Expert: Taylor Sheppard - 6/8/2008

Question
My girlfriend(the aspiring actress) and I are trying to do research about which cities would be best for her to move to. We've heard Dallas, Chicago, and Austin. Philly and Boston have also been mentioned. So the thing I want to find out is which cities would provide her the most opportunities to get experiance under her belt before we move to L.A. or New York. It would seem that its not as big a deal as before thought, but we would still like to make the best decision. I'm having a hard time doing research online, about these cities. What would you recomend?

Answer
Hi Spencer,

Your choice has a lot to do with her ability level. You don't want to
try to try out for the major leagues out of high school, if you catch my drift.
If she's knocked them out on stage or commercials or film in her home area, then go for it, if not, a smaller market may allow time to get really good (through training) before becoming "known" for not being up to par in a big market.

Austin is a great town, but right now there is little of any work coming because of weak incentives to shows and studios reining in their production plans due to the economy. Some work is in Canada, some in other places, but not that much anywhere! Dallas is also slow. Chicago and New York may have more work, but once again, a smaller market allows more visibility and less competition to fight against to be noticed.

What does this all mean? Well, it means that you have to ignore (somewhat) current conditions and just plow on until things get better, because you don't want to "Wait until a better day THEN start trying to get established" -it means plugging away until this mess we are in here gets better and things get moving.

You might look at Louisiana (Schreveport) and New Mexico, they seem to be pulling quite a few shows due to better production incentives (kickbacks to productions). While a lot of the shows are lower budget, I can say that many of Matt McConoughey's early stuff was low-budget shows. He was lucky that we were busy here in the 90's and had a Governor who was big on promoting the business then.

Hope this helps...tell her to KEEP TRAINING!

Best, Taylor