Looking for acting jobs usually involves being listed with casting agencies who are professionals in the acting industry whose job it is to be the link between companies who produce TV and film productions or commercials and the actors themselves. You will be depending on your casting agency to find you work and help with negotiating reasonable remuneration with a company once you are hired so it is worth choosing a good agency in the first place. The article below looks at some of the things you should consider when making a choice over which casting agency you should use.
The first and most important consideration is the amount of experience that the agency has had over the years. There are so many new casting agencies on the acting scene now, especially with the rise of internet promotion that it is hard to tell which ones have had the experience to genuinely help you get a job. Casting agents rely on a network of contacts to help them find out where the work is and this takes time to develop. It is unlikely that any new casting agency is going to have the relationship with directors of production companies that older more established companies will have. On the other hand, the more established agencies are also the most popular and you may find that getting the best personal attention by one of the more popular agencies will not be so readily provided. A smaller, newer agency that is only too eager to show that it can do the job might be worth trying as well.
A lot of casting agencies tend to specialise in the sort of productions that they act as agents for. This means that they might be more involved woith TV, theatre or film but not necessarily all three or even two different media at the same time. Just ask what is the area of specialisation and make sure that it is the sort of work that you are interested in.
Even within one type of industry there are a lot of different categories and again you might find that each agency tends to concentrate on certain aspects of that particular industry. For example if TV is considered, then there are reality shows, dramas, documentaries and commercials, just to name a few different categories. Of course there is nothing wrong with trying a few different things out to see what you tend to excel in and what you like doing.
Casting agencies may vary in the way they search for jobs for the actors they are representing. Not all of them have the direct contacts with directors and production houses that some of them undoubtedly have and they may resort to placing advertisements on your behalf in magazines, newspapers and online. They may in fact use a combination of both the direct approach and the indirect approach.
Most casting agencies will charge a commission fee for their services which is a percentage of what you take home. One advantage of this is that if you don’t find work, then both you and the agent are out of pocket, so there is every incentive for the agent to get you work as fast as possible.