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MISSION VALENCIA |
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ADAPTED FROM A LECTURE
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INTRODUCTION I am on a mission here. My mission is to help each of you advance your art in the world outside this room. I will strive to prepare you as much as possible for the conditions that exist out there. Our time is short. There is much to say. So please forgive me if I am loud. I speak loudly when I am excited. Please forgive me if I repeat what I have to say. We often need to hear an idea in a number of ways before it is ours. But you need not forgive me if I am wild, colorful, even foolish. All I desire is to have a positive impact upon your thinking. |
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You have chosen a "big medium" for your art. Pardon the oxymoron. I see the opposite of a "big medium" not as a "little medium", for no art is little, but as a "personal medium". A "personal medium" is one where the artist has the power to create his or her work and get it to an audience. You paint a painting. You show it to another person. I sing my daughter a song at bedtime. We have both done the work and then gotten it to an audience. In a "big medium" like animation, the artist usually does not have the personal power either to do the work alone or to get it to its intended audience. Instead, the artist must undertake a journey -- let us call it the "Big Journey" -- which begins with the artist's impulse to create art and ends when the finished art arrives at its audience. So my mission to help you advance your art means helping you know and conquer the challenges of the Big Journey. I am here to teach survival to the artist on his or her Journey, because I have seen too many artists cultivate their talents and abilities with great dedication, and yet know nearly nothing about how to travel the Big Journey. A THREE MILE WALK Let us say you are planning to walk a distance of three miles. You know that an average person can walk three miles in approximately one hour. That is, of course, assuming the distance is not three vertical miles. Three vertical miles happens to be higher than Mount Shasta, Mount Ranier, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, or Pike's Peak. It's just a little higher than the Matterhorn, and not much lower than Mt. McKinley. So now picture both trips, both are three miles in length, but one is a comfortable stroll, and the other is to the top of a giant mountain. There are very few certainties in the entertainment industry, but one of them is this: I can promise that the conditions you face on the Big Journey will be more like climbing to the summit of Mt. McKinley than taking that stroll. Unfortunately, my consistent experience has been that nearly all artists embarking upon the Big Journey focus on cultivating their art. They do not focus on the conditions of the Big Journey, if they think about those challenges at all. I urge you to prepare as if you were climbing three vertical miles, carrying the treasure which is your art. WHO IN THE WORLD IS HARVEY HARRISON? At this point, I hope you are wondering, "Who in the world is Harvey Harrison?" I am an agent, and the way I do it means I am also a professional guide, advisor, and loyal companion to my artists on the Big Journey. I have been described by one of my clients as "an old hippie". When I acknowledged that his description was certainly accurate, he thoughtfully added, "And you kept the best part. You kept the idealism." I appear here as an agent, to describe in dramatic alpine images what lies ahead on your path. I am not a magician. I cannot change the Big Journey into a comfortable stroll. The Big Journey is and will remain a giant mountain to climb, and beware of anyone who tells you otherwise. I am not an insurer of success. There are real risks out there on the Big Journey, and no guarantees of success. In my experience, the best predictor of success is talent supported by personal qualities which I will explore in a minute. What I do is travel the Big Journey with the artist, and help to transport the treasure which is the artist's art. My work falls into three principal areas: planning, selling, and negotiating. But whether you have an agent or not, you must ultimately be responsible for planning, selling, and negotiating. Just as you may have the best doctor in the world, but are still responsible for taking care of your health, so too you may have the best agent in the world, but ultimately you must take care of your career. THE BIG JOURNEY FROM ABOVE Let us now look at the Big Journey from a different perspective. What is it like in the most general possible terms? We leave behind the image of the mountain, and turn to chemistry. The Big Journey winds through a molecular compound made up of two primary elements: art and business. Chemistry teaches that if one element is pulled out of a molecular compound, that compound can collapse, can disappear. In the artist's Big Journey, art and business are an inseparable compound. I am confident of your talent and your dedication to your art. I wish to make you more aware of the business element of the Big Journey. A PLATONIC COMPASS OF THE BIG JOURNEY I love the work of Plato. His central vision is contained in his work "Republic", which is a study of justice and well-being in society and in the individual soul. Plato's ideas are profound and beautiful. They inspired the 20th century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead to describe Western Philosophy as "footnotes to Plato." "Republic" is the centerpiece of all Plato's thought. It is a fascinating read which I enthusiastically recommend. Be warned however, Plato does not like artists. I have always found this to be very peculiar, because his writing is universally acclaimed as some of the most beautiful writing in Western culture. In "Republic", Plato presents his entire vision of how things should be. As with most of his work, it consists primarily of a conversation, and the main figure is Socrates. The presentation builds, the participants listen and ask questions. We have the sense that we are moving to a great revelation. Socrates declares that justice or well-being in society and in the human soul depends ultimately on "the Form of the Good." Everything in Plato's vision emanates from the Form of the Good. The listeners are captivated. They beg Socrates, "What is it? What is the Form of the Good?" He responds that essentially he cannot tell them or the reader! However, Socrates then describes "the divided line" as a way to imagine the Form of the Good. In "Republic", Plato stresses that reality happens on a number of levels simultaneously. The divided line Socrates speaks of identifies four critical levels to reality. I will adapt his four levels from the divided line for our purposes. Please understand