What a fantastic week!
Did non-stop back-to-back meetings with MTV, G4, E!, Style, and Discovery Networks to hook up some cool new gigs for GotCast. Now that everyone's back from the holidays it's getting real busy again.
Hopefully you've seen some of the castings we've been excited about posting, like VH1's "Perfect" and Lifetime's "Style Team". And there are a ton more on the way.
It was also good to sit down with a few of the Casting Directors from some of our past castings and get their feedback on GotCast. Here's what I heard:
Casting Directors love lots of pictures and videos in a profile
- they definitely spent a lot more time on profiles that were loaded up with content.
Casting Directors spent a lot of time just browsing
- they said it was a real easy way to "discover" people.
They never know where they are going to find their next star - anyone is a likely candidate!
What they're doing now is spending time on MySpace, YouTube, and other sites seeing if anything (or anyone!) is cool out there. But it's kind of a cluster, and there's no really good way to see who's really looking for work and who's just posting goofy videos. GotCast is giving them a good way to just sort through people who legitimately have talent and want a shot at Hollywood.
Every production company and network we met with offered to cast on our site, which was very exciting. Now that we've completed a few contests and seen the actual connections get made, people can easily understand what we're trying to do. Our first completed casting, Naureen Zaim for the Get Out show on HD Net, was of interest to everyone because they could see how the site really worked.
And what would LA be without seeing my own share of stars in the process. Sat next to David Spade at Ketchup, passed John Stamos in the hallway of my hotel at the Beverly Wilshire, and shot guns with Constantine Maroulis (American Idol finalist) down at the LA Gun Range (he kicked my ass - much better shot than me).
Of course the highlight of the weekend was hanging out at Les Deux, my favorite LA bar, and meeting up with Jai Rodriguez of Queer Eye (he's effing hilarious) and Brooke Hogan of Hogan Knows Best . In case you're wondering, Brooke really is almost six feet tall before she puts her heels on. She's an absolute sweetheart though.
Somewhere in the process I managed to find a sweet apartment that's about the same price as my house in Columbus at about 1/10th the size! (We're not in Kansas anymore Toto...)
We're on our way to Las Vegas this week for the NATPE convention and to find a fresh stack of new casting opportunities!