Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Haley. I'm an actor in Los Angeles and co-founder of Cinematography for Actors. Cinematography for Actors is an online course platform that teaches the technical requirements of film and television performance. This episode is a continuation of our Actors Daily Checklist series. Even though we're giving you great tools for after you get the job, we should also give you some tools to help you get the job. Today we're going to be focusing on casting networks. Pretty much every actor who is working in most markets is using casting networks. I'm going to show you how to use it. Let's get started. This is the casting networks landing page. Casting networks, much like Actors Access, is a very strong tool and a very widely used tool. It is a really good idea to have this from the start of your career, especially and even if you don't have reps. You will be able to submit yourself every day to the same projects that people with reps are submitting themselves. It's also a great tool for background acting, which is a really great place to get some on-set experience. Some of the things we'll be exploring on casting networks today are your own personal profile, the casting billboard itself, and where you can find some cool insights. The place that you will land when you sign in is your profile. It's just kind of a dashboard where you can see everything you've ever uploaded. Once you get reps, they will talk you through how to give them access to your casting networks profile. They will link a profile up and then they will have a separate profile that is you that you still look at and you can still manage. You can see up here on the right hand side, you're able to toggle between your different profiles. I have a personal profile and one for each of my reps and they've chosen which headshots they like to feature. I tend to not mess with it. I let them do what they want on those ends because I do still have my personal profile, but they'll help you get all set up so that they're able to submit you with the tools that they think are best. In my personal one, you can see that I have chosen my things. So let's go ahead and edit this basic info area. My age is 21 here. I'm not actually 21, but we are pretending because I look young. The headshots you decide to display on your profile are a personal preference and a decision you make with your reps. I would say no more than five is a good idea. You don't want to start confusing casting. If they see too much, they're not going to know where to put you. If they see things that aren't specific enough, they're not going to know where to put you. That's definitely a discussion you need to have with your reps to decide exactly what goes on your profile. The order you put those photos in is all up to you. There are lots of things you can do with your photos here. So these are the headshots I have. I feel like there's a lot and it's a little bit messy, so I could definitely clean this area up. If I wanted to rearrange the photos, I would click rearrange photos and these little arrows you can toggle and they'll go up or down, up or down. Save the order that you decide on and then you can also add a photo in here. If you want to delete photos, you can go up to your media bank up here at the top of your profile and everything I've ever submitted is in this media bank. Even if you remove it from your profile, which is kind of a fun little time capsule, I'm going to go ahead and remove this from my profile because I don't look like this anymore. And then those choices are made and that's done. Now that we're in the media bank, I actually have some new headshots. So let's go ahead and upload one of those. Make sure that the headshots you are uploading are good quality, not fuzzy at all because when you zoom in for this thumbnail, you don't want it to look fuzzy. This is what the full photo is going to look like on my profile. It gives me a very nice preview. And then over here, this is the thumbnail. We're going to go ahead and zoom way in on this thumbnail. You don't want to be one of the tiny, tiny faces in the crowd. Your face should take up almost the entire thumbnail. Go ahead and hit finish editing. It asks me which profiles I want to display it on. I want it on my own and my management and my agency. And then hit save. And I'll be able to find that right down here. Down here is your resume. If you don't have anything, don't sweat it. It is not a very important part of this profile. It is also very easy to edit and you also get to choose what you enter. You can put the title or you can put your type of role, the director, the year, if you choose a clip from it, if you choose, and then you can play with the order of things. Very easy to personalize. Underneath your resume is where you will select all of the skills that you have. This area is actually very important. Casting directors like to see what you feel like you are able to do. When you're thinking about adding skills, that can be a little bit overwhelming. What they've done that's really cool is you can go ahead and hit edit. If you want to add a new skill, instead of making you think up things that you think you might be good at, they have a bunch of different options to pick from. If I wanted to talk about my band styles, I will just click this dropdown menu and then there are all these different ideas for what someone might be good at. Make sure you have a look through the skills. It is incredibly helpful that they have that there. Skills are really important to have on your profile because they can really set you apart. Make sure you really look through all of these dropdown menus. Something might pop out that you forgot you're able to do. It saves them a lot of time and it gets you communicating with casting a lot quicker. There's also an area you can add assets, things that you own. This is very important for background. This is where they'll look to see if you have these things. There's also a place for other experience that you find might be helpful or has been helpful or if your reps have asked for it. I've placed that I've been a barista for a very long time in here because my reps asked me for that. Make sure that you're staying on top of your sizes. Make sure that you're updating those sizes every six months or when something changes drastically. The last thing you want to happen is booking something and getting there for a fitting and they have the wrong sizes. You have to get measured again and it will cause a lot of inconvenience for you and for costumes. This is where you'll enter your sizes so that they don't have to be coming to you if you have a fitting and they can't get a hold of you. They can just come to your profile and find your sizes. The websites with the greatest wealth of breakdowns are the ones that most casting directors like using the most. That's going to be Casting Networks and Actors Access. So there's a lot of times that you will see the same