[NEohioPAL] Casting agency can of worms I opened....

[Alan Tuskes]

I guess I opened a big old can o’ worms when I posted my opinion (and that of SAG-AFTRA) about the posting I made about Cleveland Style Casting charging for the privilege to audition for a project, It turned into a debate that Fred should or shouldn’t screen all such postings, which it shouldn’t have.Sorry, Fred. That’s not possible on a free forum such as this. It does allow us to make people aware that there are “agencies” that try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, and the vigilance of the members who know better can point out that this is not right.

>From the Cleveland Style casting website, your membership gets you:

Basic Club Membership In addition to allowing you the opportunity to register with Cleveland Style Casting, we will also ask if you would like to become a member of our exclusive Cleveland Style Casting Club.  Club membership is $54.99 annually and allows you to take advantage of discounts and services that are not available to non-club registrants. Benefits include:

1.  Private audition times for exclusive CSC projects.
2.  Special invitations to CSC Networking events and engagements.
3.  Exclusive pricing on workshops and classes.

I can understand the discounts on workshops and classes, although I have never seen workshops or classes EVER being offered on their site, outside of headshots, which are available through Tina Hobbs’ makeupbar website (and I, personally, was not impressed by those, but that’s my opinion) and the only networking event, a December 13, 2012 Holiday Mixer, was open to all. So what is the advantage of the annual fee? The private audition times for “exclusive CSC projects”. Really? In my experience, the casting agent is NOT in the business of making casting decisions, production is. The casting agent looks at their roster, and forwards info about people who may fill the role to production to look at for consideration. If they have people who are particularly strong for that role, they may ask them to come in to tape something, but that would be a private audition time regardless, which every talent agency does anyway as part of their service WITHOUT CHARGING THEIR TALENT!!! Then, if talent is cast from someone from their roster, they negotiate with the producer the best rate for the talent, and make their percentage off their best negotiation. That’s the way it works. I’m guessing that CSC doesn’t know that, and they hope that nobody else does, either.

You may want to check out somebody lie The Talent Agency instead. You can submit through their website, and they don’t ask for a dime to be considered. If you are looing for experience without necessarily being paid, Ray Szuch’s North Coast Casting is a great place to check out. He opens his doors to any producer, no matter the budget, and does what he does for the love of film. I am not affiliated with either of the 2 entities I mentioned, but have worked with both before, and never heard complaints about either from anybody.

Spoke my piece. Good night.

Alan


Alan Tuskes
Cell phone 216-701-9192
Special Make-Up and Creature FX /Visual Effects
www.creaturecorps.net
www.kurtzmaninstitute.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20130103/58ec15ea/attachment-0004.htm>