X University is in the Dish With One Spoon Territory. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect.

LAnd Acknowledment

Credentials

Lindsay holds a Bachelor of Journalism from X University.

Experience

This research is the first of its kind, as most existing research on “film casting” is dedicated to the Fabrication and Processing of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) Dispersions, a “process [that] involves coating a layer of PTFE dispersion on a metal or polyamide carrier, followed by drying and sintering the coating,” (Ebnesajjad, 2015). This research will therefore set the tone for all future papers on the casting industry and implementation of technology into the audition process.

Thesis

The casting department has fallen behind in the development of the entertainment industry due to being under-appreciated, which has exacerbated long standing issues between decision makers and marginalized communities. Creating an all encompassing application portal that feels comfortable to talent, representation, and the modern casting director is essential in the future of creating quality content.

Research

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, first this paper curates a collection of articles (n=46) relevant to the casting process. PRISMA dictates a four step process to choosing literature – identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion. These steps were completed independently by one researcher.

In short, this review includes 46 English articles related to the casting process, identified through one (1) of 10 combinations of search keywords.

There are seven topics of interest in the casting process that came up throughout the literature review. They are:

Existing Casting Platforms

Launching the careers of actors and performers since 1960.

Backstage

While scrolling through the active listings, it is easy to see that Backstage posts for a wide variety of projects – paid, unpaid, scripted, documentary, reality, musical, etc.

Backstage is the epitome of quantity over quality. The site is not focused on one particular issue, it covers casting of film, TV, theatre, live performance, social media campaigns, hiring crew, writing magazine articles, etc. The site boasts the large number of projects listed, but from my experience, most of the projects are lower paid or are acting-adjacent positions – like hosting classes for kids.

The site also advertises a large number of users, but it is evident that some profiles are not up to industry standards – some headshots contain only inanimate objects and age ranges span multiple decades.

Committed to providing services that make the casting process seamless for Casting Directors, Talent Representatives and Actors.

Breakdown services

Breakdown Services and the mirage of other companies under its umbrella are very outdated in terms of design. I was also taken aback by the ads – they are jarring and it feels strange that they bounce between Breakdown Services advertisements and paid advertisements, as seen below.

All this being said, the site is easy to navigate as the header menu lists all the options you may need.

Breakdown Services does a lot. They are established with large networks, which affords them a lot of traffic, and  they have a wide breadth of topics and tasks covered by their umbrella of websites – something for everyone. However, this is not always a good thing, as having to bounce between different websites is one annoyance this project is trying to solve. 

As well, the design of the site needs a facelift – it feels like working on a website from the early 2000’s; it’s definitely workable but it is not pretty.

Easily build online casting forms & auditions, collect submissions, and manage applicants securely in one place.

Casting Crane

Casting Crane has an attractive colour scheme that is easy to look at for long periods of time, which is important for the casting director so they don’t get burned out while looking through applicants. 

The design of the site is intuitive with big buttons and large writing. It is easy to navigate from the main page to building a new casting call, viewing existing casting calls, or looking at applicants. 

Casting Crane is user friendly, it keeps the process smooth and simple – but it has its pitfalls and limitations; primarily, the presentation of information is text heavy and would be perceived better if it was more visually appealing. Its barrier to entry is low, which makes it approachable for industry newcomers but there’s potential to merge its style of application with a backend that is more similar to Breakdown Services, allowing for more options and functionality.

Social Media

Social media apps are abundantly popular, worldwide. Statista reports Facebook alone checks in at almost 3 billion active users a month (2021)!

We learned from the projects listed on Backstage, sometimes actors are considered for positions in social media content and there is  increasing crossover between content creators and actors – Awkwafina, for example, was a sizeable YouTube rapper even before her breakout roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8 (Gallagher, 2019).

However, the overlap between personal and professional relations on social media can land users in hot water; “Twittergate,” (McGowan, 2011) is just one example of this

For these reasons, I will be using social media sites to inspire the look and functionality of my prototype.

When deciding what social platforms to model my prototype after, I was quick to realize Facebook is undefeated. Statista has named Facebook the Most Popular Mobile Social Networking App as of 2019 in the United States (2021), the Leading Social Media Website in Canada, based on share of visits 2021, the Leading Social Network by share of website visitors in the UK in 2021, and the Most Popular Social Network Worldwide, ranked by number of active users (2021). 

