 This video is going to be really long. I have used casting websites for around 10 years, but more seriously, actually submitting to a lot of things over the past four to five years, although 2020 was extremely slow. I lost a lot of money in these casting websites because I paid for the annual subscription and then hardly even used it. But I wanted to help you assess if these casting websites are right for you and see if it's going to be worth it for you. I feel like some people get it without needing to or without being ready for it. How do you choose a casting website? Today, I wanted to focus on giving you advice on where to find casting calls depending on your age, location, career goals, and your budget. I don't think you should waste your money if you are a new actor and get a paid casting website. You should seek other ways to get your first set of experiences and then maybe after that you can start to create a casting website once you have all of the necessities like your headshot, your resume, and don't just take my advice on this because I am in California and this is my experience as an actress in California working in San Francisco and LA. You can treat this as one of your sources of information, one of your friends who is helping you and giving the advice that she has, but please continue to do your research and of course follow your instincts. Even though you can submit to some of these, I don't think you should submit to all of these, especially if you are a beginner or if you are in the wrong country and I want to break it down and give you the locations or how you can find out of your location. There are a lot of casting websites that say that they're global and have opportunities everywhere, which is true that there are opportunities everywhere, but some of these depend on the creatives in that specific city. So let's start talking about what you need to think about in order to find a good casting website for yourself. First, let's talk about where you are. Why do you need to think about that? Well, you might say, hey, it's 2021, everything is self-tape auditions anyway. It's a general rule of thumb that I see a lot as far as people accepting submissions from places and even agents, they want you to be no more than three hours driving distance. For me personally, for an audition, I will go as far as an hour and a half driving distance. And then, you know, if I get booked in something, it really depends and it can be further, but I have to in my mind be willing to pay for my Airbnb and my travel because a lot of sets will not have the budget to pay that they rather just go with somebody that is local. So what I would recommend is to put your location into all of the casting websites that you are considering. So you can see what is available right now to submit to. And it will usually have a place where it tells you when that casting call was posted. So you can go back and say, okay, there's been 100 casting calls posted in January and then out of those 100, which ones actually do you qualify for? And I would recommend to do this periodically because of course sometimes there's more work than other times. So research whichever casting websites you are interested in and take note. Of what you found and then come back in a month or a few months and take more notes. Where are you in your career? Because different casting websites are really great for different reasons. Don't need to think about your goals. What are your goals because if you want to be a big Broadway performer or work in theater in general, you're not going to want to go and create an account for actors access, let's say because actors access is more dedicated towards on camera acting, mostly film and TV. And in addition to that, those websites that are higher up there that will give you get you even bigger jobs, like actors access, casting networks, actors don't actually see as many auditions as the talent representatives do. Now think about how much money you have realistically to spend on this, your budget. So a lot of casting websites do charge money because they are providing a service or providing a subscription and some of them are free. So you want to think about which one you want to approach. As a beginner, I would suggest you don't pay anything. You only find casting calls through freeways or maybe experiment with a couple of casting websites, but do the month to month. Even if you have a lot of money, I would say to do the month to month. You don't know if that casting website is going to be good for you. If the market is going to be good at that time and who knows that what can happen, right? So I would highly suggest unless you absolutely know that you're going to be submitting for that full year, go with the month to month. Don't say, oh, I'm investing in my career. So I'm just going to put this on my credit card and worry about it later because I'm going to be able to pay for it anyway. Let me tell you from experience that doesn't work. I I'll be completely honest with you. Last year, I didn't have money when I first moved to LA. I didn't have money for a full year for LA casting. So I put it on my credit card. Maybe you can say, OK, once I get that first gig and if that first gig is $300, then I'll go ahead and buy a subscription for a full year with those $300. Then you're actually investing money back into your career, the money that you made through this career. A complaint I have heard a lot is that they're a scam because they made you pay more money than you thought you were. So let me tell you right now, before you make that mistake, when you go to a casting website, usually the month to month will be, let's say $20 and the yearly costs will be 120. Well, you say, oh, it's so much better if I go with the 120 because that's only $10 a month. Well, you have to pay for the full amount up front if you go with the yearly subscription, which means that if after three months you hate it, now you've lost a bunch of money because there's no money back guarantee. If you end up being like, oh, I'm not going to use this account anymore. So I should get my money back. That's not how it works. When you are paying for it, there's writing there that says, you know that you are getting a yearly account, you're going to pay for $120 up front. So what I would suggest to do instead is try it out month to month for one, two or three months. Maybe