 Today we're going to talk to Dylan about this app, the actor trade app. I actually downloaded it a few days ago and I've known about this app for months because one of my subscribers commented that there's a resource for being able to get readers. And I went on this app yesterday and I helped somebody be a reader because I didn't have any experience on this app. I wanted to get on it and see what it's like. So we're going to talk to him today and ask him a few questions about how the app works, who it's good for, and does it cost money, details like that. Hello, all of my Belgica friends and family and subscribers. I am really grateful to be here. This is awesome. Thank you for having me. I am Dylan Mooney. I am a co-creator of actor trade co-founder. I have two other partners, Skylar Caleb and Sasha Poporich, as well as one other co-owner, Chandrila Avery. Basically how the app came about was I'm an actor and throughout my career, when auditions popped up, I needed a reader to rehearse and figure out my characters and transitions and learn the words inside and out. So throughout most of my career, my wife, Jackie, was my reader and she is not an actor. I would get an audition and have her read for me for hours and hours and hours. And this would be after her nine to five job. One week I had like three auditions pop up literally all at the same time for big, big roles. And I immediately text my wife and I said, hey, when you get home, we need to rehearse. I got these auditions. It's crazy. So get ready. And she did not text me back. She gets home. She opens up the door and she has a red face, very red face. And I said, hey, babe, did you get my text message? I was, you know, I got auditions and she said, honey, I love you, but I am never reading lines for you again. I hate it. And I was like, oh, you're like, but I need you too. I mean, this is I have three big roles. What are you taught? This is the worst time for this. But I understood because, you know, she works a nine to five job and then she would come home and then run lines with me for hours. She did this for years. However, I was in panic mode. I didn't know what to do. This is before self tapes. It was just like, you know, me going in, it actually was around the time self tapes just started to begin. Needless to say, I had nobody to rehearse with me. I did the work as best as I could. I went into my, do my auditions. I didn't bomb, but I didn't book. So basically from there, I just kind of figured that every actor, you know, had this problem. Who's going to be my reader? I have an audition. Who's going to read for me? Who's going to help me get off book and figure out things. So from there, I wrote like a 20 page manuscript of what I thought how an app could work and how actors could connect with each other through tech and not really thinking it's going to go anywhere. But I brought to my friend, Skylar, and he helped me tweak a few things and flesh out kind of the idea a little bit. We developed a pitch packet. We went out into and pitched it to a bunch of development companies here in LA. So I did that a few times and then kind of almost gave up on it until one day I literally went on Craigslist. I'm not even joking on Craigslist where you usually find murders, murderers and killers. This is true. And I looked up, you know, app development companies and lo and behold, there was this company called Helvedia. It was an incubator company that, you know, developed apps for people. And he said, come on in. I pitched him an ID. He said, come on in. And he said, you know what? I love this idea so much. I'm going to invest in it. And so I found our investor off Craigslist, who's now one of my good friends and co-founders of Actor Trade. I invested over $100,000 into my idea, into our idea. So that's how it all began. And that was, you know, a few years back, the development took about a year, a year plus. And then we launched a couple, almost three years ago. And now we're at almost 13,000 people. And then we created this awesome Facebook community. Yeah. And that Facebook group has almost 10,000 people in it. And people are active and people are enthusiastic about helping other people. Not only do they post, hey, I need a reader, but they also post, hey, I'm available for whoever needs it. Yeah. One of the things that we did early on in the app development, we knew we created a chat room on the app where people can connect and schedule and things. And we were like, that's not enough because most people are on social media. We need to create a platform for these actors to connect on the app. And so we created this Facebook group called Rehearsal and Self-Tape Partners for Actors, where we have nearly 10,000 actors that help each other rehearse and self-tape for free. I don't think people really understand like how incredibly generous and kind these people are. These people are helping, like you, Belhika, helping other people out of the goodness of their hearts because they are actors and they are paying it forward to other actors because they know eventually in turn they will need somebody too. We knew everybody had a problem finding readers. That's why we created the app. Even if they could find one reader or two readers, those readers aren't always available. So how do we, we needed to create this platform so that actors in other countries can help another actor in a different country? So we did create this community and let me tell you the Rehearsal and Self-Tape Partners for Actors Facebook group community is the most active community that I am a part of. I'm a part of other Facebook groups that I come in and do