by Rob Kozlowski and Carrie L. Kaufman
December 4, 1998
Castnet.com Brings Agents, Casting Directors Online
Another online casting service has put their oar in the water. But this one might have an outboard motor hiding in the bottom of the boat and may go farther than some of the other internet casting services. Then again, it might find some rough going on the choppy seas of change.
Castnet.com, an LA-based internet casting service, has exclusive relationships with over 260 casting directors—including five in Chicago. It also has signed seven Chicago agents: Harrise Davidson, Linda Jack Talent, Aria, Shirley Hamilton, A-Plus, Baker & Rowley and Big Mouth Talent.
Other web sites have come along for actors to post headshots and resumes but none have cultivated relationships with casting directors and agents before.
The site, located at http://www.Castnet.com, is split up into two components, one for casting directors and agents and one for actors. It is not a public web site. When you sign up as an actor or agent or casting director you are given a distinct user name and password to enter your area of the web site.
The process is pretty simple. Casting directors post breakdowns for projects onto Castnet.com. Agents, who have their own distinct secure access, can look at all those breakdowns. They, in turn, can electronically submit their talent back to the casting director. No messengers. No waiting.
On the other side, casting directors can enter a breakdown for a talent search and a series of headshots comes up. They can then click on the headshot and the resume of that actor and the headshot or a 1-minute demo appears.
This isn’t only for film and television. Shakespeare Rep has signed up with Castnet.com to cast their shows, according to Bob Mohler, Castnet.com’s director of sales and marketing. Second City has signed up to showcase their performers. Castnet.com links to Second City’s website so agents and casting directors can see the photos, demo reels and resumes of the talent on Second City’s stages.
Actors can do more than just put their headshots and resumes on the web. They can send internet postcards to member agents and casting directors, who can then store them electronically. So if you’re opening at Next Theatre next week, you can send a postcard to Alderman or Brody, Tenner, Paskal and they can, theoretically, save that information directly into their calendars.
Every single word in an actor’s resume is searchable. This can be highly useful for casting directors who have to do last minute casting. There is in fact a page devoted to testimonials from casting directors who needed to fill casting spots for episodes of television shows that had to shoot that very evening.
Castnet.com gears its usage capabilities only towards CSA/CCDA (in other words, bonafide and accredited) casting directors. Your headshot and resume are on a secure site that is only available to them.
The drawback of all this is that agents cannot submit actors electronically unless those actors are on the system. And actors have to pay to be on the system. The potential is there, then, for agents to become so comfortable with electronic submissions that they won’t submit any actors who aren’t on some online system. Then, essentially, actors will be paying to have their agents represent them.
Indeed, says Mohler, "There have been some situations in Los Angeles where the casting director said ‘it’s just too late, I can only take electronic submissions.’"
That is part of why Diane Herro Sanford decided against having CED sign up with Castnet.com.
"I don’t want to be in the position of forcing [actors] to do this," Sanford said. "If they want to sign up, it should be their choice."
Sanford isn’t the only apprehensive one. While many Chicago agencies have signed with the company, some, such as Geddes and Stewart, are conspicuously absent from Castnet.com’s list.
While Sanford feels that online services can be of value in saving time to get pictures and resumes to casting directors in Chicago and other cities, "When they take the place of agents talking to casting directors, that’s a big problem.
"I don’t think you can truly sell your talent by faxing a picture over the internet. I think I can best represent my talent if I talk about them."
Mohler says that Castnet.com takes the legal right to work very seriously and does not encourage agents or casting directors to stop taking paper headshots and resumes. Nor do they encourage agents and casting directors to stop talking to each other. Mohler points out, though, that agents often "suggest" their clients pay money to be listed in a headshot directory or subscribe to various trade publications. Rightly or wrongly, actors often act on these suggestions out of fear that if they don’t, the agent will not think that they are serious and will not send them out.
