 My plan is to log on for the next 30 days every single day and submit to whatever I find appropriate to myself. So I'm on my backstage because I wanna make sure that I have all of the videos, photos, all of my information. I haven't used this in a really long time and I have so many notifications. So let's see what's going on. I have 17 messages. Here's an opportunity somebody messaged me about in 2021. It looks like some stuff has changed because it says you can create a voiceover profile which that sounds familiar, but a crew profile does not sound familiar at all. I am going to activate my membership and also edit my profile. And now they have intro videos which sounds like actors access slate shots. Your intro video is your chance to show casting directors and clients, you and your on camera personality. The intro video is more than the slate shot because in the slate shot on actors access is just like I think five seconds or something. And this one can be up to 30 seconds. This one to me is more like when you get a self-tape audition and they ask you to say something about yourself so that they can see your personality. So that will be easy for me. I can definitely do that testimonial review. It says, this is a UGC style project. I don't wanna do UGC unless they are paying a good rate and it is not a buyout because I've done it before and it was way too little money for what they're using it for. I hope UGC casting directors aren't like the majority of the casting calls I'm gonna see on here. But let me fix my profile because my hair doesn't look like that. These headshots, I don't really think represent what I actually look like that well. So I'm gonna update my profile. It's about an hour later and I have activated my account for a month for $25 and now I am saving a search for San Francisco and LA. So for the first time in so many years I'm going to look up jobs on backstage because these websites have like restrictions as far as being able to share them because they don't want people copying each other's casting calls. I'll tell you what kind of casting calls I'm seeing but not exactly explaining all of the details because you would have to basically just create an account and log on in order to see it which really isn't that hard. Yeah, I'm gonna look at these San Francisco one first. I know from experience that at the beginning it's gonna seem like a lot but then the casting calls they trickle in because at the beginning you're looking at all of the ones that are there and then basically you'll see all the ones that expired. I have set up to get an email a day with the recap of everything. So right now I have two different searches that I saved, female 23 to 35 in LA willing to travel 200 miles, paid only for production types. I essentially put like commercials, reality TV, scripted TV show, short films, feature films. So for the San Francisco one today it says there's 465 jobs with 184 productions. The LA one says there's 819 jobs with 372 productions. It says I can get $40 for referring a friend but it's like a $40 credit, right? A $40 Amazon gift card. You guys, you guys want backstage? No, I don't wanna recommend you backstage until I actually try it again. This one is for Anaheim. It is a fan series, three episodes, a lot of independent work, web series, UGC even though I filtered it to not see UGC and every time I submit it pops up to recommend a friend to get $40 but I'm like, I'm also seeing quite a few documentaries which I was not expecting. Now I'm gonna take a look at the San Francisco one. For San Francisco it is not looking good. I just see a bunch of worldwide castings. Here's one that's for a theater but it's only $100 for a one day shoot. I'm not interested in that. So in the first page for San Francisco there was only one casting that's local and everything else was like remote or global casting but it wasn't anything exciting, it was just really random stuff. Nothing like Netflix or any network stuff. A tourism video in Sacramento, only $30 an hour for three hours. Are you kidding me? Absolutely not. Worldwide, nationwide. Uh-oh, this is bad. This is really bad for the San Francisco area. I'm not finding anything. It's getting super, super late. At this point I've been working for like 12 hours, not just on this, just in general. So I'm gonna call it a day but I have to say LA looks okay. It looks like there's some cool independent work. I like this feature that Backstage has that you can click to see what you have submitted for. Today I submitted to an internal usage video shoot for a company, internal usage photo shoot, pet mom, video game trailer. There are a couple that I'm gonna send in self-tapes but I wanna film those before I send in my submissions. The deadline for one of these is Monday, which I still think I could do because it's Monday by five PM and what do they want me to do? Maybe I can just do it. 60-second video giving a testimonial of any real or fictional product. Speak emotionally about it. I might be able to do this or right before my road trip if I get up early enough. So it looks like I'm doing a self-tape tomorrow morning. I woke up this morning and realized I haven't packed anything, like anything, anything for my trip. So I just packed my self-tape audition stuff, my clothes. I self-submitted during the trip and I found a bunch more of the same stuff. Really low paying, commercial work, independent work, low budget, this and that. It's day six of submitting to Backstage. I just logged on and I see that I have two messages. I know that I got an email notification that one of them is an invitation to submit to a theater job, which I'm not interested in. A dance theater in the Bay Area. Okay, invitation has been declined. That's easy. The bilingual teleprompter job that I submitted to last week is asking me to submit my information to a Dropbox and also