lives and things like that. This group is so active and generous and kind and just people helping each other. It's awesome. We also, because of this generosity, we also created this thing called Reader of the Month. Every month and the Reader of Month gets a prize and gets to, will pin their entire actor package to the top of the page for 24 hours. All kinds of different prizes we give away, but every month we want to give somebody a prize because of their kindness and generosity. So we're as proud as we are of the app. We are way more proud of that community. I'm so grateful that you guys did decide to make a Facebook group because a lot of new apps and a lot of new social media sites say, no, we don't want to cross promote because then you're just going to stay on Facebook. We are more prone to already be on Facebook and then get a message from one of our friends on AfterTrade and say, oh, yeah, I can do it and then go on. We didn't even realize how, I mean, literally for like the first year we probably had a thousand or less people and then all of a sudden it just went, and people started going, dude, there's this community of actors that will help you for free. I mean, there are some other software and other apps out there that are charging people, charging, you know, people to read for them and things like that. And we're just like... I was just going to ask you if it cost anything because when I opened the app it said, you like the minutes accumulated because I was on there yesterday. Yeah. So I was wondering if you don't have minutes, do you pay? If the app is free, the rehearsals will always be free. You can actually self-tape by getting somebody on the app and getting the secondary device and putting them close to each other for free. So you can do all of that. The reason why we have this thing called unlimited minutes. So everybody on the app starts with 30 minutes. If you can get somebody else to sign up using your referral code, you'll never lose minutes. Otherwise, if you don't do that, if you rehearse for 30 minutes, you'll be down to zero minutes and the only way to accumulate more minutes is to read for somebody else. We created this trade system to incentivize actors to help each other. But then we also added this referral code element so you don't have to worry about ever losing minutes. You can only earn minutes because we have a reward store on the app. So the more minutes you accumulate by reading for others, you can trade in your minutes or points for prizes in our reward store like $100 off photography session, a free website design. We're going to actually revamp our reward store and add a whole bunch of new sponsors in there so that when people have like, let's say, 300, let's say they've read for a total of three hours for somebody and they already started with 30 minutes, that's 210 minutes you would have in your minutes bank and you can actually trade those minutes in for a free prize. That's why we created this read for others to incentivize people. I see. But like I said, I'll show you on the app exactly how everything works. So let me share this one screen with you first. We just lost a self-tape feature not too long ago, about almost three months ago. From the app that brought you free live rehearsals, Active Trade Self-tape feature is here. Self-tape with any available reader anywhere in the world. Save, edit, and share your video all inside the app. Send straight to casting or reps within minutes. Stay safe, stay self-tape. Active Trade. Okay, cool. So I wanted to show your viewers that and then I want to show your viewers that you use a self-tape feature, but I'm going to show it to you for real. I just want to show you our promo real quick. I was wondering about that. I was wondering about the eye line. So I like how you can move the image so you can actually have an eye line because I thought, oh, well, are they going to have to look over here where the actor's not even at? No, no, let's do it. Let's do it for real, Belgica. Okay. All right, you jump on as a reader. So first thing we're going to do is right and our managers sent our sides to us, which my managers do, not all of them do. Let me go to an old, old audition so we don't get in any trouble here. Okay, let's go to... This is good. This is a year later. Let's go to this one right here. Let's say my managers have sent me the sides. They say you have an audition and I'm ready to rehearse and then self-tape. First thing we're going to do is we're going to upload sides to the app by just simply going to the sides. If you have an Apple phone, you upload your sides to the app. If you have an Android phone, you're going to download your sides to your phone and then click choose PDF once we get to the rehearse and self-tape part on the app. Okay, but I have an iPhone, so I'm going to upload my sides to the app. So there's that. Okay. And then it should say you have successfully... There you go. You have successfully added PDF document to your profile. We will get better on our English grammar, but for now that's what it says. You have that right there, Belhika, and we'll come back to that. But one thing I wanted to show you, too, is how we actually schedule. You have an audition. We already uploaded the sides. We'll get back there. We'll get back to the app. But you need a reader. So you're going to go to this group and you're going to use this group because there are so many generous, kind people that will help you for free. So what we're going to do is we're going to put hashtag rehearsal because you need to rehearse and then I need a reader today at, let's say, 2 p.m. PST. You always