Explore every episode of the podcast Hollywood Insider Help by Nancy Fulton

This presentation is a practical guide to making a first film that becomes a useful career credit rather than an expensive disaster. Many first films fail because new filmmakers choose projects that are too large, too expensive, legally messy, or impossible to finish. A “disaster” film is one that drains money and time, never gets completed, creates legal problems, looks amateurish, or makes the filmmaker never want to make another film. A “triumph” is finished quickly, looks more expensive than it was, showcases the filmmaker’s strengths, builds good relationships, and makes the filmmaker eager to make the next project. Learn how to ensure your first film is a career building significant success. 

Production Insurance, Completion Bonds, E & O Insurance are something every producer needs to know about, and they are life-and-death for anyone making a multi-million dollar project with investor and/or bank support.  Why? Because banks and savvy investors won't fund projects that can't get a completion bond, production insurance, and E&O insurance.  In this workshop expert Ed Rowin walks us through why this insurance is required, and the fundamentals of how to get it.  Tip, getting this insurance requires you to hire line producers / unit production managers that insurance companies will bond, crews they will insure, and scripts that qualify for E & O. We have hundreds of recorded workshops with supporting resources and live events every month. Note this workshop was recorded several years ago, but completion bonds, production insurance, and E & O insurance have been required since the earliest days of filmmaking, and the fundamentals don't change because when you make a multi-million dollar film investors, banks, want to secure their investment and these tools are how they do that.  This is a must-listen episode. Want to learn more about producing your own films? Visit www.NancyFultonMeetups.com. 

This interview is designed to review good business practices that can help you side step a lot of legal hassles. 

Justin Sterling is founder of The Sterling Firm, a full-service civil litigation and transactional law firm devoted to Business Law, Entertainment Law, and Personal Injury cases. The Sterling Firm is dedicated to helping clients obtain maximum compensation, achieve cost-effective legal solutions, and resolve legal conflicts efficiently. You can learn more about Justin at www.TheSterlingFirm.com and www.linkedin.com/in/justinsterlingesquire/

Topics addressed in this interview include.

• 3 Myths People Believe About Litigation
• 5 Mistakes People Make that Often Lead to Litigation
• What to Do Business Deals Start to Fall Apart
• Things to Say (and Avoid Saying) When Someone Offers to Sue You
• Preparing to Win the Court Battles You Hope You Never Have
• What to Do When Litigation (or Arbitration) is Inevitable

Questions? Email nancy@entertainmentindustryevents.com.

This is the perfect podcast to listen to if you want to produced one or more projects with a friend or family member.  It provides very specific advice and step-by-step guidance that will help you avoid specific risks and stumbling blocks in forming businesses that incorporate on these relationships. 

Over time most of us working in the entertainment industry develop close personal, professional, and creative relationships with people who seem to share our vision for the kinds of projects we want to produce.  Some of us are even fortunate enough to have family members in the industry who want to work beside us to bring common dreams to fruition.  And, indeed, one can point to some very long term production partnerships like the Coen Brothers, the Wachowskis, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller & Andrew Form, that have turned out to be incredibly profitable and creatively powerful over many decades. 

Having said that, one of the most dangerous things you can do from a financial, personal, and a creative perspective is to commit to producing a project with a friend or a family member without carefully weighing the risks and taking significant steps to limit them. It would be a shame if deciding to produce a film with someone you love and love to work with resulted in the termination of an important relationship and an expensive financial disaster. It’s also true that even people love you can make expensive mistakes that cause you significant personal, professional, and financial harm.

This is a great interview to listen to if you feel stuck and need help moving your career in the entertainment industry forward.  Jim Jermanok (jimjermanok.com) is an award-winning writer, director, stage and film producer based in New York who started his career as a beloved agent at ICM representing leading lights like Alan Arkin, E.L. Doctorow, Helen Hayes, Ben Kingsley,  Shirley MacLaine, Arthur Miller, Dudley Moore, Andy Rooney and Henry Winkler, among many others.  He is also an entrepreneurship expert and speaker who actively works with creative pros to help them earn more from their work.  His recent bestseller, BEYOND THE CRAFT: What You Need to Know to Make A Living Creatively! (http://amzn.to/2hmx6YQ), and the workshops he delivers worldwide help entertainment industry creatives master the skills they need to achieve their personal, professional, and financial objectives.

