Can you get in trouble for this?

How much time is wasted by getting a headshot and resume of someone you don't need? Sheesh.

Look at it this way: they're someone you don't need -- right now. So send them a note telling them No, but can I keep you on file?

And then save time next time by already having an idea of who's available for next time.
 
GenJerDan said:
How much time is wasted by getting a headshot and resume of someone you don't need? Sheesh.

Look at it this way: they're someone you don't need -- right now. So send them a note telling them No, but can I keep you on file?

And then save time next time by already having an idea of who's available for next time.
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you don't even need to send them a note. if i sent a polite rejection letter to every headshot i passed on, i'd spend an entire day stuffing envelopes. there is an understanding here that extends from the old "don't call us, we'll call you" adage.
 
How much time is wasted? When you get 30 different people, and none of them is even close, that is quite a bit of time- considering you still have another hundred or so that are close because they took the time to read before sending. If it were only one or two, that would be different. And as far as maybe using them down the road, that is fine. But to worry about something that might happen down the road, when you have a project in front of you with a closing deadline... again, that is an incredible waste of time and resources. I suppose you would even go as far as to audition them knowing they were totally wrong?
 
i never hold open casting calls. with closed auditions all you have to do post a casting notice, sort through all the headshots and resumes that come in, list the ones you like, and have you're casting director schedule them 5 to 10 minutes apart. you won't waste nearly as much time and you get to see exactly who you want to see.
 
GenJerDan said:
How much time is wasted by getting a headshot and resume of someone you don't need? Sheesh.
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you tell me how much time is wasted after getting 50 emails a day for several weeks even after the casting is over with headshots and half of them not even the right gender after you specified the gender clearly. besides, that's not the point of the thread. i asked if it's bad or wrong to include a disclaimer saying basically "no transvestites" without catching a backlash.
 
The 'what the hell were they thinking' pile is always hugeaceous, compared to the 'bring em in to read' pile. It's just par for the course. For the gods' sakes, have actors send their material to a PO box, unless you want eighty-five-year-old Maori guys to continue sending their trying-for-blonde-teenage-cheerleader headshots to your home address.

A few years back, a friend of mine made a set of trestle shelves out of the columns of not-even-the-right-age-range-or-gender headshots he kept getting. At least they're a standardized size, which makes them stackable...

And 'no transvestites' isn't really even worth your while, because most of the trannys I've met (working on a friend's documentary) seem convinced that they're convincing enough to fool you into auditioning them, no matter what your call says. It's unlikely to filter anyone out, although it's probably unlikely to earn you any hate mail, either - all the trannys I've met, just shrug off people who don't get their act or persona; no hard feelings seem to be involved.

Until you reach the level where your casting is managed by a casting department working with your talent's representation, the two hundred far-out headshots for every one worth pursuing, is just something you put up with.
 
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Sad Max said:
It's always nice to know exactly when the maelstrom's about to hit.

Casting for Spyfest?
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no. no spyfest for me. all my time and resources go into paying the bills and developing low budget features. i'm sure i'll host then next dvxfest's videos again but no, i thought we were making a 'BSG' fan connection. "maelstrom" is the upcoming episode where all starbuck-centric hell breaks loose.
 
Oh...fan of the original BSG, but never quite managed to get into the new one. A lot of my friends are wild about it, though. And of course there's that beauty shot of the new Galactica gracing the cover of the Lightwave V9.0 software manual...

I'd like to chat with you some time about your feature development work...I'm always on the lookout to meet new creative people, and maybe buried in my skill set there's something that you might find useful.
 
GenJerDan said:
How much time is wasted by getting a headshot and resume of someone you don't need? Sheesh.

Look at it this way: they're someone you don't need -- right now. So send them a note telling them No, but can I keep you on file?

And then save time next time by already having an idea of who's available for next time.
Click to expand...

I would say if you've narrowed down your choices for a character between 3 or 4 people and you really like all of them, then it's ok to send an email to them. But that's as far as I would take it. Some of the people that come in to audition are just... well, not good.
 
haha, i can kinda relate to this. Im 18 and use the myspace film classifieds to post cast/crew calls for my shorts. I always get a few interesting people each time i post a new one. I asked for people between the age of 18-21 and got a lady well past 40 asking for the part. Can't blame anyone for trying though, the worst i can say is.. "no." I guess this is very common.
 
I've had to deal with similar problems. I'll be very clear on the physical aspects of the role and 40% of the head shots are incredibly wrong.

For my last project, Saturday Night Special, we had 2,500 actors audition for 3 roles. I lived in Seattle and could fly to LA for casting for only 5 days, so I had to reduce the headshots to the top 200 if I wanted to be able to hold auditions, callbacks and final callbacks in that 5 day period.

I used www.breakdownexpress.com and hired a pre-production P.A. to elminate the obviously bogus applicants. I told the P.A. "Give them the benefit of the doubt, but if they don't meet the following physical criteria, delete them."

That reduced the number to 1,500 which was far more workable. My next criteria was training. I want actors who have seriously studied the craft of acting. Their resumes will demonstrate where they were trained, the variety of acting techniques they've been exposed to and what type of experience they have. If their resume only lists 3-4 student films and they never studied acting, I'm not going to risk calling them to an audition. If they've done Mamet in college, even if it was a bad production of Mamet, at least they've worked with demanding material. If they've trained at The Actors Studio or have a background in Meisner then they've had exposure to the theory of acting.

Unfortunately, I can't trust a PA to make those kinds of distinctions so I had no choice but to make the next cut by myself...but, since I had clearly identified the criteria the time went by fast. I'm not looking at headshots at all...just resumes...and I'm looking for key things on the resume which makes the process go faster. I could spend less than 20 seconds on a resume and make a decision.

2 days later I'd reduced 1,500 head shots to 500.

The final cut is hard. I wish I could have called in all 500 because all 500 were qualified. I have no choice but to eliminate 300 more actors.

I raised my criteria on the resumes. Now, if they didn't train at a Top Five acting school or have major credits on their resume, they were gone. This reduced the number to 300. That was close enough, because I knew several wouldn't show up to the audition.

www.breakdownexpress.com makes it easy to send emails to all applying actors, so I quickly sent a polite rejection letter to the 2,200 who didn't make the cut. Then, I crafted a "request for audition" email and sent that to the other 300. The website includes scheduling software, so the actors could tell me what time slots worked best for them and I could quickly pop them into the schedule.

From the website I sent another notification. Actors confirmed their audition slot. The website saves this information in a printable format that includes each day's schedule as well as a mini-headshot of the actor auditioning for any given time slot.

I booked a small, cheap facility in Los Angeles that cost about $100.00 a day. I booked a plane ticket and a cheap hotel room. All of that was done from my apartment in Seattle.

It was a total of 2 weeks of work. But, boy was it worth it. It cost me NOTHING. And the results are fantastic. The actors I cast are all top-notch actors who are about to break in Hollywood.
 
keep it cordial and consistent

keep it cordial and consistent

Make a decision based on what you need, send the rest 'form' thank you letters. Everyone gets the same treatment, cold and corprate as it may seem. Save your warmth for the set.

alex
 
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