want to put a time and a time zone so that people know if they're available or not. Okay. I'm going to just put in parentheses. This is a test. Do not respond. I'm going to put that because otherwise there are going to be a bunch of people responding, okay? Yeah. You're going to be like, Dylan, I'll help you. I got you at two. Exactly. So I'm going to just make that big. But that's what you would do if you need a reader. And let me tell you, there will be several people that will help you. Okay. So that's the first step you do. You join this community. You say that you need a reader and then you go to the app. You download, you upload or download your sides to the app. So now, let's say, Bellhica responded to that post that I just did in the group and said, I'm available. And I said, great. Okay. Let's meet on the app. And so Bellhica says, okay, great. Now it's time for Bellhica and I to meet on the app. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to press Bellhica is going to go to read for others, which is right here. This is when you're, you click this button and you go into this mode once you are ready to read for somebody. When you are the person reading for the person audition, you go into this mode. So Bellhica would just go there. But since I am the person auditioning, I'm going to go back to the main menu. I'm going to go to rehearse now. And I'm going to put in how many minutes I need to rehearse. And let's say I need to do 30. Okay. So we'll do that. So then I click all readers. You can even put in a little description. Hi Bellhica, if you want. And then this is where your documents will be right here. So since I'm an iPhone user, I already uploaded it. So it's already here. If you, if you're an Android person, you download your sides of your phone and then you click this little button, choose PDF. And then your downloads will come up and you click the sides that you are working on. But since I'm an iPhone, my sides are already here. So I press that. So Bellhica is already waiting for me. We've already connected. She's already being very kind and generous with her time. So I'm going to press submit. We already scheduled through the group. So I'm going to hit enter. I'm going to wait for her to connect. And then I'm going to accept over here. And then Bellhica is going to press accept. And then there she is. And then when I'm ready, I press intercession. And now there we are. So let's pretend like we're connecting for this rehearsal slash self-tape. So, you know, you and I would probably rehearse a few times. You can do really cool things on the app. Bellhica can see the sides as well. Correct? Yes, I can see them. Okay, cool. So for your readers, just so that they know, you can zoom in on a script, you scroll all the way down. There's different views here. If you're, you know, if you're rehearsing and self-tapping, most of the time you'll have your sides printed. So you won't need to read it from the phone. So a lot of times I'll just put my phone up here on a tripod like this and just have you as my eye line to rehearse at first. For readers, if you want to see the script a little bit bigger, you can do this, go to full script, zoom in, zoom out. As a reader, if you're having a bad hair day, or you don't want to be seen for whatever reason, you can still read for other people and turn your camera off. If you press turn camera off, I should say Kim. So can you talk about Bellica? Yes. Okay, cool. So Bellica can talk. I can hear her. She could still be my reader in shelf tapes and rehearsals. So we created that aspect so that people can feel a sense of privacy if they want and things like that. You can also flip the camera around in rehearsal mode by tapping in your face. There you are. I'm going to tap my face again and come back. Now it's time to self-tape, right? We've rehearsed a few times. We know the material a little bit, so you're familiar with it, and now it's time to self-tape. So I'm going to press the self-tape button here. Boom, like that. Make sure and read this stuff, people. This stuff is important, especially this first one here. A lot of people, a lot of actors, have 10 million TikTok and YouTube videos on their phone and have very little storage, and then wonder why these files aren't saving on their phones. It's because these files are a little bit larger than just a normal at-home, having your reader in-person videotaping you. It's combining your own video audio file with somebody else's audio file. So just make sure you're not jammed up with 10 million videos and you don't have any room. All right, so here we go. So I'm going to press continue because I've read all that stuff. This is the cool part. You can go front camera, back camera. This is your back camera. There's your front camera, people. So I'm going to do front camera right now. We're going to do front camera. Belly because ready. I'm going to do landscape left, landscape right. For all of you, I'm sure you probably said this in one of your videos, but you always self-tape horizontally or landscape. So you can do either landscape left or landscape right, depending on where your camera is and where you want your camera at on which side. I'm going to do landscape right. So now I am actually in self-tape mode. This is actually taping. Belly because there, you can see the sides on your end, correct? Yes. So Belly can still read for me. And I'm going to drag her around. I can put my eye line where I'm at. Like if I put my eye line over here towards the camera, it's going to look like I'm looking in the lens. So we don't want to do that. We want to move her over here. And then just