to email them the information. They sent this over at 4 a.m. today. So I am going to quickly send it over right now. They said they were gonna be submitting my information to the client later today. Right now it's after my day job, it's 6.33. So I should probably see if I can get notifications, emails forwarded to me because I got the notification invite to my email that I was being invited to submit to another job, but I didn't get an email notification for this. That's done. I hope I entered it in time and I'm gonna view this application to just remembered what this job actually was. I do see that it's bilingual and for teleprompter use project is for internal training, video explaining benefits for employees, $2,000 for one day, if only in Spanish and $3,250 for two days, one day Spanish and one day in English, plus travel and hotel if needed. So the people that messaged me through backstage are actually with a talent agency in Ohio, like an actor talent agency in Ohio. Then when they asked me about submitting to this, they didn't say that they were a talent agency, did they? No, they just said that they wanna submit me to their client and then the agent did put the talent group under their name, but I had no idea that that's what it was. I'm just confused by this because this isn't usually how talent agents work as far as like talent agents don't usually post jobs on casting websites, strange situation. Let's submit to today's jobs. First, I'm going to do LA. The last few days, it's been a bit slow, I'm assuming because of the holiday, lots of student projects, indie films, or DIY commercials, low budget commercials, internal usage for tech companies or businesses in general. Training video. So this is an anti-harassment and discrimination video. 1,185, a flat rate for two days and it is internal usage. So depending on what kind of company they are, that's, I think that's an okay price. I keep seeing this posted again and again and again, it's like a YouTube fan series, not interested in it. So there's a few of those mobile game promotions video. Anaheim, $250 flat rate, casting several roles for game commercials that will be mainly used on YouTube and Instagram. Here's a feature film in Newport Beach. High profile dating series, no thank you. Here's a short film and based on the description, it looks like this would be for the film circuit, film festival circuit. So the other feature film was around $100 per day for 14 days and then this one is 150 for two days and that is a flat fee. Ooh, down here I see that they are also hiring for director photography and sound technician. So that's something new that I never saw years ago when I was using backstage is that you can also get crew jobs on backstage. I'm gonna submit to this short film but I don't see when they are filming. Oh, shoot is to be determined. I'm assuming it's because it's a short film and independent project. They are willing to work with the talent and the crew and everybody to figure out a date that actually works. A lifestyle commercial for a highly reputable brand, $400 flat seems super, super low because it's a complete buyout and it would be in Carlsbad, California, which I'm not sure, but the rate is just way too low. A pilot comedy web series. Okay, this one has sides so I will have to send in a self-tape in order to submit to it. I'm filming a short film this Saturday so I already have some lines that I need to rehearse. I have a self-tape that I have to do for a friend's horror film, horror short film and then I have self-tapes that I need to do for backstage. So I'm gonna be working a lot on self-tapes this week. It's already Wednesday. The next one is a music trivia game show seeking pairs of people who love music. I'm a single when it comes to filming. I can't submit with anybody. A virtual reality narrative film and we are at yesterday. So I am done with LA. For LA there was about a page of new casting calls today which isn't bad. The only thing is that again, most jobs here are just really low paying, nothing like super exciting and I'm having to ask for please no buyout. I need to negotiate something and for the San Francisco Bay Area there are no new casting calls. I don't see anything new. Everything is from before. Oh and that bilingual English Spanish one that I got a call back for, they will be filming in Ohio but I did see it on here. I can't remember if I saw it in the San Francisco one or in the LA one because it was posted in both. They were casting from pretty much anywhere because they're willing to have you travel. I'm assuming in Ohio it's a lot harder to find an actor who is completely fluent in Spanish bilingual. So I'll wait on that and hopefully I get cast that would be so fun if I got to go to Ohio. For now I need to go start memorizing some of these scripts I can send in a self tape. Just a couple of hours ago I got a request to film another self tape audition for that job that films in Ohio that is in English and in Spanish. They asked me to turn it in by either tomorrow morning or Monday morning and since it's just teleprompter like I have to read off a teleprompter because they want to see me how I look reading a teleprompter in both English and in Spanish. I was like, I can do it tonight. So I just got off my day job and I'm going to set up for my self tape auditions. Got my outfit and we're gonna film this. And I told them I can have it over to you by 10 p.m. tonight. Let's get this booked. So they provided me with sides in English and in Spanish. They asked me to slate and provide my availability because of filming dates. It's either this coming week or the week after that. I asked what do you want in my slate other than my name and my availability and they haven't responded. So I'm going to do two different slates. One where I do my profiles, my hands, full body shot, my location because they need to know where I'm flying from. And then the other slate, I'm just going to say my name and my availability keep it nice and short. So if I do hear back from them of what they want, I already have it filmed. I don't have to be like, oh my gosh, I have to get back into everything and do my slate all over again. Hi, my name is Belgica Rodriguez. I'm located in... I sent in that self-tape audition yesterday. East coast time, it was almost 11 and I followed up with an email to the person that I've been communicating with. Who knows if I got it or not, but I'm logging into backstage right now. