Net Results /The industry agrees that it will one day take its business online, but the question is how soon and with what service.
By Rob Kendt.Casting may be the most human part of any TV or filmmaking process, with the actor meeting face-to-face with directors, casting directors and producers.
But how well might this process play in cyberspace? Can the click of a mouse replace the click that happens between artists in a casting room? Increasingly, the casting and agenting industries that match talent with roles are being asked to consider their future in terms of ISDNs, search engines and page views. At least two competing online services -- Castnet and the Link -- are currently up and running, offering casting directors searchable databases of agencies` client rosters, providing agents the daily casting "breakdowns" of available roles and giving actors the chance to submit themselves and get "sides" (script excerpts for auditions) faxed to them through an online service provider.
In an exclusive Back Stage West/Drama-Logue poll, casting directors and agents say they are using these online services -- however skeptically or grudgingly. Of the casting directors polled, 84% said they are on the Internet at their workplace, and on average, they estimate they`re doing 19.4% of their casting business there. Agents, only 78% of whom are on the Internet, nevertheless say they`re doing slightly more of their business on the Internet, 20.7%. Most of those polled see the future of their business on the Internet as inevitable, estimating on average that the changeover is a little more than two years away. Forty-four percent of those polled agree that online casting promises to streamline their jobs, while a total of 15% -- most of them casting directors -- complain that it only promises to make their jobs more complicated.
Currently, casting directors release a list of roles not already packaged or precast to services that then distribute the information to talent reps. The industry leader, and de facto monopoly on this service for the past 27 years, is Breakdown Services, Ltd., which delivers to agents around 100 theatrical and commercial breakdowns daily by messenger and now over the Internet where they pay $42 a week for the information.
Agents then submit clients` photos and résumés by mail or messenger, and follow up with pitch calls as they try to land their clients auditions or meetings. Even at its fastest, this protocol can take a full business day.
Online casting services can speed up that process to mere minutes: A casting director could release a breakdown online, and an agent could almost immediately respond with electronic submissions of head shots and résumés.
"I`ve done last-minute jobs and specifically asked agents to submit through an online casting service," says commercial casting director Sheila Manning. "I got a breakdown filled with very strange parts that I need to cast tomorrow with pictures. How else am I going to get that in time?"
But Manning laments that "not enough agents are on the service." This is echoed on the other side by agents who lament that not enough casting directors currently receive electronic submission.
"We`re in a little catch-22 right now," explains Karen Stuart, executive director of the Association of Talent Agents. "A lot of casting directors and agents are upgrading their equipment and learning the Internet, but the casting directors are saying there aren`t enough agents on the other end, and my members are saying there aren`t enough casting directors looking at it."
But since casting directors have the power over hiring, they are in many ways the key to any change in this process. As ATA chief Stuart admits, "We could sign up every client at every agency, and if there`s nobody on the receiving end, it`s worthless."
While some have taken sides in the competition between Castnet and the Link, most casting directors and agents are in a wait-and-see mode, looking at both services to see which they like best -- and to see where the chips fall.
The Link, with its nearly exclusive access to the casting breakdowns and its impressive roster of talent from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences` venerable Players Directory, would seem to have the leading edge in the market. But Castnet, a division of the Entertainment Internet Inc., founded by Jay Sloatman and Kathryn Thyne, is aggressively marketing itself as the online standard for the dawning age of computer casting.
Both services allow agents to submit head shots and résumés electronically and to update clients` résumés online any time a new credit is added, and both allow casting directors to do talent searches of the entire database.
The industry is keeping abreast of developments, with the casting departments at studios such as Disney and Warner Bros. fully online testing out both services. But casting directors still prefer to look at head shots.
Rick Millikan, who casts "The X-Files" and "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," says, "My assistants have [an online casting system], but I feel like by the time they`ve turned it on and I`ve gone through it with them, I could have been through a stack of pictures."
On the other hand, says Millikan, "I`m sure 10 years from now I`ll look back and say, `I can`t believe we ever had head shots.`"
Rob Kendt is the editor of Back Stage West/Drama-Logue.
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