mogul? Hit me up on the comments section down below. Look forward to reading your thoughts.

Does negotiation differ from business to business?

Rosabel Cedeño is the co-owner of one of the most successful businesses in the southern region of Puerto Rico. She, along with her business partner, who also happens to be her fiancé, are the owners of an event planning and promoting as well as two of the hottest and classiest nightclubs in the region of Ponce. I thought it might be interesting to see how the film business and the event coordinating business differentiate in negotiations. But in my asking her these questions, I found myself agreeing with everything that she says.

It teaches us that negotiation is the same everywhere; it only depends on what your interests and your ultimate goals are. Enjoy the information, and don’t be afraid to ask me any questions!

1. Give an example of how you separate the people from the problem in the negotiations that you take part in for your business.

We must face the problem, not the people. The fact that one person doesn’t coincide with another’s point of view, doesn’t mean that they are being rejected. I, personally had a situation in which I had to tell my cousin, who is my employee, that she was underperforming, and wasn’t meeting the expectations. We sat and talked. And we got to the root of the situation, and I saw that she was going through some personal circumstances that were affecting her performance. We made a deal between both parties (she and I) to solve the situation, and it’s been going well up to this point.

2. How does separating the people from the problem affect the outcome of the deals?

By separating the personal problems better negotiation can be found. Negotiations are there for us to find a win-win for both parties, with modifications, and adjustments, and agreement on certain details. Maintaining a rational and objective position we obtain better results.

3. Give an example of how you use objective criteria to get what you want in your negotiations.

I analyze, determine what I desire, I think about what can benefit us, I achieve my objectives and always have in mind that we, as a team, are successful.

4. How did using objective criteria affect the outcome of the deals you make?

Negotiating and hustling a detail, or proposing a realistic and concrete point help and contribute our negotiations. And most of all help us obtain the results that we are looking for, those being success for both parties.

5. Give an example of how you work toward mutual benefit in your business.

Speaking in regards of my business, what we do to gain mutual benefits while I’m the middle of a negotiation with either an employee, for example, I try to comprehend and put myself in his/her position and listen to the point that they are raising. I am very clear in the objectives and goals that I wish to accomplish with my company and up to where I can “yield”; I discuss their preoccupations, I motivate them and we come to an agreement that would benefit each of us. If my employee understands my position and I his/her, they’re going to perform and fulfill the expectations, and therefore I obtain better and bigger benefits.

6. Has there ever been a time where you lost a negotiation or felt like you would’ve done better to get a better end result?

Yes, there came a time where I didn’t get the result that I wanted at that moment to improve my business. But I was able to comprehend that the other person’s criteria and interests were and still are valid and what I wanted would’ve limited that person. The reason why the negotiation failed was a compilation of factors that limited us both and were out of his control.

7. What is the constant factor in your negotiations?

Communication and be clear of the true interests of both parties.

8. What is your advice for people just as yourself, who are starting in the business and are pretty much at the reins of their own dream businesses?

Patience, communication, immense effort and sacrifice, having a positive attitude at every moment, for anything that may present itself. Your attitude is going to define how you undertake and accomplish your way and your goals. Desire to work in order to reach your dreams and see them come true in front of your eyes.

Having a business is very sacrificed, but there is no better satisfaction that to see your dreams come true, and in the future see how much you’ve grown….

Something that’s very important to see clearly is your interests, if after a few months or years of having your business, and your interests and motivations are the same as the first day of your journey, then you’re on the right path. If they have changed negatively, think, analyze and meditate in what you’re doing and ask yourself “what motivated you at the beginning of your journey” so you can keep going strong.

Negotiation and its perspectives...

Angelo Vicente is an up and coming indie producer. He’s done a slew of indie films and music videos and is currently in the process of co-opening his own production company here in Puerto Rico. He tells me that he’s had to negotiate everything from the name of his company to the scripts he and his partner decide to do. Given the fact that I want to work in the film business as well, I thought it would be prudent to interview someone who’s had experience in this area.

1.  Give an example of how you separate the people from the problem in the negotiations that you take part in for your business.

I believe in the ability of most people to use logic. Following on this, one can present the problem in a very straightforward manner; using an almost algebraic formula. It could be interpreted, as “this is what we need, what can we do to achieve it?” If the situation is presented clearly, the probabilities of it being understood rise exponentially.

For example, a client wants to know more about our services. What does the client need? Who is the client? What better tactics can we use to inform the client; a presentation or a video link?

2.  How does separating the people from the problem affect the outcome of the deals?

Presenting a problem with a clear focus can result in a sober observation of what is going on, instead of the situation falling victim to spur-of-the-moment decisions. Overall, it leads to making better decisions.

3.  Give an example of how you use objective criteria to get what you want in your negotiations.

Every time there is a presentation on a possible client, everything you say must be backed either by information or your professional experience. This way, there is a validation on what is delivered.

4.  How did using objective criteria affect the outcome of the deals you make?

It usually leads to positive deals themselves, since the information you present is substantiated with facts. This is very important in business.

