 Hello, good morning! It is December 1st. It's the official first day of Vlogmas. If you don't know, I am going to be doing Vlogmas this year, and of course it's going to be all about acting, but I'm going to make it more of a vlog style and share more things about myself with you guys, as well as Christmas type of content. Today specifically, I wanted to talk about two very popular things that I get emails about, DMs, I get comments all of the time, and that is the open casting calls for Disney Channel 2020, as well as kidscasting.com. So let me go get some tea and we can get started on talking about that. In 2019, Disney Channel posted a video on their YouTube channel because, yes, Disney Channel has a YouTube channel. They posted this video on November 15th to announce their open casting calls for 2019 for Disney Channel. And within that video, they also included a link so you can go and check for more details and how to submit the actual audition. So that link is still semi-live. It gives you a tab that shows you that there's nothing going on and they're not affiliated with anybody else because a lot of companies, unfortunately, do say, oh, we will get you a audition with Disney Channel or we have Disney Channel directors or etc. And then they ask you to pay a bunch of money and get new headshots through the people that they like and get training through the people that they like. So basically, they are using Disney's name in order to gain more customers to their headshots classes, etc. And sometimes it might be true that that director has worked for Disney. It might have been 20 years ago. It might have been for a tiny thing. So there are two ways that you can make sure that you're actually auditioning for Disney Channel. One is get an agent and two is wait for these open casting calls. So because today is December 1st, I don't think that Disney Channel open casting calls are happening this year. I, of course, will keep you guys updated. I check that page all of the time because I know it's something that a lot of people would want to know about. So of course, I'm going to share it. I would want to know if I looked younger or was younger because I do know a lot of actors that are well into their 20s who look like they're 15, 12 and are able to send in auditions for this stuff. So I will keep an eye out and of course make a video the day I hear any information. If you're super bummed and you really want to start acting, if you're the parent or the child that wants to start acting, I encourage you to do it at home, practice acting at home and practice and get better. And then that way, when you do have an opportunity in the future, you are more well prepared. I also have a playlist on my channel about a bunch of different acting exercises you can do at home by yourself or with somebody else. And of course, the videos I did last year for the Disney Channel open casting call 2019, I included a lot of information. I think I did ended up doing three different videos to talk about analyzing each monologue to talk about what different things you can think about. I have a different video on how to memorize the monologue so you can practice all of these things. And that way, when the time comes, you will be much, much better prepared. That's what I have on Disney Channel 2020. I hope you guys aren't sad. There's a lot more opportunities. That's another thing. Okay. As an actor, you will audition so, so, so, so many times and get a percentage of those auditions actually get booked. If this is your first time ever doing any kind of acting submitting to an open casting call, your chances are going to be very, very slim. To increase those chances of being selected to be in a project or, you know, staying on their radar, I would encourage you to do a lot of research, practice, take acting classes, get really good. So when you are submitting to these huge open casting calls that thousands of people are submitting to, you will at least make it to the top 1000 and then maybe next time you'll make it to the top 100, etc. So the only way you can be prepared is to practice to do things and, you know, just use whatever you have and get better. Now let's talk about kidscasting.com. I was able to find their YouTube channel and they have a very energetic person there. It scared me when I first clicked on their channel. And I also found some more information about them online and let's just take a look at it and we can talk about our first impressions of what the website looks like. If you have ever experience actually ever experience using kidscasting.com, please let us know in the comments, I will be making another video in the future about this. Once I talk to more people about kidscasting.com, I can ask my agents, have you guys ever heard of this? Is this a scam? Is it just is it not a scam but not very effective because there's definitely websites, casting websites that are legit, but they don't have that much work. Of course, as always, having an agent is way, way better than self submitting. They have a lot more connections. We're not quite there yet with casting websites. But let's take a look at this one and see what I think as a first impression, I am not affiliated with any of these people. I don't know anybody that works there. First, let's take a look at their YouTube channel and they have 4.3 thousand subscribers, which is decent. It says kidscasting, acting and modeling lessons, tips and tricks reviews and testimonials, fun acting videos and more. Down here in the uploads, I see kidscasting new review five days ago, Halloween competition. This is already a red flag for me personally because whenever there is a review, it shouldn't come from the company. It shouldn't come from the person. For example, let's just take another another casting website. Let's write type in casting networks and see what they have on their channel. So six point six nine subscribers, thousand subscribers and this company has