LA Actors Online: 7 Places To Be Or Not To Be
If you’re an actor in Los Angeles in 2009 and you haven’t started marketing yourself via the Internet it’s time to wake up. We’re living in the future. If you’re new to LA, want to learn the commercial market, yet you’re not following LemonLime on Twitter, you’re out of the loop. If you’re sipping a Regular Black Forest, waiting to be discovered at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Sunset and Fairfax, look to your left. That extremely good looking hipster squinting under his jauntily tilted fedora at the screen on his MacBook might just have a leg up on you. It’s time to stop being an Ottoman.
But, beware! In a town where 400,000 actors move here per year, replacing the 400,000 who gave up and moved away, starry-eyed idealism is a renewable resource ready to be mined by innumerable companies that exist solely to exchange your savings for empty promises. Beyond just the social media sphere, you must market yourself online, but it would be nice to be able to afford a Jumbo Jack when you finish registering for websites. This article will help you spend your time and money effectively.
7. CAZT (NOT TO BE)
Cazt is a business catering to casting directors that makes money off aspiring actors on the side. When casting subscribes to the service, Cazt puts actors’ audition tapes online for easy review. The problem is many sites compete for dominance in this category and Cazt is at the bottom of the stack. Save your money.
Cazt is unique in a way that may sway your vote if you have control issues: They allow actors to review their auditions for a fee. It’s hard enough to admit the important audition we just had is now in the past and therefore out of our hands. Why pay someone to replay the tape we’re already struggling to stop replaying in our minds? Cash would be better spent on therapy around the fact that success as an actor is not proportionate to one’s value as a human being.
6. BACKSTAGE WEST / ROSS REPORTS (NOT TO BE)
Back Stage is a well respected source for casting notices and acting information in New York. The list of Los Angeles casting notices available on Back Stage is nowhere near as comprehensive as those on the sites listed in the top spots on this list. If you’d actually like to have the time and gas money to haul your ’91 Stanza to the auditions you’ve created through your self-promotional efforts I suggest you focus on websites further down this list.
In regards to casting information, the value of Back Stage is debatable. Back Stage recently bought Ross Reports, a company that distributes boundless information on projects in production. Their website is revamped with scads of advice articles, lists of current pilots and more. But access to casting notices comes at a prohibitive cost. If you aren’t the type to leave a mole un-whacked, go ahead and register here. It’s not a rip off. It’s just redundant. Meanwhile, read their articles for free.
5. CASTING FRONTIER (TO BE)
We reach the first website on our list which is indispensable. Unlike Cazt, Casting Frontier is winning the battle to provide web service to casting directors. They completely eliminate the need for paper head shots and resumes, by simply giving every actor a barcode. The future is now.
A few years ago Casting Frontier started putting down roots in LA. These days you’d be hard pressed to attend a commercial audition without being asked for your Casting Frontier barcode. Put aside the post-apocalyptic visions that being identified by a number bring to mind, and go register for a free profile. Also, while some of the heavier hitters on this list may be the best choice for emailing your materials to prospective representation, the multimedia profiles don’t look too shabby.
4. NOWCASTING (TO BE)
Another mandatory website, while it contains an adequate smattering of casting notices to submit yourself on, the real value here is the NowSeeking section where you can submit yourself to agencies and management companies looking for new talent. As with the other sites, you can email your profile and link people to your page. Never underestimate the cost of the postage you’ll be saving submitting yourself to representation online. A bonus perk you’ll appreciate down the road is that casting accepts auditions uploaded electronically through NowCasting by your representation.
At $10 a month until you secure representation, whereby membership is free, it’s worth it unless you’re dead broke, which if you’re a newly arrived actor may not be such a farfetched set of circumstances.
3. LA CASTING (TO BE)
Even more important is LA Casting. This is the website every commercial agent in Los Angeles uses to submit their clients for commercial auditions. The previously mentioned sites try to compete, but LA Casting has been winning this battle for commercial casting notices for years. The downside is most of these notices are only visible to agents, so you can only submit yourself on some of them.
But, when you get a commercial agent they will require you to have a profile on LA Casting, so make a free one as soon as possible. You can start saving up money today as well, since the cost to add and change photos to LA Casting is pricier than a night out at Katsuya. Although a quite expensive service that only truly delivers once you’ve gotten representation, membership on this site is a forward thinking necessity.
2. IMDB (TO BE)
The only reason IMDB isn’t first on this list, is because of one debilitating caveat: You must have credits to be on IMDB. For that, you’re going to need to use the site ranked #1. If you’ve never experienced this wonder of creation, a vast database of film and television information, go search for your name now and see if an entry already exists for you. If you’ve done film and TV, yet don’t have an entry, search for the projects you’ve appeared in and go through the confusing process of adding a credit, so you too are represented in the Rolodex Of Power.
One doesn’t need to mention that IMDB’s Star Meter was referenced on last week’s Melrose Place to drive home the point that the somewhat arbitrary ranking system is taken seriously by the general populace. A measurement of the amount of times a name has been recently searched, one’s stature on this leader board is taken seriously by some of those who make decisions on your career path.
Even more important than the Star Meter, is simply the status of your IMDB entry page. If you have the extra money to upload head shots, create an online resume that lists non-IMDB recognized credits, and take creative license with the Trivia, Bio, and Other Works sections, by all means do so. When you or your agent submits you for projects, production or casting often looks you up on IMDB before bringing you in, so make sure it shows everything you’ve done. If someone’s about to call you in for a meeting and they see you have no IMDB page, you may very well get passed over since it looks like your career doesn’t even exist.
1. BREAKDOWN SERVICES / ACTORS ACCESS (TO BE)
Finally we arrive at the behemoth of the list, Breakdown Services. Breakdowns are casting notices. The vast majority of breakdowns for television and film casting in the Los Angeles area are released on Breakdown Services every day. Theatrical agents all over town, from Abrams Artists to Wyckoff and Assoc. are up bright and early at 10am submitting their actors electronically on that very website. And some of those Breakdowns are available to you via ActorsAccess.com.
Every theatrical casting notice (that casting directors are willing to allow you to see) is sitting on ActorsAccess.com right now. I’m not saying you could be submitting yourself for Twilight 3 within the hour, but a show on MTV or the E! Network is not a stretch of the imagination. You could be guest starring on I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant before the week is out! And if you think you’re better than a Spike TV Promo, suck it up. Even Brandon Routh was on MTV’s Undressed before he was cast as Superman. Get on there and get it poppin’.
There’s a heck of a lot more to say about using Actors Access, enough that you should stay tuned for the next article in which I spell out exactly how to use it most effectively. The point is it’s time to stop hanging out at Madame Tussaud’s taking pictures with that incredibly lifelike statue of Samuel L Jackson to fool your friends in middle America. Acting success requires hard work plus opportunity, and there’s no better place to start putting that work in than online.