"An agent doesn’t necessarily require you to have headshots, but it’s very difficult for them to do their job if you don’t have headshots," says Mohler. Detractors point out that agents currently shoulder the financial burden of delivering headshots and resumes to casting directors. With Castnet.com, the actor shoulders that burden. The only costs an actor might save by going electronic are on headshot and resume duplication. But as long as some agents and casting directors are still using paper, actors will still have to have multiple headshots and resumes.
Mohler points out that script sides are free with Castnet.com. That is a big deal in LA, where everybody is so spread out getting sides faxed or sent by messenger can get somewhat expensive.
Chicago’s Jane Alderman says she is excited by the potential of Castnet.com and their mission to become as common a tool to casting directors, actors and agents as the phone and fax machine. First, though, she admits she needs to become more comfortable with just turning the computer on.
For actors to become members, Castnet.com offers anywhere from a $99.95 annual fee for having your headshot and resume posted to $254.95 for three headshots and a 1-minute video clip, along with audio and video demo reels, although Mohler has said those prices may change. Castnet.com is planning to post streaming video on the web, so that a director in LA, for instance, can hold live auditions with anyone in the world. That technology is at least a year away and probably more like 5-10 years before the technology is accessible for everyday use. For now, casting directors can download a 1-minute video demo, which is now easier with the emergence of 56K modems and more powerful, capable machines. The quality is not perfect, but it provides a service for actors that is rarely seen on the Web.
As Richard Horgan, Castnet.com’s Chief Information Officer, explains, the concept of Castnet.com was started in 1988 as an idea by Frank Zappa. While he was sitting on a couch with Jay Sloatman, Zappa mentioned how cool it would be if casting directors, agents and actors were linked electronically. So, according to Horgan, "From that conversation on the couch with Frank Zappa, his [Sloatman’s] mind started. He started with video digitizing boards, then on to the CD ROMS, kind of like a mad scientist in the laboratory, he tried all this stuff."
When the internet introduced the world to the concept of the World Wide Web in 1992 to little fanfare, Sloatman saw the key to electronically linking Hollywood. In 1994 he bought an internet service provider and started building the network that went online as a beta test to a limited number of agents and casting directors in October, 1996. Castnet.com went 100 percent online in August, 1997.
In Chicago where Castnet.com has just started opening up shop, there aren’t enough actors in the system yet to become as useful a tool as casting directors would like. Alderman was recently at the Castnet.com offices in LA, trying out the system. She tried to do a search for a 14-year-old boy in Illinois for a role on Early Edition. Only one boy came up, and he was 25. And while Brody, Tenner, Paskal has the breakdowns for Cupid currently on Castnet.com, Micki Paskal admits they haven’t even started using the system.
But the Castnet.com staff isn’t deterred. Besides Mohler, who worked for Alderman for a short time, seven Castnet.com staff members are Chicago expatriates, including Rick LaFond, Chris Holloway, Tim Griffin, Bruno Oliver and Michael Dunn. They’re determined to get their old stomping grounds using new technology.
Getting Chicagoans up to speed, however, is going to take time and patience. Mohler says many agents and casting directors in LA have ISDN lines that hook them right into the internet at lightning quick pace. For those who still go online through analogue phone lines, the lightning is more like a slow sunset.
Signing on from PerformInk with a 33K modem, we had no trouble logging on to the main menus for agents, casting directors or actors. Even photos came up pretty quickly. At one point, our criteria found over 1,000 photos, which came up at thumbnail sizes in packets of 20 in about a minute. Individual photos took no time either. We did have trouble navigating through some of the areas. In order to get back to the first page and switch from the casting director to the actor area, for instance, we had to reload the Castnet.com address. There was no link on the main sub-menus back to the welcome page....
Alderman does advise that a service like Castnet.com will not replace the current method of casting. She notes that the artistic part of casting must always exist and that the internet will serve as a useful tool for speeding up the process.
As Castnet.com continues to grow, Horgan advises to look out for CrewNet and LocationNet, which will be debuting within a year or so as part of the Entertainment Internet Company that recently purchased them, making the whole company the centerpiece of the entertainment business on the internet. Like Horgan says, "When one of our clients moves offices, we want them to say, ‘I need my phone, I need my fax machine and I need Castnet.com.’"
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