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I need to pay more attention when I'm logging in on my laptop because it makes me log on every time. Same thing when I log on on my browser on my phone because can't get the app. There's no Android app for it. It's been about a week and I have to say that the San Francisco casting calls on backstage for my specific search is pretty bad. Like I haven't really seen anything. So let's start with San Francisco because that seems to be the one where there's the least amount of casting calls. So I can just look at those really fast. A short film. Okay, that was it. There was one new thing for San Francisco. So let's switch to LA. I mean, at least like this, I know that if I wanted to look for more independent work, I know where to look. The only thing with that is that I've been able to meet so many filmmakers recently at different industry events, film festivals, and I could pay like, let's say $100, $200 to go to a film festival for an entire weekend and I can talk to, I don't know, how many people can I talk to? In three days at a film festival, conservatively I can meet 20 people. It'll cost me between $100 and $200 to go to that film festival. Filmmakers I meet at film festivals, I'm able to see their work most of the time. We're here a lot of the time, this is like their first project, their second project, or they just didn't put links. There's definitely good films here. I can say that, like I've seen good stuff from years and years ago, but just the thing is that I'm not willing to keep paying for backstage just to get short films, independent work, feature films that are independent work or just really low budget commercials because so far I've seen really low budget commercials and for some people, this might be a great option because it is less competitive. Less people are gonna go for a job that is $300 buyout than a job that is $5,000 for a year of usage plus however much more if they want to renew your commercial. So again, it just depends. If I was just starting out, this might be okay because this would be able to provide me with more opportunities as far as more opportunities to self-tape because often they put their sides and then you send in the audition you don't even have to be selected and ask for a self-tape. It's already there. They're like, if you wanna do a self-tape send it in and there's just less competition because less people are gonna be going out for these at least in my experience. I do still know a lot of actors that are willing to do like lower paid stuff and I understand because sometimes you really just need some money for $250 jobs in the month are better than no jobs but I'm just trying really hard to not accept low paying jobs that are a buyout not to say I'm never gonna do that again. I'm just saying I'm really trying to get paid what I believe I am worth and not have any buyouts because that really feels like it just it feels so disrespectful continue to use my work but not pay me. It just doesn't seem right. So if I can control it and if I can say no thank you then it sounds pretty good to me. Okay, LA so an hour ago a sci-fi feature film $2,000 flat for 16 days of work. Oh, that's for the lead and then for other ones it's $250 for two days of work sells video for an apartment complex two minute video $200 flat. Oh, a play in Minneapolis? Seeking Actors in LA, that's interesting. Ooh, a horror film theme for this music video one day shoot a bingo game ad a mobile commercial $250 flat rate for 10 hours. Compression socks commercial $200 flat rate. Real estate agent promo video the estimated work time is two hours. Pay is $50 to $100 flat rate. That is crazy. And it's for a real estate company. They have to have a bigger budget for marketing. Oh my gosh, another independent film. This is a short film to be posted on social media. The story just sounds a little bit not something I'm interested in. The real person that likes sneakers like a sneaker head a commercial about a mini refrigerator $24 per hour estimated four hours. Oh my gosh, actors are not paid hourly. They shouldn't be, it doesn't make any sense. Adventure and travel YouTube series. So it's $50 an hour estimated five hours of work and then if it goes well then you would get paid more. So that's all for today. I have to say based off of my first week on backstage it's very, very low budget commercials, independent work, which I am okay with getting paid less for a short film or a feature film when the story is really cool. And I'm gonna have an amazing opportunity and it's not something that is potentially gonna make money unless it becomes like an actual series or if it gets purchased or something which is not very likely. Me accepting independent work I know that likely I'm not gonna make any money off of it but neither of the, are they? Like DIY commercials and all of these commercials that are really, really super low budget like they're wanting to pay an actor $24 for an hour. That to me feels like wow, no because it's not like I'm gonna go have an amazing time and it's an incredible story and then that's it, nobody's making money. It's like they're gonna be making money off of these commercials, off of this marketing. So why wouldn't I be able to continue to make money