Bridget Fitzgerald is an actress, comedienne, and model. She is also a member of National Lampoon's sketch comedy team, making a sketch comedy podcast heard by half a million monthly listeners. Her web series SmileyBridgeTV has had 1/4 million views, and she attributes some of that success to two audiobooks: "How I Exiled My Inner B*tch” which she acted in and "iHumpty" which she produced as well as acted in. You can learn more here: http://www.bridgetfitzgerald.com/ and http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2804002/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

Her investment in producing audio content and a SAG New Media web series has helped her get more and better acting roles and writing gigs. It’s also allowed her to establish herself as a producer, co-producer, and director. She’s been asked to work as a judge in writing contests and consults with those producing web series, podcasts, and audiobooks.

Topics addressed include . . .

• Why Hollywood Now Favors Actor/Writer/Producers, Actor/Producers, and Writer/Producers
• Using Podcasts and Audiobooks to Generate Revenue
• Hiring Union Actors for Podcasts and Audiobooks
• The Process of Producing a SAG New Media Web Series
• Finding and Creating New Business Relationships and Business Opportunities

Remember you can find more resources for creative pros at www.NancyFultonMeetups.com. 

Writer/Producer Nancy Fulton brings you an audio recording of her interview with Organized Crime Expert Christian Cipollini.

Award-Winning author Christian Cipollini is a freelance journalist, book author (https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Cipollini/e/B00CP95F4K), organized crime historian and collector.  A frequent guest lecturer at universities and a consultant to movie and television producers, Cipollini has also appeared as a consultant on episodes of Reelz Channel Series "Gangsters: America's Most Evil," History Channel Series "United Stuff of America" , AHC's 'America: Facts vs. Fiction', and served as a consultant & Location Producer on National Geographic Channel’s critically-acclaimed series DRUGS, INC. You can learn more about Christian and his work at www.GangLandLegends.com.

Topics covered include:

• An overview of organized crime.  What it is and isn’t, the problems it “solves”, and the problems it causes.
• A quick but important timeline for organized crime in America from the 1900’s through to the modern day. The Mob, versus the Mafia, versus the Drug Cartels, and why distinctions matter.
• A primer on the origin, temperment, and tactics of organized criminals.  What Hollywood usually gets right and what it gets wrong.
• Organized crime in America today. Major conflicts, major players, and major impacts we see every day.

 If you have questions about this event, please contact me via the podcast home page at www.AudioIron.com.

Have you worked with a toxic person or business that has made you really rethink your work as a writer, screenwriter, filmmaker, or other creative pro? Does all of Hollywood feel like a den of thieves and difficult people? If so, you'll find this interview with Dr. Rhoberta Shaler important to hear. 

As a relationship consultant, mediator, and speaker, Rhoberta Shaler, PhD (ForRelationshipHelp.com) helps the partners, employees, exes, and adult children of the relentlessly difficult people she calls "Hijackals®."

Her work has been featured on FoxNews, PsychCentral, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, The Good Men Project, eHarmony, Care2, Greatist, Pulse, and The Needs, among many others. She is the author of sixteen books, including Escaping the Hijackal Trap: The Definitive Guide to Dealing with Relentlessly Difficult People. Even the US Marines have enlisted her help.

You can learn more about Dr. Shaler’s work at ForRelationshipHelp.com and via her YouTube channel, ForRelationshipHelp. She is also host of two podcasts: Emotional Savvy: The Relationship Help Show and Save Your Sanity: Help for Handling Hijackals®!

In this video Dr. Shaler discusses:

• Why she uses the term Hijackals (R) to describe predatory and abusive people instead of more clinical terms like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Psychopath.
• Why some people seem to attract and be attracted to Hijackals and others never seem to encounter them at all.
• How and why Hijackals destroy careers, relationships, projects, and people and why those witnessing their behavior so frequently don’t step in to stop it.
• Why trying to help a Hijackal be a better person usually results in more damage rather than an end to the abuse.
• An initial understanding of how to work with, or live with, a Hijackal when walking away is too expensive.
• Why most people who have had to cope with Hijackals for prolonged periods of time need professional help to recover.

If you have questions about this podcast, please email nancy.fulton@yahoo.com. I look forward to hearing from you. You can find more online and face to face events at www.NancyFultonMeetups.com.

