Welcome to the Agency!
A very warm welcome to all of our new students and families! As you begin your journey with us, we want to share some vital insights into how the professional industry operates and how we work as your agents to secure the best possible start for your career.
We represent all of the students at the full time school, and we will be in touch with you shortly before the start of term to register your child, and to send you the paperwork we’ll need to represent them. We are a sole agency, which means that students can only be represented by us while they are at SYTS, and not with any other agency.
Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions:
Who we are:
We are an independent company affiliated with the Sylvia Young Theatre School, but operated completely separately. We represent all the full-time students at the school as well as other children not connected to the school in any way. The agency aims to find professional opportunities for your child while they are at the school, but please remember they have been offered a place at the school to train and perfect their skills. Any work that comes along is a bonus, but it’s not the reason they’re at the school. Like any agency, it is not in our power to guarantee work or auditions, as this is the prerogative of casting directors and producers.
Our Strategy:
We understand that parents are deeply invested in their children’s futures, and we are frequently asked how we “strategically plan” a student’s long-term career path during their time at the school. While we appreciate this forward-thinking mindset, the entertainment industry simply does not work on a structured, predictable timeline.
Our agency operates in a fast-paced environment where success is entirely dependent on the specific projects being cast by production companies from day to day. Because of this, career planning can’t be mapped out years in advance, we have to take it one step at a time.
To give our students the absolute best chance of success, we have to prioritise our time and resources primarily on active castings. We focus day to day on reading breakdowns, suggesting our students to casting directors, and securing professional auditions and self tape requests. Because our primary focus is on responding to these casting opportunities, and making suggestions in the short window before they close, we can only respond to non-urgent parental enquiries when we have time to. We kindly ask for your patience, as a delayed reply simply means we are busy fighting to get our students considered for a role.
Submissions:
We’re often asked if we can share lists of projects we have submitted clients for. There are several reasons why we don’t do this; firstly, as a small team, we simply don’t have time – as mentioned above, our priority is pitching clients for roles. Secondly, we make submissions via various channels, there’s not one button we can press to generate a list of submissions, as we still do a lot of suggesting the traditional way, by speaking directly one-to-one with casting directors. Finally, it’s not really of any benefit to go over past roles that clients have been suggested for, but not asked to tape, it’s more productive to concentrate on future opportunities.
It’s the casting director’s prerogative to choose who they see, and they don’t generally give reasons for why they want to see one client and not another. Our goal is to get as many clients as many opportunities as we can – there is no reason for us to overlook a client who might be suitable for a role, at the end of the day we would like to see everyone working!
However we can’t suggest every client for every breakdown – casting directors expect us to keep to the brief we’re given, and to be selective, and it is this selectiveness which has led casting directors to favour our agency over other agencies through the years.
Casting directors tell us that some children’s agencies will submit every single child on their books for every role, seemingly without reading the character breakdown. Flooding them with suggestions makes their work a lot harder than it needs to be, and ultimately, they tell us, they look at suggestions from agencies like ours first, and sometimes ignore bulk suggestions from other agencies altogether.
Improving your child’s opportunities:
We’ve noticed an increase in parents asking how they can personally help improve their child’s chances of booking work. While we love the enthusiasm, answering individual queries can be incredibly time-consuming and often takes our agents away from actual pitching.
The most important thing to understand from day one is that there are no guarantees a student will book a professional job while attending the school. Casting is highly subjective and entirely up to external directors. The agency makes many suggestions to casting directors every day, but it is the casting director who chooses who they want to see. The agents can only suggest, they can’t insist that a child is seen!
However, the single best way you can practically improve your child’s chances is by ensuring their digital industry profiles are flawless, accurate, and completely up to date.
To help us help you, please ensure you manage the following administrative tasks meticulously:
- Keep Tagmin Updated: This is our internal agency database. Please log in regularly to update your child’s profile, paying special attention to languages, accents, and heritage/ethnicity. Casting directors place great importance on casting roles authentically so the more information we have, the more likely it is that we will be able to fit your child to a role.
- Accuracy of Height: Height is incredibly important to casting directors for framing, costume, and continuity. Ensure your child’s height is updated immediately whenever they grow even a fraction of an inch.
- Availability: Parents can add unavailability dates to Tagmin at any time, and those dates will be flagged when we are looking for actors to suggest. You can choose to flag the dates as unavailable, or ask us to check with you instead, if you may be able to rearrange your commitments if the right job comes along. Please add any dates you’re unavailable to Tagmin – even if you’re only unavailable for half a day! It helps us enormously knowing when clients are or are not available. There is nothing worse than securing an appointment for a child, but then having to call the casting director to cancel it because they are unavailable. It makes casting directors very upset and ultimately makes it harder for us to secure appointments for clients in the future.
- Perfecting Spotlight: When setting up or reviewing your child’s entry on Spotlight, make sure to completely fill out the “About Me” section. This is your chance to showcase personality and unique traits. It’s also where you can mention any current projects, for instance if your child is currently appearing in an advertising campaign or TV or theatre show.
- Example of what to write: “Sam is an energetic and focused performer who takes direction incredibly well. Outside of acting, they are an avid skateboarder, hold a green belt in Karate, and enjoy writing short creative stories.”
- Media and Video Clips: We do not actively encourage uploading non-professional work, student showreels, or self-taped monologues to Spotlight entries. These can actually work against you. If we have submitted your child for a certain role, and the casting director watches a reel on Spotlight which is dissimilar to the role they are casting, they may pass without giving them the opportunity to tape.
- However, if your child is extremely skilled in a specific discipline like Dance or Sports, we highly encourage uploading a short, high-quality 30-second clip demonstrating that skill.
- Approval Process: Please note that any video, audio, or headshot files added to Spotlight must be approved by one of our agents before they go live to the industry – you can email a link to info@sylviayoungagency.com and we will take a look.
Open casting calls: There are a lot of projects advertised on social media these days; some are legitimate projects, some are scams, some are flights of fantasy on the part of the poster. Please contact us before applying for anything you see advertised. Very often these are projects that we are already talking to casting about, and we may have another way of getting your child considered. Alternatively, we may have some concerns about the project and would not advise that our clients get involved in it. Sometimes we may advise that clients should apply via the open casting call, if that’s the best or only way to get seen. But please contact one of the agents first so that we can advise.
What commission do you take?
The agency is not funded from school fees and is a separate business to the school, so the agency’s income is solely from commission on work it secures its clients.
There is no joining fee or membership fee to be represented by the agency. However we do require that all students supply headshot photos and take an entry in Spotlight (currently £129.60 per year), in order that we can suggest them to casting directors The agency arranges for a photographer to come in and photograph students for a reduced fee (currently around £60), or you can arrange your own session privately if you prefer.
Commission plus VAT at the current rate will be paid as follows:
- 15% on all monies earned in respect of theatre fees
- 15% on all monies earned in respect of BBC in-house production fees
- 22.5% on commercials, modelling, fashion shows, photographic work, ELT audio and video, animations and pop videos
- 20% on all other TV/Film/Acting work
- 10% on all recording deals and contracts
Fees are paid electronically to the child’s bank account, and we are required to report payments to HMRC
Thank you for reading this, and please make sure that you have completed as much information as possible on Tagmin and on Spotlight.
We are excited to see what the year ahead brings!