that while each level could be the subject of its own presentation, even a college course, I must speak in abbreviated terms. The first level is the level of creative impulses. It is the compelling intrapsychic desire to make art. It includes that feeling of the artwork inside you that wants to find expression. It is raw, vague, dynamic, like lightning streaking across the sky. The second level is the ordinary world. This is where business prevails. This is the level of selling and negotiating, and I promise we will return to both selling and negotiating. The third level is the level of craft and self-evaluating artisanship. It is the discerning voice in the artist. I heard about an exercise conducted at a small studio. There were two groups of participants, the first consisting of writers and artists and others with established creative abilities, the second consisting of less-creative people. Think accountants. The two groups were given identical creative tasks such as, "In three minutes, come up with as many ideas as you can to improve a wristwatch." The first group produced three good ideas. The second, supposedly less-creative group, produced twelve ideas. These included the same three good ideas the first group had, an additional three good ideas, and six not-so-good ideas. There was one difference in the instructions the two groups were given. The creative group was instructed to come up with as many "good" ideas as possible. The so-called non-creative group was not. The third level of our divided line is the voice inside the artist that decides what is "good". The fourth and final level is difficult to characterize exactly. I call it "values", but perhaps the phrase "personal outlook" is more descriptive. It is on this level that we see how the artist's work and life are uniquely individual, and interrelated. It's the level on which you ask, "What kind of person is this?" while at the same time seeking to discover, "What is special about this artist's work?" You consider myriad aspects of the person and their art, including morality, psychology, spirituality, temperament, and personal history. For our purposes, Plato's essential insight was that to achieve your goals fully and deeply, you must have harmony and balance of the four levels described above. From the outset of your Big Journey, I urge you to remember this insight. In my view, the single best preparation for the Big Journey is to attend to your personal harmony or balance among the four levels I have described. Plato laid out these four levels as four segments along a line, the "divided line" of which Socrates spoke. He felt strongly that some levels were higher or more worthy than others. For our purposes, I prefer the image of a navigational compass, with four points of direction on it. They must all be present and in balance for your expedition on the Big Journey. SELLING AND NEGOTIATING Now we come to the business element of the Big Journey's compound. I need to stress selling and negotiating. First you sell, then you negotiate. I will take them in reverse order and start with the simpler: Negotiating. Negotiating means making business arrangements. I believe it is a rich art in its own right, but exploring that belief is beyond the scope of our time here. The most important thing to know about negotiating is simply this: The more you understand about how the business is organized and operates, the more effectively you will negotiate. The studios know in fine detail how their business is organized and operates, and they negotiate very effectively because of this knowledge. Selling is a trickier subject. I would like to tell you about one of my favorite conversations. I started out working with Hanna-Barbera almost twenty years ago. It was a splendid time for me, and I have remained in contact with Joe Barbera. About a year ago, I ran into Joe at a restaurant. It was around the time of the merger between Turner (which then owned Hanna-Barbera), and Time-Warner. Joe asked me, "Do you know how much they valued the Cartoon Network at in the merger?" (The Cartoon Network consisted largely of Hanna-Barbera's library, so the Network's value reflected Hanna-Barbera's value.) I said, "No, Joe, how much?" He replied, "Two billion dollars." I said, "Congratulations." He said, "Thanks." Then he asked me, "You know what the hard part was?" Now, I must freeze the action for a moment, and say a few important things. First, this is one of those moments you dream of. Second, while two billion dollars is a big number, it is eclipsed for me by Joe Barbera's ability to pitch or present creative ideas more beautifully than any person I've ever seen. I have literally gotten out of a sick bed just to see Joe pitch. He is that captivating. Third, one of Hanna-Barbera's many "Hall of Fame" achievements is that, at the time I worked with the company, it produced 80% of the Saturday morning programming for all three networks. I can say confidently that this level of productivity is unlikely to be equalled, let alone exceeded. Finally, I know that Hanna-Barbera has always kept properties which it developed but never sold, to have them available when or if they should be needed. One group consisted entirely of properties that no network executive then in position had ever seen. If I recall correctly, there were approximately 450 of these unexposed properties at any given time. Let us resume the action with all of this in mind. Remember, Joe asked me, "You know what the hard part was?" I said, "No, Joe, what was the hard part?" He replied, "The selling." I was speechless. He said, "It was really difficult to get people to buy those shows. It was really tough." Selling may mean selling entire shows as Hanna-Barbera did, or it may mean assembling and sending out a portfolio. The most important thing to remember about selling is that you are guiding someone to see that they need exactly what you want to provide. Whether you have an agent or not, you must be responsible for planning, selling and negotiating. For the spirit of selling, I like this image: Feel the need to sell like a person who has been underwater too long feels the need to get to the surface. As for the spirit of negotiating, I urge you to think of it as more like selling than like gladiatorial combat. CONCLUSION To summarize: The Big Journey is steep and long. An agent can be a good companion on the Big Journey. In light of all the forces at work on the Big Journey, consider carrying the Platonic compass, to support the achievement of harmony and balance. Plan always for selling and negotiating. Finally, I endorse the advice Bob Dylan is supposed to have given once: "Have an open mind and carry a flashlight." © 1998 HARVEY HARRISON |
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Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 CATALYST LITERARY AND TALENT AGENCY |
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