This might be a good Your Turn. You know how you put out the breakdown for Another Harvest Moon a while back and it’s not casting [non-names] until August? Well, you know how people with tape (on the Actors Access system) show up earlier in the list than people without tape? If someone who had no footage adds footage AFTER submitting (or deletes the headshot they submitted, for that matter), does it re-order the list the next time you go to view it?

Thanks! 🙂

Great question! I went directly to the source on this one. Here’s what Gary Marsh, owner of Breakdown Services (and, therefore, Actors Access) had to say.

The system wouldn’t re-order the list to reflect changes in video status because it only bases [the ordering] on video that was submitted at the time of that original submission. As one of our tech guys told me, “An actor could have 100 videos, but if they do not submit video along with the submission on the role, they will not be ordered with preference like that.” Besides, if an actor added two or three or more videos, how would the system know which of those videos to make available to any particular casting director?

And here is what Bob Brody, general manager of Showfax (and every Actors Access actor’s best friend) added to the discussion.

Unlike photos, you must select the video or videos that you wish to make available to casting for viewing. If you have a video you don’t want casting to see among your collection (for whatever the reason), if casting views your additional material, they won’t see listed the video or videos that you did not select to include. Whereas, with photos, casting sees all you have (via who made the submission; actor via Actors Access, manager, agent, etc., if they choose to view more pics other than the submitted thumbnail).

As for the non-video part of your reader’s question, YES, the photo you submitted will remain with the submission even if later on you decide to delete that photo from your photos.

So, there you have it!

Now, I’d like to note that there’s a pretty big assumption on the part of the actor, in this particular scenario: That casting is going back through already-viewed submissions. Hate to tell ya… we’re probably not doing a lot of that. As the submissions come in, we’re viewing, marking, and ranking “selects” among them. Any “going back through” that we do is going to be among the selects we’ve already ranked. And that means we’re not likely using the system-default ordering view (which puts actors with video footage ahead of those without it) but instead viewing our “1’s, 2’s, or 3’s,” etc.

Yeah, I won’t be scheduling sessions for actors who don’t fall into our “name actor offer” period of casting going on right now until August, but I’ve already created my “must-see” list, long ago. As Bob Brody mentioned in his excellent POV column a while back, actors need to submit early to get on our radar. For some other great Actors Access tips, see this cool thread going on at the Showfax.com discussion board.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000733.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.