PARK CITY — If you want to act in movies, it might help to go see a few now and then.

If you want your music to be heard in movies, you'd want to see — or listen in on — a few flicks, maybe during the Sundance Film Festival.

As of Friday, song broker Stacey Richards had seen about a dozen films in the festival and also attended a panel discussion on the role of music in movies. Besides that, the Salt Lake resident and owner of Spot On Songs has been meeting or bumping into a lot of connected industry people in and around Main Street.

"It's really been exciting and exhilarating," Richards said. "It's funny, I'll meet somebody who knows somebody … who will help me further what I'm doing."

Like a lot of people at the festival each year, Richards is there to learn more about her own business and to figure out who the players are. Her goal is to help her career while helping musicians get their work into TV, film and video game productions.

"There's just thousands of people trying to get their music placed," she said. Richards wants the musicians to concentrate on being creative while she peddles their songs. "They're never good at representing themselves to these other avenues."

For Richards, who is married to California Guitar Trio's Paul Richards, the festival is a lot about the music she's hearing and the people in films whose job it is to choose which songs fit with their movies. She watches the credits roll and notes who the films' music supervisors are so she can contact them later.

Previous to calling herself a song broker, Richards compiled music for CDs that people use for workouts like kick boxing and yoga. But she was ready for a change.

"I love movies and I love music," she said. "It's actually a really natural progression for me. I've got some amazing talent just in our back yard here."

She's diving into a highly competitive field, with a lot more people like Richards doing the same thing from the movie capital — and music central — in the Los Angeles area. But with Utah becoming more known nationally as a mini Hollywood, "I think there will be a lot of opportunity here," she added.

The festival is a good start early in her career as a song broker. Time will tell whether all the time she's been spending in Park City will pay off.

"For me, it's about seeing a lot of films in the festival," kind of like having her finger on "the pulse," she said. One movie that struck her musically is the documentary "Afghan Star," which follows four contestants through three months of singing and performing during Afghanistan's equivalent of American Idol.

"There's so much great music out there and there's so much need for placing great music," Richards said. "I feel confident there will be a continued need to get more and more music exposed to these directors."

E-mail: saspeckman@yahoo.com