castings all over the world. So they have way more than 6000 users and for their videos, telling the truth on camera with casting director Brian, all of these videos are interviews with professional people. And then now let's put casting networks reviews and I might come up honestly, but let's see how to nail your casting networks profile. Okay, this is stage milk, acting resource guru. So see, there aren't any casting networks reviews posted on the casting networks YouTube channel. These are all actual people that used it and are giving you the true opinion because none of these are sponsored. I mean, at least I don't think so. This one only has 552 views, 547. This one has 10,000 views, but this is how to self submit on LA casting. Okay, this is Wendy Elaine Wright. She has a lot of subscribers and that's the way reason why it has a lot of views. That's the reason I don't like it. But he does have a video that looks, I say he because there's one gentleman that looks like he's in a bunch of different of these videos. I don't know if he's a creator, so it says lesson from actor Will Roberts. Okay, he's an actor. So maybe he created this website. Let's click on this video from a year ago. Okay, so I've seen a few videos by Will Roberts here at Kids Casting and some of the information that he has said is great. Some vocabulary, self tape tips, some of these tips are good. I don't know if he was a theater actor or what kind of things he was in, but we can look for Will Roberts on IMDb and see what he has done. Oh, oh, this is him. Oh, okay. So he has been in Oh Matador 2017. Okay, so he's been in a few things. That's cool. So he is a working actor. I'm glad we found him on IMDb. That just gives me a little bit of a like, this is actually a person that has, that is acting and that is doing work and has done work. And it looks like he's based out of LA because his info is LA info. Here's his website. The About Will Roberts. It doesn't say he created KidsCasting.com, which probably would have been here if he did. All right, enough about Will. Thank you so much, Will. I just watched a few of the Kids Casting reviews within their YouTube channel. And most of them just say thank you KidsCasting for giving me all of these opportunities and they can connect you with brands all over the country. Very, very vague. So nothing concrete of, hey, I'm at Disney Channel right now or filming something. I have to say I am very, very skeptical of all of this because I've never experienced this website, of course, but I don't know. I'm not a casting director. I am not a creator of casting websites. I'm an actress and I'm giving you my perspective on this website and what I would do if I had a kid. I am genuinely curious if this is a real thing because a lot of people ask me about it and I also want to know because if it's not, I want to tell you and if it is, I want to tell you. Now, let's read some complaints on the Better Business Bureau. The first one says I was charged $80 on my credit card. I expected to pay $8.80 monthly. KidsCasting sent an email saying it was an annual subscription. So I asked for cancellation of the meme era hop by email. They did, they did just just two weeks with the subscription and they sent me a recovery. They sent me an email confirmation but no money back. My credit card company was unable to recover the money. It's unfair. I got charged. I got charged for one year subscription for something I'm not using and I'm not getting. Okay, and here's another one that says I signed up for $10 a month and ended up paying $120. So for these, it sounds like people aren't reading what they're doing because most subscriptions, you get a deal when you sign up for the whole year and you pay upfront. So for example, LA casting, backstage, all of those websites also do this. Also say you can pay us $20 a month and go month to month or you can pay us $100 for the whole year or whatever their deal is and you can get a much better deal but you will have to pay that huge amount at the beginning. So I would say this one is on them. It was probably in the details. I don't know but if you are signing up for anything, make sure you are reading everything. And in the Better Business Bureau, it says that they are based out of San Francisco. Where did I see that? Yeah, so it says that they are based out of San Francisco but on their website it says that they are based out of Wilmington, Delaware. There's a number so I can always call them and see. I just called Kids Casting their 1-800 number and it does sound like they outsource their number to a third party because it was an automated message at first and it said please say on the line somebody will connect with you and then somebody answered with a Filipino accent which of course there's American Filipino people here that might have that accent but it is very similar to the one that is as Explore Talent and I've said this before Explore Talent is absolutely a scam. So yeah it looks like they use a service like them. I told the lady I was a parent and that I'm also an actress and that I use other acting websites and I was wondering how casting directors know about kids casting, how they even post it on here and all she could tell me was that casting directors log in and manually look through all of the casting calls and I said do you guys have a contract with specific casting directors or companies. She said no based off of the videos that I saw previously and the way that it looks because it is very they have a lot of ads here on their website and it just looks very attention-grabbing which of course you know it's a saturated market so you want to bring a lot of attention to yourself. It sounds like they grab casting calls from other places and put them in here it's not like they're directly connected like they have a contract but because they found that information somewhere on the web they created another another casting call for it. She didn't try to sell me anything