![]() ![]() ![]() Casting directors at Cannon Films, for example, have earned approximately $11,000 as a group in showcase fees-in addition to salaries already paid to them at the film company. The figures are based on an approximation of earnings (using the standard fee of $200 per session) of casting directors’ scheduled appearances on various cold-reading showcase calendars. Some dissenting Casting Society members report they were told that any divisiveness on the issue would hamper the CSA’s primary goal-to establish an Academy Award for casting.Ĭalendar estimates that certain casting directors have earned large sums since the SAG-AMPTP contract was signed last August. Many actors, agents and even some CSA members regard the teaching designation as a sham, claiming the CSA invented it to prevent negative perceptions of casting directors within the industry and to protect their showcase earnings. ![]() However, CSA members had already been boycotting the $50 showcases for a year prior to the contract negotiations. CSA officials insisted that those showcases were, in fact, “classes” and casting directors were “teachers.” Hence, their right to collect fees.Ī second type of showcase, which paid casting directors only $50, was the only one affected by the ban on fees in the final contract. CSA officials claim the word was a misnomer when used to describe the kind of event that paid casting directors $150 to $200 to attend-the primary target of SAG’s efforts. The Casting Society guidelines forbid casting directors to take money at showcases, but the CSA also changed the definition of the word showcase. Instead, SAG accepted a less stringent producers’ counterproposal for regulating showcases-a proposal that had been drafted by CSA. SAG wanted to regulate, if not ban, fee-paying to casting directors at showcases and proposed as much during its contract negotiations last year with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Talent agents demurred because their clients might lose work. Although the CSA has publicly postured itself as a leading force in responding to SAG’s complaints about showcases, its officials have fought most attempts by the actors union to ban showcase payments to casting directors.Ĭalendar explored the issue of showcasing in interviews with more than 100 actors, agents, casting directors and guild officials.įew individuals wanted their names used: actors, because they feared that being quoted-even innocuously-in this article would mean they would “never work again” casting directors generally stayed anonymous because they feared alienating the powerful Casting Society of America. However, the Casting Society of America has taken a more curious stand. It’s a job that casting directors are already paid by producers to do, they said. They said in interviews that they think it’s unethical to take money from actors (although the money actually comes from a third party, the showcase operator). Many casting directors agree and shun fee-paying showcases. One anonymous letter writer to a Hollywood trade newspaper suggested that showcases were not unlike “a job applicant putting $200 in an envelope, attaching it to his job application and passing it to the personnel director.” An estimated $500,000 ended up in casting directors’ hands. Last year, approximately 10,000 job-seeking actors in Los Angeles paid more than $1 million at about 3,000 individual showcase sessions, according to estimations made by Calendar based upon weekly showcase schedules and interviews with showcase operators. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and many actors deplore such a practice as being exploitative of actors the Casting Society of America (CSA), a national professional group of 185 casting directors, calls the practice educational.īut other actors say they pay for these showcases so that casting directors may see their work and, hopefully, call them in the future to audition for a role. At these sessions, actors pay the showcase operator (usually another actor) so that they may perform a short scene from a TV series, a play or a movie before a casting director, who is paid to attend. ![]() Nowadays, job-seeking actors can meet many Los Angeles-based casting directors at operations known as showcases-as long as they’re willing to pay for it. ![]()
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