Bridget Fitzgerald (smileybridge.com) is an actress, comedienne, and model. She is also a member of National Lampoon's sketch comedy team, making a sketch comedy podcast heard by half a million monthly listeners. Her web series SmileyBridgeTV has had 1/4 million views, and she attributes some of that success to two audiobooks: "How I Exiled My Inner B*tch” which she acted in and "iHumpty" which she produced as well as acted in. You can learn more here: http://www.bridgetfitzgerald.com/

Her investment in producing audio content and a SAG New Media web series has helped her get more and better acting roles and writing gigs. It’s also allowed her to establish herself as a producer, co-producer, and director. She’s been asked to work as a judge in writing contests and consults with those producing web series, podcasts, and audiobooks.

This interview with Nancy Fulton discusses how writers, actors, and producers benefit from generating independent media. 

Larry Jordan has amassed more than 45 professional credits, working on successful films such as Fallen, Assassins, Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo and television series including CSI: Miami and NYPD Blue.  . Larry has worked with many of the top creatives at the world’s largest entertainment companies, including Time Warner, Sony, Fox, MGM, HBO, Netflix and Disney. Larry recently Master the Workflow (www.MasterTheWorkflow.com), a game-changing online course that teaches the practicalities of a career in film editing to a new generation of up and coming filmmakers and professional film editors.

Topics addressed in this interview include:

• Why a professional editor is key to the success of an independent feature film.
• When in the process of development/pre-production producers should start looking for their film editor.
• How to foster a productive, streamlined, relationship between DP, Director, and Editor
• The relationship between Film Editors and Post Production Supervisors
• Collecting, storing, protecting, and editing digital images in a 4K+ world
• What to look for when assessing film editors for your feature
• Why some indie filmmakers elect to edit their own productions and how to do it well

Remember you can find more support for your work at www.EntertainmentIndustryEvents.com.

Dr. Rebecca Roy has built a successful practice helping entertainment industry professionals reach their goals, manage their stress, and deal with the natural ebb and flow of creative careers. She is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (PSY 28773) with both a Ph.D. and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology (MFT 45901) and she has 12 years experience as a psychotherapist licensed to treat both individuals and couples. She uses evidence-based treatment approaches which are both solution-focused and long-lasting which help her patients reach their goals while remaining grounded, sane, and creative.

She is a former coach of Olympic athletes and has over 20 years of experience helping people reach their goals, including many writers. She has been featured in the New York Times, LA Times, Reuters, CNN and many other major media.

Topics addressed include:

• Frequent Causes of Writers Block and other forms of Severe Creative Inhibition
• How these Inhibitions Creep into the Lives of Creative Professionals
• How External Forces Can Exacerbate Creative Inhibition
• Entertainment Industry Specific Challenges for Creative People including Drugs, Alcohol, Untreated Organic Mental Illness, etc. 
• The Impact of Creative Inhibitions on the Work and Well Being of Creative People
• Self Help Solutions that Don’t Help at All for Those “Blocked” in Creative Pursuits
• How Psychologists Understand and Treating Creative Impairments 
• The Unexpected Benefits of Working Through Creative Blocks
• Carl Jung, CBT, and Other Therapeutic Lenses through which Creative Blocks can be understood and treated. 

If you are a creative professional working to write, produce, act, etc, you can find the support and active community you need at www.NancyFultonMeetups.com. 

In this interview writer/producer Marilyn Anderson addresses tools and techniques writers and producers can use to:

• Entertain potential business associates, partners, and investors with style and grace
• Dress themselves and performers well
• Travel well cheaply to domestic and international locations

Writers and Screenwriters frequently find themselves living a long time between paychecks, pitching projects to decision makers in face-to-face meetings, and paying for the travel and other experiences that turn into the stories, articles, books, and screenplays they tell. Marilyn's techniques help writers save money while enjoying a better and more productive life.

Producers entertain constantly. When they aren't inviting writers, agents, actors, investors, and key crew to lunch, dinner, or drinks they are providing catered meals throughout production. They have to dress well to convey confidence and an air of success, and they are paying for travel all the time.

Marilyn's How to Live Like a Millionaire When You're a Million Short is a funny, savvy, empowering book derived from her many years as a working writer and producer in the entertainment industry. 

She frequently consults with producers to help them reduce costs and solve problems as they develop their projects and works with writers to improve their screenplays.