you'll take a month break in between. Once you know that you do like it and that you are using it a lot, then I would suggest you subscribe for the full year. But I find that usually you need a few months on a casting website in order to really see what it's all about. It's about timing, how much time do you actually have? What is the current environment? Is everybody on vacation? Is everybody on lockdown? Like what's happening? Are you going to be able to find jobs and book jobs? Next, what I want to do is I want to go onto these casting websites and through their filters, I want to show you the locations that they say they have available. So just because these cities and states and countries are on these websites doesn't necessarily mean that, yes, it is worth it for you, but I want to go and show you how as a non-paid member, you can also go and research and just see what's available. But depending on the locations, you're going to see that different places have different opportunities. I want to start with free ways that you can find different casting calls and opportunities to act. I have found casting calls and I have been booked for things through what I'm about to tell you. I have talked about Facebook groups a lot in the past on my YouTube channel, but that is somewhere that I have always found a lot of really fun, creative people and I eventually end up working on some kind of passion project and then in a paid project. Here's an example of a Facebook group. So if you are, let's say in Atlanta, you can try searching Atlanta non-union actor casting calls or Tallahassee non-union actor casting calls. But this is an example of a Facebook group you might be able to join and get casting calls from. This one has 22.6 thousand members. So there are quite a bit of casting calls that get posted here. Some of them are non-paying. Some of them can be scammed. So please, please, please be very careful on what you do submit to. And you can also just search casting calls or acting groups on Facebook. And then you'll be able to find a lot of different things. Actors leveling up is another group that I am a part of. It's also a private group. It's pretty new as I believe it was created in the summertime. But this is a Yellid and she posts quite a bit on here. Sometimes they host different events and there's a lot of actors. So if you want to get advice from other actors, what they're doing, there's actors on this group from all over the world. And it is called actors leveling up. The requirement to get into that group is because, of course, these are all private groups. The requirement to get into that group is basically that you want to be an actor or you are an actor. And this goes for pretty much any kind of acting that you want to do. If you want to do theater, background work, voiceover, there is a Facebook group for pretty much anything. And I have mentioned women plus in theater in the past, San Francisco Bay Area, filmmakers going to put a list of the different Facebook groups that I am a part of. When you do go see that list of Facebook groups, I suggest copying and pasting it onto Facebook. And then instead of San Francisco Bay Area, you can put Atlanta area and different groups will pop up. A lot of them that you might join might be spammy or not right for you. And it's totally fine because you can just exit the group, but at least you can see if there's a creative community around you that you can be a part of Instagram. Of course, you can follow different casting directors. And here's good faith casting. I can't remember why I started following them, but they're based out of Arizona, New Mexico, and LA and this casting director often gives a lot of tips. So this is a great page to follow in general for tips from a casting director. Even if you aren't in these locations, you can at least get some information from her. And the pages for different films, people will make an Instagram account specifically for that project. So if you follow them and they need a last minute replacement for an actor or they are posting their open casting calls or something like that, usually you will be the first person to find out because if they're going to post it on their website, they are definitely going to post it on their social media accounts. So following them on Instagram or if they have a YouTube channel, you are going to be able to know when anything like that is coming up. So this one, for example, this page was made specifically for the Bob Frank movie, but I did start following them a while ago and they just looked at their followers and then, you know, invited some of these people to audition if they'd seem like they were actors and invited people that they knew because they didn't want to hold a big open casting call. And he contacted me and asked me if I wanted to audition for this because I happened to follow them on Instagram. So I would definitely say if you ever see a short film, independent film, a film festival, anything like that, go ahead and follow them because it's very likely that you can work with them in the future to see what they're up to, see if they're holding any current auditions, but there are so many really great filmmakers. You can also follow different theaters on Instagram or go to their website to find information about their audition. So let's take, for example, Cal Shakespeare because I have auditioned for them in the past. I know for a fact that they do their open casting calls in October of every year. So what I'm doing right now is looking for something that says auditions or right here, work with us, something related to becoming part of their team or just in general working for them. So they have volunteers, job openings and auditions and casting. So you're going to click on that and then we're going to see, yep, they do open casting calls every October. And because there was a pandemic in 2020, they didn't look like they didn't do their open casting calls for pretty much any theater. You can go onto their website or their social media accounts and see when they are holding auditions or open casting calls. I also follow different agencies whenever I see one of my friends is represented by a talent agency, then I will go and follow them in case I can one day be represented by them and just learn more about them in general. And then of course, there's a TikTok and YouTube where you can