5.  Give an example of how you work toward mutual benefit in your business.

In our field, for example, a budget might be adjusted to reflect the realities of a smaller client. This leads to more business for us at a price they can afford, so quality is never sacrificed, and neither is our business.

7. Has there ever been a time where you lost a negotiation or felt like you would’ve done better to get a better end result?

Yes, these situations always happen. They happen less as you realize what your own preparations have to be like.

9.  What is the constant factor in your negotiations?

Empathy with the client is very important. If you do not understand your customer, selling your service/product will be more unlikely. Also, an emphasis on quality is a must: you must be proud of what you are offering.

10. What is your advice for people just as yourself, who are starting in the business and are pretty much at the reins of their own dream businesses?

 Always do your best, and never  “half-ass” it. My advice would be to treat it with respect. Everything else will flow from there.

The Decline of 3D or the Death of Movies

The Hollywood Reporter has done an interview with DreamWorks Animation top dog Jeffrey Katzenberg about the “alarming dip in 3D grosses at the domestic box office this summer.” This dip apparently started with Disney’s current overseas hit: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Katzenberg says: “For the first time, a majority of the audience opted to see a studio 3D pic in 2D. It happened again a week later with DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2.”

To tell you the truth, my fellow readers, this isn’t news to me or to anyone. 3D has been one of the affecting factors to the slow death of the movies. It has been stuffed down our eyes, throats and noses ever since that little movie called Avatar came into our lives. The world was presented with a "new" way of making loads and loads of money. The fact of the matter is that these top Hollywood studio heads are digging and digging and digging for every and any excuse to get money from the consumer. How, you may ask? By stimulating their most obvious senses. Romantic comedies are not even the top grossing movies anymore. All wee see are action movies in 3D. Adventure movies in 3D. Cartoon movies in 3D. Everything is in 3D. That way, putting the consumer in a position where they’re not caring about being exploited in the most, both direct and indirect ways to get a buck out of them (us).

What’s even funnier about this subject is that Pirates was actually a successful film, both domestically and internationally. Only it grossed more money internationally in the 3D aspect than it did domestically in 2D. And it was still successful.

“The audience has spoken, and they have spoken loudly.” That the studios don’t want to listen and keep filling their heads with nonsense about 3D being all the rage now a days, therefore they must juice it until there’s nothing more to juice? Well, that’s something that even a 5 year-old can tell you.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of these studios don’t even listen to what their audience is asking for. Therefore they will continue to blame ‘the end of the movies as we know it’ on 3D. When, in fact, one of the main reasons that the movie industry is in its deathbed is the overuse of 3D.

Image courtesy of: http://jotaperealini.blogspot.com/2010/12/kung-fu-panda-2-el-ano-de-la.html

"Priority Piracy Watch List"

I was reading my weekly The Hollywood Reporter newsletter and I found this article on piracy and the US Congress's support of the industry. As a normal person, who doesn’t have a job one would recur to piracy thinking that it’s no big deal. As an industry professional one can only be disgusted at the fact that people really don’t understand the severity of the act of piracy.

The battle has been constant, from ad campaigns, to conferences that condemn it and now, a group called the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus (IAPC) has decided to release a “priority piracy watch list”. And on top of that being backed up by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) saying, “it will help raise awareness of creative content that it is stolen and illegally distributed through some of the world’s most notorious marketplaces.”

The fact of the matter is that “Theft of American movies, television shows, and other creative content in these countries and around the world costs tens of billions of dollars and jeopardizes the livelihoods of more than 2.4 million stagehands, makeup artists, actors, costume and set designers, truck drivers, architects, directors, accountants, and others who make up America’s creative community,” Greg Frazier, MPAA’s Executive Vice President an Chief Policy Officer, said in a statement.”

Ever since Napster came on in the late 90s the amount of illegal downloading has become the new way of theft. Striking not only digital creative content, but also, identity theft, credit card fraud, among others.

Frazier continues, “As more and more people watch and enjoy creative works online, America and its partners abroad NEED to increase domestic and international efforts to protect those works from theft.”

Illegal downloading is one of the main reasons why studio heads have gone forward with highly expensive marketing campaigns, ridiculous amounts of product placement, and basically juicing the movies they make with merchandise that sometimes can border on ridiculous.

Now the US Congress comes into play with this initiative to try and create awareness with basically the entire world, so that this digital epidemic comes to a close.

I’m a professional of this industry. I know the hard work that goes into it. I love my job. But people only see the end product, they don’t see the work –hard work, that goes into making a movie, or an album, or a TV show, specially TV that happens weekly. The public has no idea. It’s hard for us, to give so much of ourselves to provide them with a quality end product, for these pirates to steal it.

Let’s hope that this initiative takes momentum and creates conscience among us.

