Saw an interesting Audition notice recently on Cynopsis, take a look below.
A production company is looking for a Host to lead an animal show. The ideal candidate must have a dynamic personality and sense of humor, be willing travel extensively and have some on-camera reporting experience. Applicants need to email contact information, photo, available video clips and job experience
The stringent policy stems from Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
leaders increasing concern over the issue of “fi-core,” under which actors resign
their SAG membership and withhold the dues spent by SAG on political activities
but can still work on union jobs.
SAG director Todd Amorde stated to Variety, “Individuals who make the choice to quit their union cannot expect to be allowed back in without the union asking some questions about why they quit and what sort of work they were doing,”. “Making
the decision to resign affects not just the member who resigns but our entire
union membership and our collective ability to enforce existing contracts and
to organize more SAG covered work.
The Screen Actors Guild stated members who have resigned before June 13th can
apply for reinstatement under the guild’s less-stringent reinstatement process
but must apply to do so by the end of year.
Arrived Wednesday night in Chicago, and had a wonderful dinner on Rush Street
at Carmines with Chicago’s respected casting director, David O’Connor.
David has been casting in Chicago for the past 17 years and runs his casting
office as a producer. Without question, the most successful casting director
between NY and Los Angeles. With so little TV and film production in Chicago,
O’Connor Casting is busy every day casting several commercials every day! Additionally
with his alliances with casting offices in NY and LA, he has been using video
conferencing to speed the casting process.
With additional staff that has just joined him, watch as he starts casting
network and film studio work for the wonderful talented actors in Chicago.
The Screen Actors Guild will launch iActor, a free online casting directory for members, this spring
SAG members who are dues-current will be able to upload headshots, resumes, video clips and audio clips to create individual profiles searchable by casting professionals.
A SAG rep said no specific date has been set for the launch, but members are being asked to go online and upload their resumes, headshots and reels to help get the site ready for casting directors.
Robert David Hall (”CSI”), chairman of the iActor Task Force told Variety, “As Screen Actors Guild members and actors, we need every advantage we can get.” The directory “will become as strong as we make it, so member participation is crucial.”
Take a look at the press
release on the Screen Actors Guild web site for more info.
My colleague’s blog at TVI Actors Studio, Susan Sleepers “Pick a Little Talk a Lot” has an interesting post about pilots that have been green lit and most probably will be cast and shot in NY.
So what does an Emmy Award Winning Casting Director (for Comedy Television Casting) do for fun?
Prominent casting director Deborah Barylski is directing a wonderful little play called “The Sapling” written by Ojai playwright Stephen Bauer. The theme of the short plays center around the theme “Saving Christmas…One Story at a Time” is at Theatre 150 in Ojai, California.
Over the last three years, there has been a war involving the supremacy over casting notices for aspiring actors. In 1960 the late Ira Eaker, founder of Backstage (with Allen Zwerdling), had a lock on the New York City auditions. The newspaper quickly became the prime source of casting and audition information for aspiring New York performers. On the West Coast, the Brody family created,“ Drama Logue”, similar to BackStage but with a Film/TV slant on auditions.
Prior to the popularity of online casting notices, the Brody family sold their newspaper to the parent company of Backstage, VNU, a European conglomerate with deep pockets. VNU also owns the Hollywood Reporter, Nielson Ratings, Adweek, Billboard, to name a few.
Fast track to the mid 90’s, numerous online casting companies came and went.’ One of the largest companies out the gate was IAM.com , funded by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners and the Palo Alto, Ca. Venture capital firm, Sierra Ventures. Even with TV commercials on the 72nd Annual Academy Awards telecast as national advertising spots that were aired on MTV and the Superbowl, the company floundered in their attempt to make a presence with “working actors”.
To make a very long story short, two companies appear to have the lucrative online casting notices sewn up: Breakdown Services and LAcasting.com. Breakdown Services founder, Gary March, who since the 1971 has been extremely successful in being the go-between for casting directors and producers, talent agents and managers. Breakdown Services became synonymous with legitimate auditions for actors in New York and Los Angeles. Backstage and Dramalogue have the low paying, deferred paying and student films. Meaning they provide the projects agents would not deal with. In addition, San Francisco casting director and brilliant entrepreneur Beau Bonneau created “LACasting.com,” which arrived in Los Angeles and took the city by storm. LACasting became a workable and reliable method for agents to submit the actors they represent electronically.
While LAcasting.com has apparently won over the commercial talent agents in LA, Gary March’s “Breakdown Services” continues to reign the world of film, TV and theatre auditions. Meanwhile, New York talent agents have not been won over with Beau’s services. New York agents continue to use the tried and true way of working and selling using the telephone and email, a much simpler and comfortable way for the town to work.
Where did Backstage go wrong? While they may be down, they may not be out.The publishers have added some brilliant new executives to bring the brand back, National Editor-in-Chief: Jamie Painter Young and innovative and aggresive Charles Weiss, National Advertising Director. It seems to have lost the hearts and eyes of aspiring actors in America. Actors now click to Breakdown services web site and LACasting.com
I will frequently post with my opinions of the online casting business.
Here is something interesting I read;
Musician turned actress Q’orianka Kilcher was forced to give up her career as a street performer in Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade when her karaoke equipment was stolen from her car. The break-in inadvertently kick started her acting career!
The actress, who stars as Pocahontas opposite Colin Farrell in new movie The New World, used to make as much as $1000 a-night singing nursery rhymes and songs on the Third Street Promenade.
When her equipment was stolen, fans rallied round to help her find the culprit - and called on local newspaper the Los Angeles Times to help.
The actress recalls, “I had a huge fan base and they contacted the LA Times.”
Her karaoke equipment was never found but the story interested a William Morris talent agent and he suggested she consider an acting career.
That led to her first role as a choir member in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
There is an excellent artcle in todays on the CBS Soap “Guidling Light” and their podcast that is avaiable on the web. Rob Decina who cast the Guiding Light and teaches a daytime acting class at TVI called me about this weeks ago, and it seems that the show is picking up new audiences as they use this new technology.
New ‘Guiding Light’ Podcasts
Aim for a Younger Audience
By VAUHINI VARA
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 18, 2005
As its audience shrinks, “Guiding Light” is making a sales pitch to a new generation of viewers: If you can’t spend an hour watching a soap opera every afternoon, how about listening to a shorter version on your iPod during the morning commute?
Audio versions of each episode can now be accessed for free from CBS’s Web site. Fans can listen to a show over the Internet, or download it to their PCs or a digital music player such as Apple Inc.’s iPod. A spokeswoman for the show said the podcast has been downloaded about 14,000 times a week since it launched in September. It also appears in podcast directories from Yahoo Inc. and Apple’s iTunes.
Take a look at the entire article in the Wall Street Journal.
“With the possible exception of “appeared on TV’s Law & Order ,” it’s the most common phrase you’ll find in a theater program: “Member of Actors’ Equity.”
“Connecticut has one of the highest concentrations of so-called “regional theaters” in the country: the Yale Rep, the Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed and Seven Angels, to name a few. These are professional theaters that generally originate their own productions, hiring professional actors and stage managers. Connecticut also has a host of “presentation houses” such as the Shubert, the Bushnell and the Chevrolet (formerly the Oakdale), which host national tours of Broadway hits. Then there are what Equity calls “small professional theaters” like the River Rep (now looking for a new location after 19 years at the Ivoryton Playhouse), which want the benefits of Equity membership but can barely afford them, so must work under special “letters of agreement.” ”
excellent article written by Christopher Arnott for The New Haven Advocate.
