Thursday, February 09, 2017

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Criminal Charges Against 5 Casting Workshops Brought by LA City Attorney

The Los Angeles City Attorney's office has filed criminal misdemeanor charges against the operators of five casting workshops for allegedly charging actors for auditions in violation of the state's Talent Scam Prevention Act of 2009. If convicted, each of the 28 defendants – including 18 local casting directors - could face up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.
SAG-AFTRA said it supports the prosecutions and will continue to work with the city. Preying on the hopes and dreams of artists is one of the oldest scams in Hollywood, said Duncan Crabtree Ireland, the union's chief operating officer and general counsel. We thank City Attorney Mike Feuer for enforcing the law and taking action to hold people accountable when they violate the law and take advantage of vulnerable people's dreams. We will continue to work with the City Attorney's Office to help protect our members and future members

(from L.A. City Attorney Busts Five Casting Workshops For Charging For Auditions).

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

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Pilot Season Casting Challenges

...for all of its importance, the process of casting pilots - for those actors who aren’t among the very small number well known enough to simply be offered a show outright - is, ironically, so strained and grueling that it doesn’t afford actors the opportunity to be cast in the show best suited to them, nor the producers a position of confidence that they have hired the best ensemble available.
...who gets cast can have little to do with acting ability anyway. Rather, because there are so many pilots competing for the same pool of talent, timing and competition issues can frustratingly undermine an actor getting cast in the right role. Studios and networks always demand that any actor going in to test for a show sign a "test deal," which says they can't accept another deal within a five- to ten-day period following their test; such contracts are required so an actor won’t be able to use the after-the-fact leverage of having beaten out the competition in order to negotiate a better deal for themselves. Most networks and studios will not test someone if they are being held by another pilot under one of these deals, therefore these actors are kept off the market even though they might not get the pilot that is tying them up. Meanwhile, their compensation for being held in this way is zero

(from Vulture).

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

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Law Enforcement Crack Down on Central Casting

In a cease-and-desist letter sent Wednesday to Central Casting's office in Burbank, the two agencies [California state labor commissioner and the Los Angeles city attorney] said that the company's practices do not comply with the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act, which went into effect last year. Similar letters were sent to 13 other, much smaller Los Angeles companies. Undercover agents from the City Attorney's Office found that Central Casting charges actors $25 for photo services regardless of whether they secure work through the company. Officials cited a 2008 news report claiming that Central Casting registers roughly 500 background actors per week [about $50,000.00 in registration fees a month, 500 x 25 x 4]

Officials gave the company 10 days to end the practice or else face civil or criminal charges (from Backstage). My current list of background casting companies in LA includes 31 and the vast majority require fees to be paid to register with them. The Krekorian act in part rewrote California Labor Code Section 1702.1 to say:

No person shall own, operate, or act in the capacity of an advance-fee talent representation service...who provides or offers to provide...one or more of the following services described below, provided that the person charges or receives a fee from or on behalf of an artist for photographs...

and begins the list of services with Procuring or attempting to procure an employment opportunity or an engagement as an artist.

Update June 1, 2011: Rumor is Central Casting has stopped charging a registration fee, but I do not have confirmation.

Update June 12, 2011: Central Casting has said they have stopped charging a photo fee.

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Monday, May 16, 2011

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2011 Pilot Season Role Breakdown

James J. Jones of Premier Talent Group has done a great analysis of the roles cast in the pilots of the 2011 pilot season. Here are some excerpts (or you can read the whole PDF):

87% of all Pilots filed with AFTRA jurisdiction
21.2% of series regular's roles went to bonafide star names
49.5% of series regulars went to former series regulars of major shows
27.3% of series regular roles went to heavy working actors with numerous series recurring roles and/or series regular roles of shows that did not last.
2.0% of series regular roles went to true developmental actors.

Thanks to Sara J. Stuckey for pointing this report out to me.

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Thursday, April 08, 2010

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Thrill of Booking

It's not a hard and fast truth, but the realities of a new job are sometimes a let-down as the complication and stress compete with the excitement. I find it important to hold on to the "I just booked!" joy and try to celebrate and remember it.

Sometimes I think the best part about booking an on-camera job is the initial phone call and the days leading up to the shoot, and that the rest is all downhill

(from Stacey Jackson).

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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Casting Finds the Right Actor

How (casting workshops, auditions, etc.) is secondary.

...the central requirement of my job as a casting director is that I find talent. Where I find this talent, via what means, or in what location is secondary to the fact that my job depends on my finding it

(from Middleton Casting blog).

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Friday, October 23, 2009

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Fox Changing Pilot Casting Process

Fox is changing the way it selects actors for pilots.
The network is phasing out traditional in-person network tests, in which finalists for each role audition for network executives who choose a winner.
Taking a page from the feature world, where screen tests are prevalent in casting a role, Fox is opting for taped network tests. After passing live tests for the producing studios, actors' performances are being filmed and sent to the network for judging.
Taped tests were embraced by new Fox entertainment chairman Peter Rice, who came to the network in March from the feature world, having headed Fox Searchlight.
He wanted to standardize the tests, [Marcia] Shulman said.
That led to Fox giving studios guidelines on what it's looking for in a test: actors should be off-book and free to move around, the test should include close-ups, etc.
Although employed across the board so far this season, the tests-on-tape rule allows for exceptions

(from backstage.com).

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

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One Role and Zeitgeist

Ann Hu discusses the intersection of type, who you are, the current Zeitgeist and an actor's 'one role' propelling them forward and building an audience.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

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Turning Down Work Can Be Good

Ashley Avis has a post about when ...it's smarter to turn down work for the possibility of better work.