breakdowns on those websites because they're trying to get to as many people as possible. You don't have to submit on both websites. They'll see it no matter where you submit from. To find breakdowns you hit Casting Billboard right up here on the left. You can pick different lists that populate for you. All over the world you can choose from unions, roles, types, pay preferences, gender, and then if you would like it can autofill based on your profile. I've found that for me it hasn't been very accurate so I usually go in and just fix everything when I'm in there. They also have this new feature, Saved Searches. When you go in, if you don't like the way it's autofilling based on your profile, you can change everything, filter it, and then if you like what you see that it's bringing down here in the breakdowns you can hit Save the Search and that search will be saved in your Saved Searches up here. The third area inside the Casting Billboard is Submissions. If you tap that you can see every submission you have ever made to any casting director or any project. You can sort by submitted newest to oldest or oldest to newest. Since Casting Networks is so widely used it is very dense. Even if there's a lot to submit to on Casting Networks, I personally have a hard time finding it and sorting through the breakdowns. It's a lot easier on Actors Access and that's what I prefer to do. Everyone has their own preference. It is still important to try to look through what's available on Casting Networks. I submit daily on this website as long as the other websites that I use. So just like Actors Access, I'm coming in in the middle of the day usually and sometimes if I'm feeling really motivated I'll check again at the end to make sure that I'm catching every new breakdown that's coming out before the next day. I'll show you how to do a search and then we'll do a submission so you can see. I'm going to go in and change things. I will select all because I like to travel. I am in Equity and Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA so I'm going to select those. Role types, I'm only looking for principal roles right now and paying, non-paying, it's fine. Either one. This does get really specific so make sure you're looking at project types. I'll do everything. Everything and anything. You can end up on reality TV or a talk show, PSAs, it's all these different options. So if there's something you're not comfortable with like cabaret, you can go ahead and deselect that. You can select your ethnicity here or your ethnic appearance and your age. I'm going to say 20 to 25. Most casting directors like a range of five years but search for whatever you feel like doing. It's up to you. Sorry you have to see this. This looks like it's a good fit for me so I will go ahead and hit the title name and that will take you in and show you the entire breakdown. You can see a synopsis, you can see notes if the director, casting director, wanted to make some notes. You can see the location that it's shooting in. Here are the shoot dates down here on this one. So you can see when the submission is due and you can see the work dates that they're planning. Down on the bottom of the breakdown are the different roles. Ellie looks like they're looking for a lot of different skills from Ellie. A lot of dancing. Submit to role. And then it will tell you if there is requested media. Sometimes they will send the sides through in a link just on the breakdown and they just want everyone to tape. So you'll tape it and then you'll connect it to this breakdown. You can pick your different headshots. You can decide if you want just one. You can choose which one you want to be the cover photo. And then if you want to add some extra ones you can select those. You can also select which media you want to include. So comedy reel. And then if you want to upload these they are requesting extra media, extra headshot, and extra resume in a reel as well as some natural photos. Using this drop down menu you can choose to select from your media bank things you already have or you can upload from your device. And that is a very simple upload. You just browse your files and decide what you're looking for. And then you hit send submission. Are you ready to send? They ask if you're ready. In case it was a mistake we're going to say yes. Send response. I've come into that submission history. I have actually decided that I don't want to audition for Ellie because I can't dance. I'm just going in here and clicking unsubmit. And now it's unsubmitted. If I change my mind and I want to submit again because I'm feeling more confident in my dancing I can come right back to that submission. It will stay even though I unsubmitted it. It's still in that area. Once you have reps you make the personal decision whether you want to continue submitting for yourself. Even though my reps are submitting for me every day if I continue to submit for myself I feel like I'm taking ownership of that and I end up with a lot more work. Up here next to the media bank you can see that there is an area for alerts. Every time you get an alert you can choose to also receive an email. You can see this is where all of my requests for self tapes come in and also where a lot of my callback requests come from and different correspondence with different casting directors and sometimes with my reps. Anytime I get a message from my rep or from casting that also is coming through to my email. You can also get notices from casting networks coming through to your email or coming into your alerts. They actually have a lot of like pretty great helpful tools that they teach you about and some cool interviews and things that can help your career. Another very cool part of this website is insights. These insights have all of your completed media requests, all of the role descriptions, and who they came through. So you can see if you submitted it, you can see if your agents submitted it, and you can see who the casting company was. So you can see if you've auditioned for these casting directors before or if they're new, what they wanted to see before, and whether or not you looked with them. This is the most expensive breakdown website. You can choose from different pricing models. There's the premium model that is $21.66 a month or $259 that is billed yearly. This will include unlimited casting billboard submissions and you can upload as much video and as much photo as you want. They do have the basic plan that's free. You can put two photos up and one video and one audio clip and you will be able to search all of the casting billboard. But if you ever want to submit, you have to upgrade. A lot of people don't pay. Once they have reps, they plan for their reps to do all of their submissions for them. That's great. It's totally just a personal choice. And that's Casting Networks. This has been an episode of Actors Daily Checklist from Cinematography for Actors. 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