Below is Step 4 in My 10 Steps To Start Your Acting Career in Los Angeles – For International Students
Step 4 is as straightforward as it sounds. Now that you have your headshot and resume together, it’s time to show them to the world by signing up on casting websites – also called Breakdown Services.
LA Casting
This is the site I have been using the most. It costs about $15/month. Take your time and fill out everything. There are pages and pages to fill out. It might take a couple of hours. It’s worth it.
When you are done, you can choose to only show roles that are fit for you. If you have filled in everything correctly, roles not fit for you will be weeded out. This is great because it is time consuming to go through the casting notices every day. If you receive casting notices that don’t really fit you, it gets annoying after a while because they are so many.
I’m sure you will learn to differentiate between roles that fit you or not fast. Go for it and sign up 😀
Other casting sites
actorsaccess.com
I found Actor’s Access pretty similar to LA Casting so I just chose one since I didn’t want to pay for the same thing twice. As an international student, I don’t think there are many student projects/indie/low budget projects I was missing out on by just sticking to one breakdown service.
backstage.com
This is the only site where I have experienced that filmmakers reach out to me. Sometimes there would be an audition invite in my inbox. It was great to have people reach out to me so I used this site mostly for that reason rather than for self submitting.
hollywoodcastingandfilm.com
As a member on this site, they let you view your audition videos online, receive unlimited free self-taping services, and simultaneously “auto-submit” to all roles that match your online actor profile. However, many projects that are submitted here are also submitted on LA Casting.
However, membership fees add up fast. I didn’t buy a membership for this site until I had had five auditions specifically hosted at Hollywood casting and film. This site is worth paying for once you have a few audition videos to watch. Before that, it’s fine to just have LA Casting.
cazt.com
At Cazt, they also save your audition videos so you can view them online afterwards. The casting people also provide feedback most of the time. That is a nice way of learning. Also, anyone who auditioned for the same part as you can watch your video as long as both parties have made them public. Heads up: Only make the audition videos you are proud of public 😉
If you have to save money, I recommend not signing up until you have collected a few audition videos here either. Not all, but most of their casting notices also overlap with the ones on LA Casting. Why pay for several sites when they all mostly have the same casting notices?
Good luck with signing up 🙂 Next step will be to start submitting, wohoo!!
Cheers,
Ina