There Is No “t” In My Surname.

Dig the glossy finish, rounded edges, and obnoxious design!

And by “Casting Directors”, I mean Jon Dorfman & Lucy Cummins. They cast (while also performing other duties) Gingerbreed and they had a few very nice things to add to my previous post. Jon’s advice on emailing your headshot:

I do have a damn sexy rubenesque forehead. Lucy’s not internet-specific advice:

That last note I find particularly compelling. There’s a temptation to be terse and “businesslike” so as not to look like you’re grovelling for a part, am I right?

I’ve given a fair amount of advice to other actors regarding the internet. I figured it’d be nice to put it all in one place.

Posting Your Resume Online

• ActorsAccess is by far the easiest way to put your resume online, as well as to send it to other people. Be sure to create a custom link
  suitable for emailing.
• BackStage costs money. But I’ve gotten more unexpected “Hey, I found your resumé; want to audition for me?” emails by being on there than I have anywhere else.
• If you want to be extra classy, you can buy a domain name and build a site yourself (or pay someone…). Arishost, for example, is pretty darn cheap. One advantage of having your own site is that you’ll get the last email address you’ll ever need: firstname@fullname.com. I may be the only person who is enthusiastic about this.

Finding Casting Calls

• ActorsAccess will, upon request, regularly email you casting calls to your specifications. Downside is: to submit yourself for a role costs $2 (or $46 for a year of unlimited submissions). I found the $2 surcharge to be a hurdle that kept me from even wanting to look at the casting calls; since I got on their unlimited plan, I’ve submitted myself for at least one thing per week.
• Backstage.com provides lots of casting calls, particularly stage stuff. Like ActorsAccess, you can have them email you with ones appropriate to you. Downsides: a complicated interface that will frustrate you. And, unlike actorsaccess, they do charge.
• Mandy.com is free and easy to use. It’s mostly shoestring-budget stuff: student and independent films.
• NYCCasting is a Yahoo! Group (i.e. a mailing list) that posts a number of NYC-centric casting calls every day. Free to join, free to submit. Half the emails you get from them are advertisments, however.

Email

• Use an email address with your full name in it. Better yet, put your whole name in there. When casting directors are sorting through mounds of emails, you want them to see your name as often as possible. The more they see your name, the more they’re likely to remember your name, and the more they’re likely to remember you.
• Particularly if you don’t want to give up your obscure email address, be sure to enter your name in whatever email program you’re using. This applies to webmail (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), too. When someone receives an email from someone who’s gone to the trouble of filling in this field, they’ll see the sender’s name next to the sender’s email address, like so:
  “Lauri Best” <lcrewxkxk@axis.net.au>

  If it’s not filled in, they just see the email address:
  <lcrewxkxk@axis.net.au>

  Casting director: “Who is lcrewxkxk@axis.net.au? Have I met them? If I just delete this email, nobody will ever know.” Click. “Hmm. I wonder if that talented Ms. Best will ever call me back?” Seriously, though, I’m certain this stuff makes a difference — and it’s easy to do — but a lot of people don’t bother.

• Try not to delete email. There’s rarely a good reason for it, and you will inevitably delete something you’ll need later. This isn’t 1998 any more; your mailbox is bigger than three megabytes. Organize it into folders or with labels, but don’t delete it unless A. you know you’re not going to need the info, or B. the email contains a large picture or video file and therefore takes up too much room.
• Be sure to check your spam folder every so often! Important emails get miscategorized as spam all the time. I know an actor who almost missed a callback because the casting dude’s email got devoured by his spam filter. No lie! They say his ghost haunts these very halls!
• When you reply to a casting call via email, it’s always a good idea to paste the entire casting call under your reply. That way, when they respond to your email where you said you think you’d make a good “Malachi”, you can scroll down to immediately recall what project they’re talking about.
• When you email your headshot/resume to someone, you want to make it as easy as possible for them. Personally, I just say “take a look at my headshot/resume at {my website}” and I make sure that if/when they click the link to my website, the headshot and resume are the first thing they see. No animations, no music, just what they came to see. (Alternatively, and just as easily, you can send them the link to your actorsaccess resume.)
• If you do find yourself emailing your headshot itself, make sure they’re useable. Do not email the huge file your headshot photographer gave you! This will take forever for the casting director to download and open (which will make them dislike you). Get a friend who knows something about image editing to make you a nice, screen-appropriate, well-compressed jpeg. (Thanks, Jon!)

Other Stuff

• Googling everybody you interact with can often reveal interesting things about them (like past projects they’ve done, what other people say working with them is like, etc.). Remember to use quotation marks—searching for, say,
  “Essie Acosta”

  will generally give you better results than just
  Essie Acosta

• Google Web Alerts are a lazy researcher’s best friend. If there’s anything or anyone you want to keep tabs on, this tool is for you. Set up a web alert on your own name, and any time someone mentions you on the web, Google will email you. By setting up Alerts for projects I’ve done, I found that one student film was going to be playing at a film festival in Paris, and another was going to be sold on DVD. Alerts are also great for keeping track of exs and other nemeses. (I’m told.)
• One thing I’ve been doing lately is suggesting to independent directors that they put their films on YouTube and/or Google Video. Films on these services can be embedded into your website if you have one, and links to them can be easily emailed. Plus, it’s just more publicity for everyone. So slyly suggest it to them.