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Monday, February 09, 2009

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Successful Auditions

I believe that actors have to find a way to enjoy themselves whether they book the job or not. We have to find ways to enjoy auditions, and as hard as it is, as counter intuitive as it is, we just can't make success or failure about booking the job. We have to make success or failure about enjoying ourselves. We have to enjoy the process of creating the character, preparing the audition, and then giving the people on the other side of the desk whatever our take on the character is. We absolutely cannot go in there and try to give them what we think they want. The way we stand out, and the way we enjoy it whether we are hired or not, is to take the material, prepare it, and find some way to make it our own

(from WWdN: In Exile).

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Friday, January 23, 2009

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Broadway 'West Side' Cast Maria from YouTube

Arthur Laurents needed a Maria for his upcoming Broadway revival of "West Side Story." The 91-year-old director, who wrote the libretto for the legendary 1957 musical, found her on YouTube.
Josefina Scaglione was an Argentine stage actress working in Buenos Aires. She spoke English with a rich Spanish accent, was unknown to American audiences and was exactly what Mr. Laurents had been searching for

(from The Wall Street Journal). You can read about video and social media on one of my other blogs.

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

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Create Projects Yourself

To all the actors and writers out there, you have to get over the idea that someone else is going to promote you. This is an old school Hollywood relic of an idea that has to go. It's time to find your own audience and connect with them directly.
You are the only one who owns your brand and you are the only one who can make real connections with it. This isn't an easy idea to fully embrace. We are ingrained with the arcane and stupid idea that we just need to be discovered or seen by the right people and our careers will suddenly be awakened. Get that load of crap out of your heads right now

(from tubefilter.tv). Some of my ideas about making a web series are on my blog Details.

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

To Audition or Not

Any project can compensate you in any of three ways (in no particular order of importance):
  1. money
  2. artistic experience/growth (e.g., it means working with someone great, it stretches you in a good way, etc.)
  3. career building (e.g., it is better than everything already on your resume, impresses the public, etc.)
If it does two of those three (well enough to make up for the inconveniences, opportunity costs and hardships of the audition and playing the role), audition. If not, don't.

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Tuesday, April 08, 2008

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Casting 'Actors' vs Characters

When I'm hiring people for a show, I know what I need and want.
And that is ALL I'm looking for.
When it comes to people who appear on-screen, I almost never need an actor.
I need a homeless man with a Harvard education. I need a mother of three who is accused of murder. I need a hapless hero with red hair. I need a villain who's willing to kill kittens and eat lard.
So, while you are trying to sell me an actor, I'm not paying much attention to you, because I have a show to get on - and I need characters.
Which means ... your product should be a character.
You may have the range to do anything we throw at you ... but we'll never know that unless you get on the soundstage with us.
(from Bob Fraser's MySpace blog).

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Monday, March 24, 2008

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Calling Services

For extra work, many actors hire a calling service to simplify tracking down work. There is some information about calling services in LA on backgroundbeat.com. I don't know how reliable the information is; caveat actor.

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Monday, November 26, 2007

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Actor Market

As actors, a lot of our job is to find our next job/project; we spend our careers in the labor market searching for jobs. Al Roth, a professor in Harvard's Department of Economics, gave a talk at google last month that was an overview of the field of market design called Market Failure and Market Design; it focused on labor markets.

He speaks of things like "stable matches" and "thin markets" and other fun econ stuff. A stable match is when both the hiring firm (producer/production company) and the worker (actor) would mutually prefer to be matched to each other. That seems to describe the roles actors should be booking.

Some of his examples, like an endocrinologist who likely fits in an endocrinology department and would apply for a position in a predictable way at a predictable time, don't perfectly reflect the realities an actor who might be bookable for two (or more) very different parts at any time (e.g., Liz Stauber played two notably different roles in movies that were in theatres at the same time [Ally Hayden in T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous and Debbie Barlow in Three Kings]).

I'm mulling how Professor Roth's talk may apply to or inform the daily routine of submitting oneself, or courting the most ideal representative for one's own unique career.

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Thursday, November 08, 2007

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Ethnic Minorities Cast More

Following a fifteen year trend, non-Caucasian performers made incremental gains over the past two years, although mostly represented in supporting roles, according to the latest casting data collected and analyzed by Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 2005 and 2006. Casting data for women and senior performers has remained relatively unchanged
(from SAG's website).

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

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Acting for Free vs. Acting for Money

A friend asked about how to pursue acting, and specifically asked, among other things, about acting for money verses acting for free. This is what I wrote:
Working for free for some is always acceptable since acting is for them more avocation than vocation. If one wants to make a living, I'd recommend, once you have some credits that may not have paid on a resume, only accept work that compensates in some way: Like all professions, eventually one must get paid for one's work if one plans to make a living at it. Doctors take 10 years to become doctors after college. Actor's should expect the same kind of investment of time to become established.
Anyone have any other thoughts? Leave a comment.

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

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How to Find Extra Work

This list of extra casting directors and background casting companies is based on a list by Carol Grant Casting and posted to the Hollywood Happy Hour email list. I've tried to verify/correct the phone numbers online and add a few casting agencies myself. As always, be careful and exercise your own due diligence; caveat actor: Again, be vigilant; caveat actor.

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Monday, February 05, 2007

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Casting Isn't Personal

I had lunch with a family of friends a few weeks ago. Two of the kids are actors. The mom told this wonderful story about how she explained casting to her the oldest of the actor kids, when he started feeling let down about not being cast (because, of course, early in kid actors' lives, most don't even realize there's a difference between auditioning and booking, since it's all a chance to play make-believe). She said that she put a deck of cards face down on the table and asked her son to select one. He did. Why did you pick that one? she asked. I had to make a choice, and that's the one I picked. She said, Good. That's casting
(from The Actors Voice).

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