If you have questions about this event, please email nancy.fulton@yahoo.com. 

Ray Ellingsen, Founder of Moving Pictures Media Group, has been an active sponsor for Nancy Fulton Meetups over the years. His support has helped us provide more events for more filmmakers, and his appearances and the guests he's brought with him, have helped our members understand how to develop films with budgets over $1M. You'll enjoy this interview if you have film you're struggling to produce, or a script that you want producers to love. 

It is impossible to run a profitable business or build a successful career if you don't know how to deal with difficult people.  You'll encounter them as partners, customers, co-workers, and employees.  Failure to correctly identify them early, and resolve the issues they present correctly, can derail your career or business completely, or even land you in legal hot water. 

This guide helps you figure out how to analyze and approach problematic people in a way that protects you and your work going forward. 

If you are struggling to find work in Hollywood, this resource will help. There is a culture you have to understand in order to thrive 

You will learn: How to find paying work, how to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are great at what you do so you can float to the top of your profession, how to persuasively ask for a job and get it. how to avoid getting burned by users, abusers, and incompetent people who don't know what they are doing and find out about mistakes people make that make them permanently unemployable. Finally you'll learn the surest way to ensure you can make a good living doing what you want to do.

You can find an 8 page workbook that supports this lecture at NancyFultonVideos.com.

Dr. Sean Young, is a UCLA Medical School professor, and executive director or the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior, and the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology will discuss how to stick with the changes that will help you achieve your personal and professional objectives. His research has received more than $10M in funding from organizations like The National Institutes of Health, Facebook, and Intel, and well as leading hospitals. 

In this interview he discusses what he's learned about how people, and businesses, can change their own behavior and the behavior of others. 

As an agent at William Morris and CAA, Marc Pariser represented leading writers, directors, producers, production companies, comedians, actors, executives, and two past WGA Presidents while enjoying is his own extremely successful 25+ year career.

In this interview he discusses what it takes to get a good agent or manager to represent you.  You'll learn what they need to see, how to approach them, and what not to say and do. 

You can learn more about Marc Pariser on his website at MarcPariser.com and more about Writer/Producer Nancy Fulton on her website for writers, screenwriter, producers, and other creative minds at NancyFultonMeetups.com

It's completely possible to spend many years and many thousands of dollars working to produce a film that never gets made. You can also struggle to get a film made only to discover you've just purchased an expensive legal and financial nightmare for your family. 

There's an order in which things must be done in order for a film to be a successful creative, professional, and financial endeavor. 

Christina Jo Leigh is a working producer and active line producer who has helped many projects go from script to screen.  In this interview she helps new filmmakers understand how to build a project from the ground up.

In this episode of Hollywood Insider Help, we dive into the multi-award-winning book "Games People Play" by Eric Berne, a pivotal guide to understanding human interactions. Particularly relevant to the entertainment industry, this workshop explores the fundamental concepts of transactional analysis, shedding light on the "drama" often encountered in Hollywood. We review common "games" people play and offer techniques to dispel them, enhancing your professional and personal interactions. Additionally, discover how these games inspire brilliant books, movies, and films. Make-believe drama becomes even more captivating when rooted in the fundamental behaviors of human nature. Tune in for insightful discussions that bridge psychology and storytelling in the world of entertainment.

Welcome to the Hollywood Insider Help podcast! In this episode, we delve into the detrimental thought patterns that can hinder your success as a media creator in the entertainment industry. We'll explore how these negative habits can affect your creativity, collaboration, and career progression. Discover practical strategies to identify and change these patterns, ensuring you can consistently create on demand, effectively engage with other creators, and successfully find, perform, and promote your work. Tune in to learn how to break free from these limiting thoughts and propel your career forward.

When people come to Hollywood with dreams of making it big, they often encounter perplexing behaviors and responses. Many of these can be traced back to Hollywood's turbulent history and the monumental mistakes made by Studios, Directors, and Producers. These blunders have not only ended careers and destroyed studios but have also resulted in financial losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars and, tragically, even cost lives. In this eye-opening episode, we delve into some of the most significant disasters in Hollywood's history. By the end of this podcast, you'll gain a much clearer understanding of how to navigate the Hollywood landscape. You'll learn what seasoned Hollywood Insiders know about the pitfalls that can ruin careers and lives.

Why Listen?