create your own work and I feel like this is said all of the time, but you guys, I have a YouTube channel and I am creating my own work. I am keeping myself busy. This is an example of creating your own work. If you want to make a YouTube channel where you post your acting, you can use that as your portfolio. Have something that you can show people so that they can say, okay, we'll consider you or that can say, okay, fine, send us a self-tape audition, but creating your own work either here on YouTube or on TikTok, just practicing being on camera, but not only creating your own work on these platforms, but also you can find work through these platforms. So I don't know about TikTok, but definitely here on YouTube. I post whenever there's a huge open casting call that I know a lot of people would benefit from, I will make a huge video where I talk about it and I share that information. Of course, I'm going to share it on my channel and I know a lot of other people do this, so a lot of content creators on YouTube will use in LA. I have seen casting networks or Actors Access that they use to cast their for their YouTube videos, so they will post them on there. But sometimes also they might do a big open call on their YouTube channel. You can search open casting call or casting call January 2021 here on YouTube and you might be able to find a video. There are also a lot of acting related YouTubers that will help you in order to find the broadcasting website or to find more casting calls, try and find an actor who shares information about how they're doing it near you. For example, Kurt, you is in the Atlanta area, so he would be a great person to go and ask questions if you are in Atlanta or the surrounding areas, but also be very respectful if somebody doesn't want to tell you where they're currently living as in the state or the city because it's private information. Backstage Casting has a YouTube channel and on their YouTube channel, they often feature other creatives and other people that also have YouTube channels. So their YouTube channel and their podcasts are both great places to find more people to watch and more places to do your research. And then they also interview a lot of people and in the interviews, they will ask those people, hey, when you were starting out, did you ever use backstage? And often they will say, yeah, I use backstage back when I first started out. Another free way to find casting calls is finding different places that produce work in general. So even if it's a church that does plays, you can start acting there. Universities, private or public universities, community colleges, they usually will have some kind of broadcasting program or filmmaking theater program, and they might have open casting calls. Even if they have actors that they already use because they're their students, sometimes they accept people from the outside because they don't have enough actors in their school to fit those roles. So they often have open casting calls. And all you have to do is call up the department, follow the department on social media or email them and ask them if they ever do open casting calls. And if they do them, it's very likely that they do annual ones so you can keep auditioning year after year if you are interested in developing your acting long term. It seems like it's such an old school thing, but in different communities and libraries and community centers, they still have different clubs and programs that you can be a part of. So again, just looking into your district and seeing what kind of opportunities there are, if you're looking to get some work as a background actor or an extra in films, in my opinion, in my experience and in my opinion, I don't think you should pay for casting websites to do this because those jobs, they usually need a lot of people and you don't need experience. You just need to send a couple of photos over to see what you currently look like and just certain requirements. So you don't need to have acting experience or acting talent and you are going to get paid pretty much minimum wage and sometimes a little bit more, but I don't think you should pay for casting websites to get cast in this kind of thing. A really popular one is central casting. Central casting is for background actors and they are based out of LA, New York, Georgia and Louisiana, so this is only for background work. And they're a huge company. They do so many different productions and films. I have mentioned in the past my casting file with Gloria also casting. This is for background actors. They also cast on here featured extras, stunt doubles, stand-in. So there are a few different kinds of casting calls and it looks like they have expanded because I've only seen in the past New Orleans and San Francisco Bay Area casting calls, but it looks like they're also in Jackson, Mississippi right now and they are casting quite a few people for February. If you are in Jackson, Mississippi, New Orleans or the Bay Area to create an account on here and you should follow them on social media because once they do expand to different places, I'm sure they'll talk about it in their social media accounts and then you can create an account once you see that they are casting near you. There are a lot of different casting companies that are very location specific. Casting TaylorMade is another one that is also in Atlanta and also very location specific. They are not going to fly you out to be a background actor. I do not have an account with Casting TaylorMade because I am not in the Atlanta area and if you are, then you should make an account with them if you're interested in being a background actor. I've talked about them in the past for stranger things. So if you are interested in that, you can create an account with them, but only you guys only if you are in the Atlanta area because these are for background actors, not speaking roles. They do not do that and you can follow them on social media for updates in case they ever do cast for other things. Like right now they're doing Stargirl Season 2 and you can just see if they expand to different locations. But as far as I have seen for a couple of years, they only do background casting. We Got Pop is available in the UK and in the US. I registered with them a few years ago and I have been able to get a few different casting calls sent to me, but I've never booked