because I'm a part of it because that's what actors bring to the table. They're bringing you this marketing thing that you can show other people in the form of a commercial and get more clients and get more sales or whatever. I'll see you tomorrow to submit to some more. Today's day 15 of submitting to backstage and I'm gonna finally film my intro video which is essentially name, age, where I'm from and any relevant experience, hobbies or special skills. It's essentially a video that people can click on and see what you sound like, what you look like in a casual environment. So I'm gonna finally film that and maybe I should have done this before to improve my chances but at the same time I wanna see what the difference is between me just submitting without that little intro clip versus submitting with it. Maybe I'll get more bookings, I don't know. Also, while I set up for this I want to tell you that I submitted last week to a print job and I did get an offer to actually work it. They asked me to email them today so I did of course, to make sure I was available on those dates and to send any current photos because some people have headshots on their casting profiles that don't really look like them. It's their photos from like 10 years ago. I believe that they were offering me the role because they said we would love to work with you, we just wanna confirm that you're available those dates. So it looks like I might have actually booked a job from backstage. This is my setup for my little intro video. They did specify that it should be no longer than 30 seconds and be horizontal, good lighting, you know, all of that. What hobbies should I talk about? I don't know if they actually want my age because usually they want your age if you're under 18. Since you're here I should tell you that before I do my slate I always giggle a little bit because it makes my smile more genuine and so, hi, my name is Belgica Rodriguez. It also said to talk about some relevant experience like acting experience. So I guess I should do it again and include that. So far, everybody that has shown interest in casting me for something has ghosted me. It's day 19 of submitting to backstage and I have not booked anything. I've come close, so it seems to booking stuff. The prices haven't been great. Every time I ask no in perpetuity, one of them might have ghosted me because of that because after they were like, hey, we're really interested, can you send in a self-tape? As I was getting ready to film it, I said, hey, but did you see my message about the perpetuity thing? And then they replied with, we need it, we have to have it. So now I am on backstage and on the LA stuff, direct to TV, another short film, a stroller company, oh, Families with Children, I don't have children. I just submitted to a short horror film. There's so many horror films right now for some reason. And then I clicked on a commercial to do like UGC, basically Testimonials. It's only $200 for four hours of work flat. Like not even gonna consider it, that's so low. Part of me wants to see if they would be willing to pay more, but at the same time, I feel like they'd be like, no, next. A series, it says it's a 90 episode, one to two minute series to be distributed for an online app. I don't know if that means like Netflix or Hulu or something, they're like creating new content that is super short. Or if this is for TikTok or Instagram. So today I saw a mini series that's 90 episodes to be posted on some app, a bunch of short films and a few UGCs and some random little commercials of like not a casting director doesn't seem like casting but the person involved in the project. And now I am on San Francisco one, which I haven't seen anything. So it's been 10 days since I've seen something. So let's see if there's something here today. The one other post for the San Francisco Bay Area, it says to be determined shoots in California. So I also don't think that this is something for the Bay Area specifically. It says $2,000 to $3,000 flat rate series. It's like a Latina character and a female director. I'm gonna apply to it to learn more about it. That's just like a recurring theme. I feel like I am constantly applying to things so that I can learn more about them. I just wanna get the gist of it because I'm trying to get through, you know, all of these casting calls on different websites because I don't just use backstage because this is just for now. I primarily use casting networks and actors access. So I do spend quite a bit of my time submitting to auditions. Anyway, I need to go eat dinner. I finally got a reply from an indie film that I auditioned for through backstage. And today, in about 10 minutes, I have a callback audition. So this is an indie film being filmed at the end of November, which is just a couple of weeks away in San Francisco, I believe, somewhere in the Bay Area. So I have a callback today. And I randomly logged on to backstage yesterday because, I don't know, I was like, ah, I wonder if they ever contacted me back about this. And they did. And the only option for the callback was today. I'm on my lunch break from my day job. And I just set up all of my self-tape audition stuff because it's a Zoom callback. So I'm gonna be on a video call with them and they sent me sides last night or this morning, I don't know, I checked this morning to see if they were confirming it. And unfortunately, I had to do my day job. So I was only able to look through it a few times, but the lines are very conversational. So there's nothing crazy to memorize, but I did do my best to, while I was reading it, just try and grasp it. And I have a couple of props. So one of the props is a phone. Oh, which I'm recording on right now. And the other prop is like a gift. The other person in the scene gives me a gift at the end of it. So I just have this just so I can have something