• Gain Insider Knowledge: Understand the mistakes that have led to Hollywood's most infamous disasters.
• Avoid Common Pitfalls: Learn valuable lessons that can help you steer clear of the errors that have destroyed careers and studios.
• Gain Essential Insights for Newcomers: This episode is particularly beneficial for new producers, screenwriters, directors, and investors looking to succeed in Hollywood.

Join us as we uncover the hidden truths behind Hollywood's biggest failures and equip yourself with the knowledge to thrive in the industry. Don't miss this essential episode for anyone serious about making it in Hollywood.

In today's workshop, we're going to be talking about cultivating a robust attitude so you can thrive in the media business.  And specifically, I'm going to review some practical advice on surviving and thriving in what is an incredibly competitive industry.

I think most people that work in the entertainment industry, at one point or another, find themselves thinking, Oh, my God. Why is this so difficult? Why is this so hard? Shouldn't it all be easier? What am I doing wrong? I must be doing something wrong because I've never been so unhappy. I thought this was going to make me happy. I thought when I had the freedom and the time to work as a writer or a screenwriter, as a producer, as a performer,  I thought that I would just fall in love. I've wanted to do this my whole life and it's just turning into a miserable experience. 

People are surprised by how difficult it is to work in the entertainment industry is because nobody  pulls you aside early on and explains some of the more difficult aspects of working in the industry or working as a media creative. 

As creatives, we invest time, effort, ideas, intellectual property, and our reputation in the projects we do. A project that goes well becomes a stepping stone to other great projects. Failed projects, or projects we fail on, are thus damaging from many perspectives.

Our work is more or less collaborative, based on our desire or willingness to collaborate. Working with the "right" collaborators lets us do our best work. The wrong collaborators disable, distract, and disaffect us. They take us out of the zone in which we are most effective.

In order to find the right collaborators, we need to understand what kind of creatives we are, what we do best, what we need to do our best work, and where our weaknesses are. We also need to understand how to work with (and sometimes side-step) those collaborators with whom we are not perfectly matched.
Learn what kind of creator your and why that matters so much to your work as a producer, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, or author making media for money. 

Writers, actors, filmmakers, artists, designers, and other creatives are taught young that choosing to be a creative professional is risky business. It doesn't have to be. 

In this workshop you'll learn: 

• Why earning a living as a creative looks like luck or magic from the outside. 
• Why it is not the tight-rope walk you've been told it is since you were born. 
• How to understand exactly what you need to do to build a creative business so you can swiftly do it. 
• How to find fans and turn them into paying customers.
• Why taking big risks, and making big investments usually doesn't pay off, but running lots of inexpensive experiments almost always does. 
• How having money to invest into your creative business can be a blessing or a curse. 
• How to figure out what you might have been doing wrong. 
• How to determine what "works" and what doesn't when it comes to the products and services you sell. 
• Practical examples of how most creatives go off the rails in trying to create a sustainable way to get paid for their work. 

This is a very practical, brass-tacks, rational workshop that helps you understand, intuitively, what you need to so so you can do it. Furthermore, you'll understand why what you've been doing previously hasn't been working wonderfully well even though you've got a lot of skill, talent, and commitment. 

If you have any questions about this workshop, please email me at nancy@nancyfultonmeetups.com. You can find in-depth live and online how-to workshops at www.nancyfultonmeetups.com and NFM24.com. 

Only people have money to buy things. Whether it’s an independent producer with funds to purchase your screenplay, an investor with money to put into your film, a studio exec shopping for a book or podcast to license, or a director looking to hire an actor . . . only humans ever pull the trigger on purchasing things.

That means you need a business network within the entertainment industry that will actively help you find the people who actually want to buy what you sell. In this event you learn the art and science of building and entertainment industry network swiftly, comfortably, and cost effectively.

Topics addressed:

• Where and how to find networking events that lend themselves to making real connections.
• How to very comfortably meet people at events 
• What to do with their business cards
• How to introduce yourself to a group, and one-on-one, so people remember you well
• How to reach out to people after an event comfortably
• How to give people leads on potential opportunities
• How to accept leads from others graciously and without obligation

This is the perfect podcast to listen to if you really struggle with networking, building professional relationships, and using those relationships as a springboard to great opportunities. You can find written lecture notes and a video with slides covering this material at https://gumroad.com/l/wJbwL