anything from this. But I do know that it is reliable because I had a friend in the San Francisco area who worked for a casting company and that office would often use this website in order to organize all of the actors. So just like my casting file and Casting TaylorMade, I'm sure there are a lot of different casting websites that were created for local markets that you might be able to find. And I have a huge playlist on background acting, what it's like, how it's really like to be on set, how long the hours are, what to bring to set, what you should wear. It's just I have a huge playlist on it. So I would definitely recommend watching that playlist before you go and be an extra because it is a lot of hard work and you want to know what you're getting yourself into. If you are a beginner, I would suggest backstage casting as an absolute beginner, but don't go and go create an account right now. It's only worth it to pay for it if there's active people around you. Because if you live in a really small country or really small state city and there's nobody creative around you, nobody making things around you, then they're not going to put things on there. So you're going to have nothing to submit to. So what you want to do is put your location here. If your location doesn't pop up, then it means they don't have absolutely anything on there. And sometimes even if your location does pop up, they don't have stuff. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select a location here and then we're just going to keep it open as far as the gender and the age range. But we are going to turn off the big open casting calls that are global. Nash, let's try Vancouver. So I'm going to search this. There's 33 jobs here. One was posted on Saturday. Another one most posted on Saturday, all genders, 20s, 30s. So this one is from November 28th. So that's quite a while ago and it's just a few down. So you can see there aren't a lot of casting calls for that location. Let's try Long Island in Maine and it looks like there is absolutely nothing. Let's try New York since, you know, it should be a lot more and see what comes up. We're going to exclude jobs calling for nationwide slash worldwide submission. Feature film, it's paid non-union and it was posted January 8th. They're looking for leads and background, a singing one. New female artists two hours ago, small business commercial two hours ago, lingerie, hat commercial, Hispanic, grandparent, financial commercial. So I've seen a lot of commercials on here, as well as short films. So student films, demo and instructional video. So in New York, there's definitely a lot of casting calls on here. But again, the filters are pretty open. All I put was it's in New York. You can put different filters over here, gender, transgender, your age range, the distance you're willing to go, location, compensation. So if it's paid or not. And then the type of production that you would like to see. Let's try a different country and then see if we can find any. Looks like this is a work from home. Oh, OK. So there's there's obviously nothing really there. It is oriented towards beginners and you will find a lot of people that are trying to skip the whole casting agent and talent agency and go there and get submissions straight from the talent, smaller commercials, open casting calls, a lot of jobs that will pay you less money. A little bit of theater I've seen on there. Lots and lots of student films, a lot of schools use backstage and casting networks to post their work and especially places like the New York Film Academy. They have so many films that they have to cast. So often they will throw a bunch of them on these networks. And then that's how you can get great footage for your real ambassador work. Like, you know, going to conventions and being one of the people at the booth. You can get one month free on their podcast. They give you a code for one month free. And yeah, usually you can find some kind of trial for backstage. Which is great, especially for beginners. Casting networks, you can find in a lot of different places. I use SF Casting and LA Casting. Here they have the US, Australia, Canada, LA, San Francisco and United Kingdom. I have found a lot of commercial work on casting networks as well as some extra works. This is my San Francisco casting account and we can see the type of work here. So this is print, print, print, print, commercial, commercial, other. There's definitely a lot of commercial in casting networks. Student films are often posted here as well, especially if you live in LA or San Francisco, also on casting networks, I have found a lot of commercials that aren't necessarily, you know, as low budget as you would find on backstage. But they're also not, you know, big national commercials. I personally have never auditioned for a national commercial unless it was my agency through SF Casting. So that's another thing that I mentioned before that some of these websites are best used with your talent agent. So casting networks, casting frontiers, frontier actors access our websites that are best used with your agent because they will have access to more information, more casting calls. I've also found some theater in casting networks as well as industrial. So it's very similar to backstage. I would say it's one step up from backstage as far as the level of actor or the level of experience that you have to have in order to successfully get casting calls and book auditions. But now I'm in casting frontier and I am on the non-paid account. And here you can see all of the different places that they say they have casting calls to Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Florida, Michigan, Mid-Atlantic, New York, Pacific Northwest, there are so many. So you can log in here if any of these places are where you're currently living and see what they currently have available. So right now I have the LA one here. Actors access, I have found a lot of student films in LA as well as bigger TV shows and films, but again, most of them are for really small roles. And I know that my friends have been able to audition a lot through actors access a lot for a lot of different casting directors, big casting directors. But they got those auditions through their agents. Big casting teams will go and log on to, let's say, breakdown services, because that is their version of what we would see