to see. And I'm cold right now, so I'm wearing this. And for the scene, we are outside. So it could be, this could be used. Like, it's appropriate. What the heck? Okay, okay, that is so funny. As soon as I jump on the Zoom call, it's this woman who I've met. I went to a film festival in July and I met her there. And then a few weeks ago, I saw her at a Bay Area film mixer in San Francisco. And as soon as I opened it, I see her face and I just like start giggling because I'm like, what? It's your film? So they really, they said they enjoyed me. But unfortunately, the filming dates are a lot of dates. There's like 24 filming dates and it's five days out of the week during that entire time. So it might not work out for me just because I do have holiday travel and conflicts in between. So they're gonna see if I'd be able to at least do like the first two weeks of filming instead of all like almost four weeks. It's such a funny coincidence that I ended up auditioning for her because we talked about her film in July when we met. And then we talked about her film a few weeks ago for the Bay Area film mixer. And it just sounded like there were really no roles for me. I don't know why I didn't ask like, can I audition for you? Like, is there anything I might be able to audition? But she said, when I was talking to you, I did think, oh, maybe Belkika should audition for this. So I thought that was just like so funny that I randomly found her casting call. I need to get back now to my day job. I randomly found the casting call on backstage that I never used. Like I have literally only used it, you know, to just see it for a little bit, but I didn't find much other than that. I really hope it works out. It's a SAG ultra low budget film. So I wish her the best. Maybe I can come like volunteer at least one day as a PA or something if I can't act in it. But I'm happy I got a callback. So would I recommend it to you? I was gonna put makeup on and, you know, wait until tomorrow when I have more energy or whatever. But no, I just wanna be brutally honest with you. So I made a couple of notes. Number one, I wanna be honest. What would I say to my best friend if she was like, hey, should I get backstage? Let me give you a few pros and cons. Number one, the postings on backstage are so random. Sometimes they're not so professional. Sometimes they are. It's definitely a place where you can expect the unexpected. The roles take a lot longer for you to hear back sometimes because it is independent work where it's, it can be a bunch of people who have day jobs and this is their passion project and they put a posting and they're like, okay, send an audition within the next month and we'll get back to you within the next three months or something, which is fine. It's just different. You can get very random things, $20 to come to an office for 30 minutes and film something for their very small real estate company. That's very random. I would never get that from, let's say my agency. Yeah, extremely low paid work sometimes, which depending on where you are in your acting career, you might be okay with. All of that is like a pro and a con at the same time, just depending on who you are and where you're at in your career. The potential here for the independent work can be good but this is gambling. You can be a part of, let's say, over the course of the year, five independent films where you maybe make $100 minus having to drive their gas, toll, things like that. You might be losing money on it but you are gambling that maybe in the future you will work on something because of the footage that you were able to get from them, add it to your reel, showcase yourself, be in something in the future or creatives that you work with now in the future will work on other things and they might be able to get you paid work in the future. So some sort of investment. Would I recommend it yes or no? For the San Francisco Bay Area, the postings are just not enough. I don't think you should get it right now. If you wanna try it for a month, go ahead. You would be using your time and money better if you just went to a bunch of film mixer events, film festivals in the Bay Area and met creative people that way. If you're an introvert, I get it. It can be hard to go up to people but get a buddy, do a buddy system. If you're in LA, you think this might work. There's a lot of random stuff and a lot of really low paying work but if you're able to get backstage for, I think sometimes there's like a promo code that you can get an entire year for like $80 or something. If you're able to do that in LA, one job might actually pay for the annual subscription and really it's such a numbers game. So if you're in LA, you should do what I'm doing, I think and do backstage actors access, casting networks and go to a bunch of film events and talk to other people. But seriously, when you do independent work, like it does eventually pay off but it may take a long time. You might plan a seat today and then in seven years find a reward. So you do have to be really patient. For me right now, I'm in between day jobs. I am self submitting on casting networks, actors access, considering continuing on backstage. I have San Francisco representation, I have Phoenix, Arizona representation and I'm looking for LA representation. So what I do is I self submit a bunch. So this is me right now, willing to do indie work, willing to do some lower paid work but also asking for no buyouts for commercial work. Please tell me what questions you have because I have a feeling that I am gonna continue to self submit a lot and I have a feeling I might continue to use backstage. Here's something I concretely right now recommend for you is to go to film festivals and meet creative people. Here's a film festival I went to in July of 2023 in the Bay Area. If you're in LA, it's worth the drive, watch it.