Not to mention, I have personally used Facebook as a tool for casting national and international projects for companies along the ranks of:

In my experience, the specific elements of the app that work for casting include: 

• The ability to share the post 
• The ability to comment on a job post and tag people you think would be interested
• The ability to advertise the post natively in the app

In addition, I have seen talent use social media sites in the following ways: 

• Forum-like conversations and advice for newcomers in the industry 
• Finding scene partners or readers for self tapes
• Posting reels or performance videos for competitions or participating in monologue slams via the live function
• Streaming live performances, such as plays – one fun example is Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical (2021).

Social media is a huge craze – mostly thanks to Facebook – and it would be negligent to disregard its popularity and familiarity when creating a new virtual community.

Dating Apps

Although mobile dating apps originated in the early 2000’s for the LGBTQ2s+ community, the 2013 release to Tinder is credited for ushering in a new era of virtual romance (Fetters, 2018). In America alone, 12% of the adult population credit their marriage or a long term relationship to dating sites and apps (Anderson et al., 2020). In Canada, according to eHarmony, 20% of current committed relationships began online and in 2015, 7% of couples getting married met on a dating website (2021). Being a frequent user of dating apps myself, it was a no-brainer to look to them for inspiration.

Users

When thinking about who uses a casting application, you must consider every step of the process:

1. The Casting Director will post the project
2. Agents will submit their actors or unrepresented talent will self-submit
3. The Casting Director will narrow down the submissions and share the shortlist – sometimes referred to as a “deck,” with production, creatives, and if it’s sponsored, the brand.

It is evident though that the casting director uses it the most.

App Suggestions

Mobile Swipe

One of the reasons dating apps are so popular is because they have a game-like swiping function (Abolfathi & Santamaria, 2020). It is the swipe function that engages me when I use them. In fact, I get so much more enjoyment out of swiping on dating platforms than I do surfing through headshots on any existing casting platform, it is the inspiration behind this entire project.

It was my goal to create an easy browsing feel for looking through headshots that included the swiping function. A prototype is featured below:

Deliverable #1

Deliverable #2

To add your name to the above directory, simply fill in the form below!

Profile Tags

We have learned it is important to cast actors from marginalized communities in order to build an audience within said community – more colloquially, representation matters.

The profile tags can be used for declaring your sexuality, gender, disabilities, or any other important information. By creating a noticeable reminder of people’s identity, if one chooses to declare, it is my hope that producers will be more conscious of the diversity of the people they are bringing in.

Non-Traditional Casting as a tool

Although non-traditional casting has always existed, it’s more of a way of working than a tool. I suggest we change that. If you are dedicated to a certain style of casting, I believe it is beneficial to share that with talent at the application level.

By allowing talent to sort through the casting calls, based on the type of casting, it will ensure the talent seeking and applying to your projects are excited about the type of project it is. 

Diversity Ratio Warnings

Combining non-traditional casting with the topic of race, I suggest that when casting a project as open or open race, having a warning appear if the shortlist is heavily skewed in one direction, encouraging more diverse options. This will not only gamify the process, by giving the user a goal, but will help eliminate accidental biases.

Reporting and Blacklisting

There is a lot of damage between casting and talent, and the industry’s reputation is going to take a while to rebuild. One step in the right direction to be the ability to report or blacklist someone from appearing in your future searches. Both on the talent and casting director side. 

Since neither of the existing platforms touch on these issues, I look again to dating apps. Tinder has the most in-depth reporting experience, allowing you to be specific about the issue at hand, as seen in the following screenshots.

AI Bechdel Test

The topic of gender in casting is two-fold; the casting side and the actor side. For the former, other than building my own resume and supporting the projects of other womxn in casting, there’s not much new technology can do to get more womxn interested in the casting.

For the latter, I suggest an automated script reader to run a Bechdel Test. To pass the Bechdel test, the production has to meet the following three criteria:

1. It must have at least two female characters
2. They must both have names
3. They must talk to each other about something other than a man

It sounds easier than it is. Here are some films that FAIL the Bechdel test:

I do not believe that female characters are left out of stories purposely, I think it happens out of negligence and naivety. I suggest an artificial intelligence script reader that can pinpoint what characters would need to be written as female to pass. If this process was quick and easy, I can not imagine producers not wanting to use it; I suggest using a gamification tactic and giving out an award or stamp of approval on scripts that do pass the test. 