because, you know, you always put your phone on a tripod, you back up a few feet. So let's make Belly a little bit bigger so that I can get a good eye line on her. Look at that. I can even go full Belly cup. I want to like that. And then also on a tripod, you're going to be a few feet away. So you might need to adjust your framing by zooming in. I'm zooming out. And now I'm going to end this. Let's show your viewers the quality of the actual self-tape. She just read for me, for my self-tape and for rehearsal. All right. There you are. Can you say a few words? Hi, my name is Benjika. I'm going to be helping you as your reader today. Awesome. So Belly cup is my reader. Awesome. Yeah, I love, I love this solution to the dilemma of self-tapes, especially because right now a lot of people that used to hate self-tapes and refuse to do self-tapes this year have, they have had to do them. Something else that I wanted to ask you about this is that anybody can join, right? You don't have to have any kind of prerequisite or anything. If you want to join the group, you can. Yeah. Because I thought this would be especially beneficial for beginner, beginner actors. If they wanted to get some practice and being a reader, you know, and if they're scared to maybe be a reader, they can tell that person that wants a reader, Hey, I'm new. Just so you know, this is, you know, my first time doing this or I am just getting into acting. So I want to help you by being your reader and just learn, learn about, you know, whatever's happening. Yeah. This group is for all people of all levels in this group. We make it a point that everybody is the same. Nobody is better than anybody. Whether it's me or somebody's brand new or somebody that's above me, you know, even a celebrity, we will not allow anybody to, uh, mistreat or think that they're better than anybody. So this group you is welcome and free for all. Um, in fact, we go as far as, you know, we want this community to be a free community. Like we don't make people use the app, but why wouldn't you? I don't understand because you can, there's so many awesome beneficial things that the app does for you, like privacy, like instead of standing on a zoom link and your sides to somebody that you don't know. Um, especially with sensitive audition material, after trade, you upload it to the app and as soon as the rehearsal is done, it disappears. Your reader can't download it. They can't share it. If they screenshot it, we get alerted. They get alerted. I mean, there's so many and they have to click a privacy, um, you know, a privacy policy. They have to agree to it. So we protect material and it's, we created this, uh, this community where people can just jump on the app without having to get a private message. People ask for telephone numbers, ask for emails, you know, all these things. It's just like, Hey, let's jump on the app. I'll see it too. Hey, I'm there. And then also you can message each other on the app. Like right now I'm going to go to my history and I'm going to see you. And I'm going to just say, Hey, thanks for today. And on your phone, it'll pop up. Uh, you got a message for me, right? Let me just see. Did something pop up on your phone? Oh, yes. So yes. So you can message people. Uh, also this is where you all yourself take videos will be at first. The videos will be here. And then all you simply do is just click the video, press, uh, either save to gallery share or edit. Once you save your video to your gallery, which that's probably the best thing to do, you want to delete them from here because otherwise it's taking up double storage. So I already saved that video. So I'm going to delete that. And then also real quick is the reward store. This is where you can find your free prizes. You can trade your minutes in for free prizes. This is our chat room. Look how active this chat room is. These are actors from all over the world chatting, getting to know each other, uh, scheduling, rehearsals, things like that. So that's really cool. And then lastly, I'll show you is our unlimited minutes. Once you sign up, get another actor to sign up using your referral code by simply just forwarding it over to, to, to a friend or somebody. That way you can be unlimited and you'll never lose minutes. Do you see that right there? So that's important so that you never lose minutes. You can only gain minutes that you can use to trade in for rewards and then for longer rehearsals. Once you go unlimited, because unlimited works in the way that you never lose minutes. So if you have 30 minutes, you can do as many 30 minute rehearsals as you want. If you're unlimited. If you have 150 minutes, you can do as many 150 minute rehearsals as you want. If you're unlimited, if that makes sense. So that's that. I think we've probably pretty much went over everything. I'm really grateful for you to, uh, for accepting and such a quick, uh, turn around. Yeah. Yeah. No, no problem. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for being a part of the community and you've already, you jumped in already and helped somebody, which is awesome. And that is just the type of spirit that we, that we love in the group. And you know, this is awesome. You know, the more, the more people we can, you know, show the app to the better for us, for everybody. Um, so yeah, so thanks for having me. Of course. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching. Uh, I hope you guys are able to either try this app out or any other app that will help you with your self-tape auditions and 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, like this video and leave me a comment.