You made a new film industry connection. Now what? Charles Haine explains how to follow up after a festival or event without being pushy or forgotten.
You’ve done it! You went to a networking event, be it a trade show, a panel discussion, or a film festival party, and made a new connection in the film industry, usually by trading business cards.
First off, well done. If there’s one thing my students say more than anything else, it’s, “I’m bad at networking.” It’s not true. They’re mostly just fine at it. Networking is just something that seems super-duper hard, and done only by the extremely extroverted, but it’s part of having a career, so you should feel good about it.
The first thing to do is to install the Rapportive plugin for gmail: it’s a handy little plugin that brings up a window with of all the social contacts associated with an email address. Once you start writing an email to someone, it pops up and without even leaving your window you can connect via linkedin, facebook, twitter, or add them to your mailchimp.
Now, on to the email. The purpose is simply to cement the connection you made. If you have a direct ask, such as, “I’d love to talk further about my reality show idea for your network,” or “I’d love to talk about singing to your roster of directors,” or “I’d love to send you the script I mentioned,” get to it quickly. Try to focus on only one direct ask, and to keep their decision making simple. It comes off unprofessional to say something like, “Well, I’m interested in reality, narrative, TV and film. Could you watch my work and tell me where you think I should go?” Instead, come off like a person with a clearcut mission and drive. You might be interested in a lot of different areas. That’s fine, but do a little research on the person you are emailing, and ask them for help in the area where they have the most experience and can possibly offer you the most help or expertise.
If you don’t have that specific thing to ask, it’s enough to say, “it was a pleasure to meet you, and I just wanted get in touch to say I look forward to running into you again.” Hollywood is a small town, you will probably run into them again, and you’ll be more memorable from the contact. Also, the email gives them a chance to connect with you socially as well (they probably use rapportive), so that you are on each others’ radar, and you are added to their twitter followers. If you have an online portfolio you are proud of and feel reflects what you do (not your potential, but your actual skill), a line like, “if you want to check out my work, you can see at www.charleshaine.com,” is completely appropriate. Avoid saying, “I’d love your feedback,” or “be sure to watch full screen and to the end.” It’s up to them if and how they want to watch, and feedback isn’t what professionals want: they want jobs. Also, make this only 1 link: a list of 6 YouTube links will usually be ignored. Curate the experience for them, to point them towards your best work.
Don’t use texting. Text messages demand immediate response or they get lost in the shuffle. Your follow up isn’t immediate (text is best used for when you are running 10 minutes late to a meeting and want to inform someone), it can wait, and chances are they have a system for managing email. If they are powerful enough, their assistant does it for them, so let them use their system and respond on their own time.
Finally, never send something incomplete. I had a contact text me, “I’m 40 pages into a script, wanna read the pages and get attached?” I asked, “What’s the logline?” to which he responded, “It’s a really hard script to summarize, you kinda gotta read it.” All this accomplished was burning the connection: I have even less interest in reading that person’s future work than I had before. If you are hoping to submit a script, write and re-write and re-write until it’s perfect. Then do the hard work of finding a log line that captures the magic you put in the script. Submit it to someone, by asking via email first. Chances are they won’t even read it — they’ll have an assistant or dedicated reader read it first and read the synopsis, then the script if the coverage is positive. If you aren’t willing to do the work of getting the script ready to read, why should they dedicate their time to reading it?
Everyone is constantly on the lookout for the hot new talent, but for that to be a truly exciting experience for the Hollywood veteran, the hot new talent needs to be someone that you look forward to working with. Make it easy for them to work with you, and you vastly increase the odds of being someone who keeps moving up.
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