actors access. They will go in there and they'll say, OK, we have this huge new Netflix film we need to cast, we need these 15 people. They'll give the breakdown to talent agents. So they can filter if the talent agents get to see everything or the talent agents and the actors, because of course the talent agents are going to filter it better and actually get the people that are more accurate for the roles that they're looking for. So they weren't able to self submit for these LA jobs that are speaking roles on TV shows, stuff like that. It's only through their agents. I also have friends in New York that use casting networks and actors access in order to book TV and film projects. But again, through their talent agent. So if you are a more experienced actor and you have your actors package and everything and you are looking to get an agent, I would say have this account. But maybe you don't pay for it unless you are willing to work for less or do smaller projects, because you're going to get the most out of it once you do have an agent, but you should have all of these castings casting accounts now. So when you are in the interview with the agent and they say, do you have an actors access account? You're like, of course, it's up to date. I have all my headshots on there, my headshots, resumes on there and it's ready to go. Actors access in general is for TV shows, films and also big open casting calls. I have found a few huge open casting calls that I have posted on my channel that were posted on Actors Access. So you might be able to find that there as well. And usually the open casting calls are sponsored by different companies. So you won't have to pay for actors access for these open calls. Now I am an Actors Access again as an unpaid member and there's two different locations that you can click on the US and they do have a few different places here as well as Canada. So what I'm going to do is go to the US and choose Central and see what they have to offer. So the type right here, pilot, feature film, commercial, episodic, internet project, feature film, pilot. So you can see a lot of TV and film here. So if you are in any of these locations that they say, go ahead and create an account and see if any of these are worth it for you. Oh, let's see San Francisco, Google land. So it's commercial, internet, web series, pilot, feature film, commercial. So you can see on the San Francisco when there's a lot more commercials. For advanced actors, somebody who has a lot of experience, maybe they have an agent or are looking for an agent, I highly recommend for you to have IMDB Pro and putting all of your information on there. So currently I have IMDB Pros and my information is in this. You can see what different people are represented by if you have a paid account. So if you have an IMDB Pro account, you can go search me and see who represents me in which locations and you can do the same if there's another actor that you really like the work that they're doing and it's similar to what you can be doing, you can see who they're represented by and potentially submit to those talent agencies or managers and see if they can represent you as well. Right now, I am hoping to get representation in LA. So my IMDB Pro is up to date. It has all of my contact information for my agents in San Francisco or if somebody wanted to contact me directly, if they searched me and found my information on IMDB, that casting director or talent agent would say, oh, OK, here's her reel and her headshots and some information about her. We should, you know, call her up for a meeting or when I submit to different agencies and they say, oh, she looks OK, let's do some research on her. They're likely going to have a couple of things show up. One, my YouTube channel and more importantly, my IMDB. And then on top of that, of course, I have all of my casting websites with my headshots, my resumes up to date. So when I do get representation, I can say, yep, it's all ready to go. You can start booking me right now. Usually it's about $20 a month unless you are in Sagrafter union. You can get a code and I believe get 20 to 30 percent off. Something I've seen since COVID started, especially in background acting is that there are less and less casting calls for minors because usually when there is a minor that is booked, usually a parent will accompany them or another person will be hired to, you know, take care of the children. So that means more people are on set. And right now the less people that are on set, the better. And then your age. So I have, I didn't act when I was a kid. I really started acting more seriously after college. But if you are under 18, I would recommend that you get training first and that you try and find ways to get auditions without having to pay anything. Because as a child, you will be a lot more limited because they can't go and drive themselves to an audition or a gig. And I would suggest, you know, submitting to a bunch of agencies and agencies that are commercial agents and getting started there because for commercials, you don't need as much acting experience, of course, as you would for TV or film or even theater. It's more about your look. So there's a lot more agents, commercial agents that are willing to sign people under 18 that don't necessarily have experience, but have a certain look. And then from there, you can ask your agent, hey, I'm actually interested in acting, where should I get my training? Can you represent me, you know, theatrically? So I would say that is a safer bet, especially because there's also a lot of scammers online that try and take advantage of kids that are, you know, have big dreams and don't really have the experience or ability to filter out the scams. Okay, so now what you need to do is take everything that I just said into consideration and go and continue your research. I do have some other videos about a lot of different casting websites and information that I have found. If you know any additional information specifically to your city and state, of course, if you're comfortable sharing it, please leave it in the comments so other people can read it and also take advantage of those opportunities. At the end of every video, I feature another channel. This is today's feature. If you would like to be featured on my next video, make sure you're subscribed to like this video and leave me a comment.