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Todd Munson Mark AlbrechtSnackboy's Words of Wisdom |
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june 1998 guest Scott James online casting  As the 20th century draws to a close and the 21st rapidly approaches, the catch phrase that you can't seem to get away from is online. If you happen to live and work in the Hollywood community where if you are not on the cutting edge, you are yesterday's news, being Online is all the more important. When it comes to actors, leave it to a Nebraskan to come up with the cutting edge way to keep in the Hollywood loop. Scott James, originally from Lincoln, found a way to put his computer savvy, love of acting and entrepreneurship into one really cool project.
As an aspiring actor, Scott felt that there had to be a better way to make himself known to casting directors and producers than to send endless headshots and resumes which usually ended up in a pile with 300-500 others. With this in mind Scott, who had previously done website work for the Mark & Brian show and the Los Angeles Dodgers, set to the task of gathering a number of casting directors and producers together and really finding out how they make their decisions, the criteria they use and what tools would be most helpful to them. The result of this endeavor was an online service known as "Castnet".
Castnet is an online service that allows actors to connect with casting directors and producers via personal pages that are available at the click of a mouse. Where it used to take a casting director vast amounts of time to look through piles and piles of headshots, Castnet now allows criteria to be entered and searches to be done all within a matter of minutes. Searches can be done based on almost any key words, from gender to ethnicity, to hair color, to fighting skills. Scott says the user friendly versatility of Castnet has made it the tool of choice for Hollywood. Whereas actors have been traditionally limited to the "headshot" or "composite" that they sent out, they can now have almost limitless versatility by having a presence online. Scott said that Castnet offers sites from the simple headshot and resume to the more advanced ones with quicktime movies of an actor's performance, audio bytes of voice-over work and full portfolio's of pictures.
Scott said that being an actor himself helped him realize that a majority of parts are strictly chosen based on a "look" and it seemed pointless and uneconomical to continue to send costly headshots when it was the wrong "look" to begin with. The great thing about Castnet is that it is free to casting directors and producers and starts at $100/year for actors to have a page. If you look at the convenience for no cost to those making the choices and the inexpensive price to the actor, it only makes sense that this is truly the future of casting. Scott's advice is that if you want to keep up with the times than you'd better have a presence on the web. For more inf. you can email: scotty@castnet.com or call (213) 964-4900 and ask for Scott. --Craig Cleaver So, you're tired of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. Let's face it, it's not what you know, it's WHO you know, so why don't you come get to know us? The Hollywood Salon is movers and shakers, celebs and wanna-be celebs getting together over a beer and a memory of a faraway place. We're not all Nebraskans - some of us just like to hang out with Nebraskans - but we're all part of the magic of Hollywood. Join us at 7:30 on the SECOND Monday of every month at the Culver Hotel, 9400 Culver Blvd. (@ Washington Blvd.) in Culver City, California 90232. Just ten bucks Just TEN bucks...includes one drink and a raffle ticket for fabulous Nebraska prizes. (Ten bucks too much? volunteer some time to the NCC and get in free.) There is a fully stocked bar, with cocktails, draft beers and good wines. ĘThere is also a great restaurant at the hotel serving wonderful appetizers and full meals (you can eat early in the lobby/bar or bring your food up into the Salon conference room). There's a VIP guest almost every month--check out the list of recent ones and see who you've been missing. You'll have a chance to share your news and needs in our Show and Tell. But the best part is all the friends you'll meet--old friends and new friends. Most of them will know where you come from. And all of them are bigwigs (or tomorrow's bigwigs) in Hollywood. |