What's a good casting website?

A

Angelshare1

Well-known member
Is starnow.com any good? I'm looking for something that's free to me (the guy doing the casting). And of course looking for something that has lots of traffic. I'm in MN so anything that's more CA or NY specific wouldn't be of much use to me. There's always Craigslist but I haven't had the greatest results with that and was wondering if there was something more industry specific.

Thanks!
 
Well the majority of casting sites are a rip off for the actors. You could post on actors access and aim towards people in New York or Los Angeles. If you're shooting a good project actors will travel for the role. I know I would. And if you can't pay then why not use craigslist actors. You are gonna get people who WANT to work on your project that way and thats not a bad thing. Good luck. You can check these for free.

The casting director.com
poptent.com
talentdb.com
talent6.com

There full of amatuer actors though. LA Casting and Actors Access are the big ones on the West.
 
my personal recommendation is NOT to do your casting online. simply put, experience suggests that the sort of actor who picks up a copy of backstage west, reads the notices and physically mails in headshots and resumes is much more professional and serious-minded about their craft than the sort of person who goes to a web site, fills in their info once, than just has to scroll thru the notices clicking on the ones they want to electronically submit to. I look at it as a level of resistance that weeds out undesirables.

i've done it online in the past and the "no show" rate was 50%. but sticking with a simple ad in backstage west dropped the "no shows" to nearly nothing.
 
That Casting Director.com thing is pretty cool. They have good actors listed too. Some bad but all sites have good and bad actors. You guys should check out www.withoutabox.com I just found it and it's really cool. Great for those people trying to beef up credits and get exposure. I also just found this DVX thing too. Very cool. Any advice on finding an agent if I'm not union?
 
I recently produced a project and YES! The no show rate was ridiculous. This town is really full of unprofessional actors and wanna be actors. No wonder nepotism is so popular. I'd rather hire a family member or a friend any day. At least they'll show. Party on people! great site.
 
Holy crap! Some guy actually called me in for an audition (I told my douche bag boss I had a dentist appointment) and when I drove 23 miles it ended up being one of those multi level marketing deals. Seriously I had to laugh it off. No more auditions off CL. Friggen gas money man.
 
Yeah it sucks. Especially when ya rent an audition space for 100 bucks a day and the no-show rate is about 50%. I didn't want to have auditions at my house because that just screams unprofessional. O well, we all learn from past mistakes. That's how we get better I guess.

Speaking of unprofessional some actress just walked into my agency and said, "I'm looking for representation" Now my boss says, "NO WALK INS!" I guess that rule doesn't apply if you have huge fake boobs! Good for her...I guess.
 
ScottyBreal! said:
if anyone is on a "Casting site" they aren't REAL professionals.
Click to expand...
That isn't quite accurate. You'd be surprised at some of the people you will find on some of the casting sites. Granted, you're not going to find the heavy hitters, but you will find PROFESSIONAL actors with impressive credits. Yes, you'll also find a lot of wannabes too. But to say there aren't professionals on some of the casting sites is inaccurate.
 
I should have been more specific. The sites mentioned, Talent 6, Castingdirector.com and the other ones, are not full of beginners. That's what I was commenting about. They are just fairly new so of course there isn't going to be much to look for. Out of all the sites, even the big ones, the casting director one, in my opinion is far more professional and people seen to like it. Plus they really work for the actors. The other sites don't. My ex is on it. That's what I meant to say. If you scour around Now Casting you'll find incomplete profiles, fake profiles, etc. Yes there are more people. I think they all have their fair share of Professional actors and non-professional actors. LA casting is only good because it's the only one for commercials. The fees are crap and they should feel ashamed to charge people what they charge. Talent6 is crap because they flat out lie to their actors. Now Casting is really good if you want to build a reel and stuff like that. Out of all of them, and this is going to sound crazy, Craigslist was the best out of all of them and th most reliabe. Kinda crazy but true.
 
In LA, there are ONLY two sites that you NEED and a total of four sites that are actually worth it.

The essential two:
-LACasting-The majority of commercial casting directors post breakdowns here.
-Actorsaccess-best for film/tv

The optional two:
-Nowcasting-Great for student and independent films for building your reel and resume.
-Backstage-Some student films and good for stage/theatre stuff.

In NY
The major film/tv casting director post mainly on Breakdownservices/Actorsaccess.com

NYCastings is better for commercials.

Backstage is for student films, musicals and plays.

Craigslist is considered really risky and bottom of the barrel.

These sites also have national listings but I do not know how they will work for you.
 
Casting sites

Casting sites

They're all garbage.

LA Casting: Ridiculous fees and it's all garbage. I hope they go out of business for being such pricks.

Actors Access: Why bother? Most of the postings are advertisements for workshops. The breakdowns are old and the chances of getting seen are slim to none. I should know, I submit to the real breakdown services and AA is all the left over crap.

Now Casting: Nothing worth paying 12 bucks a month for.

Exploretalent: Garbage and the guy who owns it ran a porn company. They pretend to have celebrity endorsements.

Talent 6: Garbage and not worth your time. I feel for the actors that joined. They think they'll actually get discovered. A shame.

Talent Hunter: Crap and they steal breakdowns from other sites and post as their own then charge actors twice the fee.