which is great that's a great sign that she didn't try to sell me anything on the phone because if she was and I'd be way more skeptical if she's asking me you know for $500 or whatever in order to connect me with somebody so yeah that was my experience giving them a call. One more thing I want to do is do kids casting reviews and see what comes up that isn't kids castings channel. In this video she's talking about her experience with kids casting and I went down to the comments and it said so are you a fan of kids casting? Has your baby landed any roles? Where are the auditions hailed? And then the person whose channel this is our life ARELife says would not really not really a fan of kids casting because of the customer service we never went on any auditions kids casting is a third-party service for a fee they will let you know where auditions are. Then would you recommend paying to be in this and then Maddie Sand said I have I have it and I love it so yeah so let's go to her channel and it looks like she has a channel about acting as well which is funny how to become an actor without an agent oh maybe that video will have information about the casting websites she uses and we will be able to see if she's actually used it. Okay so it looks like she is underage she's taking care of her sister in this video and she's talking about how to become an actor without an agent and she said she uses kidscasting.com and that she has used it and has been a commercial from it so I'm gonna finish watching this video and then um you guys can I mean she has a YouTube channel Maddie Sands um you guys can ask her for more information maybe she can make another video all about kidscasting. I watched most of this video I scrolled through some of it and um it gives me a little bit of sponsored vibes but she didn't say it was sponsored or anything so but she the reason why it gives me sponsored vibes is because she's one of the featured actors on the website maybe they didn't pay her to do this but they were like hey if you make a video about your experience will feature you that's positive um I don't know I don't know how it worked but there's one person that says that she has used it and and there's somebody gonna comment it here I want to know what part of kidscasting costs money so it says you can have a free profile and then once you go to contact the casting directors that's when you have to pay so it's very similar to backstage backstage also allows you to uh do a bunch of research and then once you go to submit that's when you actually have to pay okay so let's let's look for another one thank you Maddie. Hey guys it's Maddie. I found one more video for kidscasting on their YouTube channel and this one they're interviewing somebody so this is Lily H Bradley and her mom so if you find this person on Instagram you might be able to talk to them and ask them as well if they think it's legit if they had a good experience because he did have a point of parents actually submitting a lot you know because some people might pay for it and submit five times and never hear back well it's because you might have not uh been right for the you know the role but if you're constantly constantly submitting and you're never hearing back then of course that's about all of the information I could find and I'm still on the fence I of course I'm not a child and I don't have children so I don't have to deal with casting calls specifically for minors so if I was a parent would I sign up for sign up my child for this? Not yet I cannot find enough information where I would trust it if you have a lot of money and you want to try it out do the month to month or you know the whole year and just try it out and submit a bunch go ahead and try it out be safe um you know they are going to ask you for basic information and photos of course whenever you're doing modeling acting anything like that they're gonna want photos but I much much would much rather would submit online to agencies a lot of agencies have a website where they say get discovered on the website and um let me open up MGT a lot of websites will have a be discovered uh tab so for example this is my agency Marla Dell Talent in San Francisco and they only accept local talent so if you're local to the Bay Area you should submit to them if you do not live here you shouldn't you shouldn't waste your time they're not going to accept you unless you live in the Bay Area or very very close to here but they have all divisions and then they ask you for photos your name way tight um special skills and then uh the photos like I said and voiceover you can do a real you can put a demo real there but you can submit like this and it doesn't cost anything most agencies in large markets will take commission and will not charge you a monthly annual weekly fee anything like that so go ahead and submit yourself to different agencies do a bunch of research of what agents are near you and stay safe I'm gonna close out today's video here thank you so much for watching if you have any additional questions please leave them in the comments if you have any additional information so other people can also see it of course leave it in the comments and I will see you tomorrow for day two of vlogmas so another thing I need to do today is announce the winners for my giveaway so I did a video recently where I talked about the remote I use for filming and I am giving away five of them so I'm gonna go to my channel right now and comment back to those people um that won the remotes so if you did enter to that to win that today is December 1st so I am selecting the winners and go and make sure that you if you want that you read the comments where you commented I'm gonna reply back and tell you if you want it and send it over at the end of every video I do feature another channel this is today's feature if you would like to be featured on my next video make sure you're subscribed like this video and leave me a comment