Preference of Engagement for LGBTQ2S+ Roles

There are plenty of LGBTQ2S+ issues in the casting industry to choose from. One suggestion I have in addressing many of them is using preference of engagement when casting LGBTQ2S+ characters.

I suggest using an algorithm to filter the applications by how closely they meet the character description; if you are casting a trans role, self-declared trans talent will be considered before self-declared non-binary talent, who will be considered before cis talent, etc.

By making it a rule to cast within a marginalized community before seeking talent elsewhere, it will ensure opportunities make it past the first available influencers and create more realistic, well-rounded characters. It will also normalize seeing people of marginalized communities portray themselves in popular culture, which can benefit them off-screen as well; casting trans people as trans people helps combat the notion that a transwoman is a “man in a dress,” whereas casting a cis-het male in a trans-woman role only reinforces that stereotype.

Age Range Limits and Warnings

Age is a tricky subject when it comes to casting. As, actors under 18 have a different set of rules than actors 18-24, which is different again from actors 25+. Meaning it is very important that talent in these ranges declare their age accurately.

After seeing the 50+ year age ranges listed on Backstage, I suggest a max range of 20 years, with a notification for anything over 10 years that suggests they narrow their specs to avoid going for roles they aren’t fit for. I also suggest the ability for a casting director to report back when they disagree with someone’s listed range, prompting an email to talent to let them know they may want to raise or lower their age range, based on feedback.

Algorithmic Sorting

I also suggest algorithmic sorting when it comes to viewing both profiles and jobs. If a character’s race is South Asian, for example, regardless of what races of actors submit, it benefits the casting director to be able to filter the most fitting applications to the front of the list. 

On a similar note, I suggest a separate declaration of what accents talent can speak in that gets factored into the algorithm. This way, when seeking talent for a role with a certain accent, casting directors will first be connected with profiles who have declared they speak in said dialect. This will hopefully combat any misconceptions about broad connections between people’s race and their vocabulary.

It is, however, important to mention that a lot of algorithms suffer from inherent bias from their data sets. Therefore, although I am hopeful for a world where this technology can be utilized, I am aware implementing it at this stage would have a counter effect.

Facial Scanning

One tricky part of casting is making what I lovingly refer to as a “Franken-Family”; casting a group of unrelated actors that look enough like each other that any reasonable person could believe they are blood relatives.

Facial similarity between individuals informs kinship judgements in third-party kin recognition.

(Hansen et al. 2020)

In other words, one’s perceptions of facial similarity depicts whether or not one thinks two people are related. I suggest using a facial comparing software that rates the similarities between actors’ faces and suggests pairings that look more alike. 

Check the likelihood that two faces belong to the same person.

Face++

The system compares the proportions of the two faces and rates them on a confidence scale of 0-100. This process is instantaneous and would take the guesswork out of what pairs of actors would look best together – though of course this is not the only factor to casting.

It is, however, important to mention that a lot of artificial intelligence programs suffer from inherent bias from their data sets. Therefore, although I am hopeful for a world where this technology can be utilized, I am aware implementing it at this stage would have a counter effect.

Conclusion

The modern casting director can no longer sit idly by, allowing our silence to foster complaicancy. It is our responsibility to address the long standing concerns with the audition process and build towards better relationships between all shareholders of a production. One way to do this is giving the process a technological overhaul, using modern technology to mediate the existing issues in the industry, paired with design elements from familiar websites, creating an intuitive application that simplifies the audition process.

Although the last section discussed what technology inspired this project and how it can be utilized to address issues in the casting industry, I would also love to work towards a full-service application that includes calendar integration – something that allows actors to fill in their availability for auditions then put together a schedule that works best for all talent, the ability to go live for monologue slams and other digital performances, forums where people can ask and answer industry questions, the ability to book a reader or shoot a combined self-tape, and other modern functions that meet common needs of both performers and casting directors. 

For the future of related research, I ask the following questions: What does being cast as the main character of a successful franchise do to your image for the rest of your career? What’s the ratio of audition to booking for the average actor? How many roles must one be cast in to be considered a “working actor”? How many roles does the average actor get cast in? How can we further cut down on wasted time in the casting process?

On a personal level, I would like to explore the societal impact of “real people” casting – both from the marketing angle of how investing in your customers can build brand loyalty and how it affects filmmakers in terms of truth in storytelling. 

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Pinterest