The Beauty of Failing is What Comes Next

J.K. Rowling is one the best writers in the world. The size of her fortune would have you believe that she’s written hundreds of books. Her fans certainly WISH she did. But no, she has only written eight books in all (Harry Potter series and The Tales of Beetle the Bard). 2007 was the year when she published the last book in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last movie in the Potter franchise hits theaters this summer. It’s not a secret to anyone who lives in civilization the amount of success that Jo has achieved with one BIG idea back in 1990. But before all of that success Jo, as her fans call her, went through situations one after the other. The death of her mother, marriage and then divorce, chronic depression, poverty near being homeless… In all a very hard life. Jo talks about the “benefits of failure” in her speech. She talks about how hitting rock-bottom in different times in her life (all leading up to the publishing of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) helped her delve deeper into her stories and the world that she created in the series. In her failures she found clarity. In her failures she found the will to keep going towards what she most wanted, which was to be a writer. A lot of press would say that her story is one of fairytales; the things she overcame would’ve done with another person’s life what it didn’t do with hers. She kept going strong, not just for herself, but also for her daughter, her sister, and the memory of her mother, who never knew that Jo had started writing incessantly about six months before she passed away.

Her story is one I greatly appreciate because we all go through trying times. We all go through things that challenge our faith not only in God but faith in ourselves. It leads us to question ourselves even in moments where we know what we want. Fear of failure does that to a human being. You can be the most confident person in the world, everyone has insecurities. The difference is that a confident person sees that as a challenge and keeps going. Jo tells us to embrace that failure and make something positive of it. She did. That’s what she encouraged the Graduating Class of 2008 from Harvard University in the Commencement Speech.

She’s inspiring to me because I’m not what you would call the most confident person in the world. For all you knew through my writing in this blog, is that I’m a very confident person. But I’m not. I’m 26 years old and I live with my parents. In an island that doesn’t give many opportunities to people that specifically want to work in the arts; unless they know you, the road becomes an uphill battle. One remembers stories of people like Jo, who in the midst of her depression turned it into something that the entire world would support wholeheartedly. She is a definite role model. It’s not a coincidence that my Deathly Hallows copy is sitting right beside me in this very moment. This series represents a struggle, not necessarily between good and evil, but a struggle with yourself to do what is right for yourself, to not be selfish with yourself. To find the truth in things that matter. It’s the best story I have ever read in my short life… and for that I thank her. 

For more information on how she has contributed to causes related to MS and fighting poverty, think of the happiest thought or memory you can think of and then say Expecto Patronus!

Image courtesy of: http://ideagirlconsulting.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-1-new-trailer-teaser-director-david-yates-novel-jk-rowling-screenplay-steve-kloves-daniel-radcliffe-rupert-grint-emma-watson/ 

Puerto Rico Film Commission?

The Puerto Rico Film Commission is the most important entity dedicated to “promoting the development of all the elements that comprise the audiovisual industry”. Its highest achievement to date is offering one of the highest tax incentives offered by any film commission.

The PRFC was created by act of law in 1999 primarily to develop the arts and sciences of the film industry on the island. Their primary incentive is a 40% tax credit on payments to PR residents and 20% tax credit on non-resident talent. These incentives are also offered to off-island producers who may want to carry out their shoots in Puerto Rico.

Their service is pretty basic, as well as any other city Film Commission. They act as a liaison, helping investors, studios, and production companies and independent producers find all the services needed to film their projects in Puerto Rico.

They also offer a “phone book” of all the people that make up the industry in the island. Pre Pro has all the numbers you’re looking for when you are a producer in Puerto Rico. Not only possible assistants, camera crews, lighting technicians, but food services, transportation services, laundry services, among others.

All of this information is great for international producers and/or if you happen to have $50,000 and give them exclusivity, just to get them to hear you out. For local filmmakers is very difficult to acquire that quantity of money and getting them to help you out with the distribution of the film. I know this sounds a bit unorthodox given the fact that I live here, and, of course, my business would be located here. But, I know this from former experience, one of the islands’ own directors, famous for his educational style of filmmaking has been through a very difficult run to produce the movie. He resorted to a very odd strategy of funding.

He came up with the idea of through selling tickets for the premiere getting the money. You don’t need me to tell you that the movie hasn’t even begun pre-production. The reason why he resorted to this odd strategy is because he simply didn’t have the money to finance it.

And to me, that is the biggest problem with the Commission. They filter too many of the projects that get to their desks and subsequently cut the wings of the rest. In other words, if you don’t have either enough money, or a good story (to their eyes) to tell, you won’t get help at all.

As an aspiring filmmaker one gets disheartened by this circumstance, it’s very difficult to get support from the government for us locals, and is why the industry in the island is suffering. The arts are not being developed or nourished by either the government or the Commission.

I didn’t want to make this post “controversial” for lack of a better word, but, the situations have been so many in which it’s been very hard to get funding, that I just couldn’t stand here and say nothing about it. Yes, it has great tax cuts, but that’s about it. I think they can do better than that to help improve the chances for us commoners to get our stories out there.

I truly hope other hopefuls don’t get the terrible luck that we have, and hopefully do whatever you can to get your stories out there for people to admire.