Talentopia: Seriously? What the hell kind of a name is that? I give them a year tops.

Craigslist: Full of hookers (was the most reliable though, weird)



I work at an agency. Casting Directors ARE NOT USING THE ABOVE WEBSITES! These sites lie to actors. La casting is one thing but the others are shi* and you should only join a site if you're getting something out of it. The above sites have projects listed that you can easily produce yourself. Try the Jefferey Gund list. You can get the same crap on his site for free. If you don't have a decent agent that has industry credits, you have no shot at getting decent auditions and paying crazy fees for a casting site won't do it. You're better off takin gall that money, buying a camera and shoooting your own projects. Most people just do what everyone else does and they wonder why they never make it.
 
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Man, makes me happy that I live in Chicago. We have awesome actors coming out of the woodwork. Especially young talent that hasn't made the leap to NewYork or LA who are getting their bumps and bruises on the theatre circuit and veteran folks who have no desire to exist in the LA or NY circuit.

I'm still a good two years away from doing anything that would require any casting (right now it's strictly web-based stuff with friends and family), but I think my dad and step mom both being equity actors here in Chicago is going to be a big help when it comes time to cast.

Is there anywhere in California that's less movie and more theatre? People can argue this point, I suppose, but I think there's a lot more good actors on stage than there are good actors trying to get parts in movies. To me, theatre actors are in it for the acting, the performance; people acting to be in movies or television, I believe, can sometimes be suspect.
 
You're smarter then 90% of the people here. I never heard an actor say, "I'm not ready for casting yet" My agency would take you based on that alone. Yeah doing your own thing, casting and writing your own projects is the way to go. Write shorts and submit to festivals. Indy stuff is really taking over studio stuff. In my opinion anyway but my opinion doesn't matter nor does anyone's because this town has no rules. You can be successful in thousands of different ways. Keep on keeping on buddy and good luck.

Chicago is AWESOME by the way. The most fun I've ever had in a city. I had to go with y boss because he likes having someone around to do **** for him (he's a loser) and one of our clients was shooting a movie downtown. I don't remember the street but it was a huge mall that was made of all glass. You could see inside the stores from the outside. Really cool city and very clean.
 
16 imdb credits... 13 of them are legit and I got 75% off craigslist. But yeah a ton of crap too.
 
I've used actor's access on the acting side, as well as NY Castings and Mandy. I've gotten jobs from all three. I'm not too many years into my acting career (I got a very late start), so most work has been micro-indie, and mostly unpaid, although I have done a few paid jobs for The Onion and others. Overall I've found these sites to be quite useful to me at my skill and aspiration levels. I am almost always involved in one or more films at any given time, and have enjoyed about a 30% casting-to-audition ratio. I recognize that the "real", full-time pros, doing fully paid work do not appear on the "Actor's Access" branch of Breakdown Services, but I am quite satisfied with what I've been able to accomplish by this means in the 3 1/2 years I've been actively pursuing it while I make my real living elsewhere (as a recording engineer, and increasingly video shooter/editor, etc.).

I may be delusional, but I believe that when I get my skills closer to pro level (which I believe I have a pretty good sense of due to my many years of work with professional/famous actors in recording sessions), I think I can start to make inroads into more high level work. And I think I'm getting pretty close to that point, actually. But in the meantime, these sites have served me very well, and kept me quite actively learning as I go.

On the casting side, while I wasn't technically the casting director, I was heavily involved in the casting of a feature I co-wrote and acted in last fall, and we used both NYCasting (accidentally - I had asked the director to use NYCastings - with an 's' - and he got it wrong) and Actors Access. It was a low budget thing, with actors being paid about $100 a day or so. We had a huge response from both sites, several hundred in all, with AA being about twice the size of NYCasting (NYCastings would have been considerably larger I think, but it was too late to go there once I found out the mistake). We auditioned about 100 people, and found very good actors for all key roles. I disagreed with some of the director's choices, but of course it was his prerogative to make the final call.

So on both sides of the table, I've found the casting website experience to be very satisfactory. I will be producing my own short film in the near future, as writer/director, and will definitely be using both Breakdown Express (the casting side of AA) and NYCastings for it. I have every confidence that they will be very effective in providing me with a good talent pool to choose from, especially since I plan to pay the actors. I suspect the latter alone will at least double the number of applicants, and probably halve the number of no-shows.

IMO, for people on DVXuser, which is largely populated by low budget micro-indie types, Actors Access and other reputable sites like NYCastings (which is where I got my acting jobs for The Onion, btw) are very effective tools, particularly if you live in an area with a large talent pool like NY or LA.
 
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actors access is so convoluted. I can't figure out how to post a casting call there...

I just finished lacasting and the website is really easy to navigate. I did Mandy, but now you all got me worried about it. What are the dangers involved with it?

oh another question. is 100 dollars a day considered lo/no/deferred, or is that full pay?
 
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The casting side of actors access is called "Breakdown Express":

http://www.breakdownexpress.com

You can go there, sign up and post a casting call pretty easily.

As an actor I've had no problem with Mandy casting here in NYC. Been cast many times, and everyone has been a straight shooter so far.

$100/day is decidedly "low" pay. IMO anything below about $500/day would be...
 
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