In an industry based on whom you know and how you market yourself, everyone from college grads to professionals looking to make a career shift to top executives seeking fresh talent all benefit from good old-fashioned networking opportunities.

The Power Hour is one initiative that aims to supply industry novices with relationship management and self-promotion skills, as well as all-important access to industry contacts.

A career development forum for Canadian Women in Communications, Power Hour is the brainchild of Michelle Nadon, senior manager, regulatory affairs and policy strategy, Bell Globemedia; Lally Rementilla, CFO, service provider networks, Lucent Technologies; and Dennie Theodore, proposal systems, Atlantis Systems International.

Launched in February 2001, the Power Hour – a misnomer, really, as it encompasses several hours – convenes one evening bimonthly at Toronto’s Windsor Arms Hotel and is attended by 150 to 200 junior, senior and mid-level members of the local entertainment industry. Each meeting features guest speakers addressing a range of issues in the broadcast, production and technology sectors. Recent speakers include Mary Powers, VP of communications and promotion at CHUM Television, and Elizabeth Duffy-MacLean, group VP, regulatory affairs and policy strategy for Bell Globemedia.

‘We’re saying, ‘So you’ve got a good CV, but are you well-rounded? Are you aware of industry protocols and the industry as a whole, or only your area?” Nadon says. ‘We’re trying to give the big picture.’

Some who have contemplated a career shift within the industry have benefited from the Power Hour. For example, during one session, an employee at a production company in transition met a senior executive at a major entertainment company – a meeting facilitated by Power Hour organizers – and subsequently landed a new job.

Power Hour welcomes male industry members as well, although more than 80% of participants so far have been women.

The organizers’ challenge is to continually remind senior industry members of the recruiting possibilities Power Hour offers.

Rementilla devised the Power Lunch as a giveaway at each meeting. The organizers will arrange a luncheon for the randomly chosen winner with the industry figure of their choice. The organizers also help the winner plan his or her business strategy for the luncheon.

Pushing a rock up a hill

Steve Lucas, writer/producer on the Barna-Alper/North Bend Film Company cop series Blue Murder, has to this day retained working relationships with contacts he made years ago at various industry institutions. Throughout his career he has worked with the likes of Peter Raymont, Bob Lang, John Walker and Laszlo Barna. ‘They were all guys I met at the beginning,’ Lucas points out.

Lucas began writing and producing documentaries at the National Film Board, CBC and TVOntario, making his initial contacts. He pitched a young director named Sturla Gunnarsson on a doc about the anguish of being fired, and the result, After the Axe, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1983. ‘I’ve been trying to make a comeback ever since,’ Lucas jokes.

He kept working and developing as a writer in the documentary stream, keeping his bigger projects ready on the back burner.

‘I was able to make something of a living at it,’ he says. ‘And I always had a big rock I was pushing up the hill that was a feature film, miniseries or series and if it went I would shift off the bread and butter and go on to that big project.’

Establishing a career on the creative side of the biz and keeping it thriving requires long-term commitment, and after several years Lucas enjoyed his biggest successes with the 1991 feature Diplomatic Immunity (another collaboration with Gunnarsson), the 1997 mini Major Crime, which he wrote and exec produced, and Blue Murder.

While Lucas points to the various public institutions as the best places to have launched his career, with the growth of private production in this country, he now cites the Canadian Film Centre as the best springboard for filmmakers.

Agents of career direction

The creative folks often have the benefit of an agent to help guide them through the dark forest of the industry.

‘The client-agent relationship is a business partnership that takes into account analysis of all aspects of the marketplace and includes the nurturing of a long and prosperous career,’ says Brent Jordan Sherman of Toronto agency The Characters.

The cyclical nature of the production industry allows agents to somewhat predict the general pattern of work, but nonetheless Sherman advises that creative people approach the business with some long-term awareness.

From the agent’s end, he adds, it is important to ensure earning potential is maximized to help see one through the slow periods that inevitably arise. And what to do in those downtimes, which have been particularly prevalent post strike threats and post Sept. 11?

‘A TV writer should write a new spec script,’ Sherman says. ‘A director should consider updating his demo reel and consider writing or finding new material. Slow periods are also the perfect time to foster new relationships, to expand your database and ‘meet and greet’ people outside your inner work circle.’