Cinematography for Actors

Cast Me Now: How this AI Workflow Helps Actor Submissions

• Cinematography for Actors

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0:00 | 35:14

Cast Me Now: castmenow.co/cfa 

Are you tired of spending hours submitting to casting calls every day? Cast Me Now founder Shreyans reveals how their AI platform is transforming the actor submission process by automating applications across multiple casting platforms. Learn how this innovative service is helping actors save hundreds of hours while landing more auditions without lifting a finger.

In this enlightening conversation, Shreyans explains how Cast Me Now works by scanning casting platforms for roles matching your specific parameters, then automatically submitting you to appropriate opportunities. Hosts Haeleigh and Indeana explore the platform's customizable preferences, pricing options, and upcoming features including voice agents and a "Finder Rep" tool to connect actors with agents. The discussion also delves into the entertainment industry's slow tech adoption compared to Silicon Valley and how AI might actually increase the value of human performers in the future.

Like, subscribe, and use code "CFA" for a free month of Cast Me Now!

0:00 Beyonce has star quality
0:06 Cinematography for Actors podcast intro
0:44 Onto the episode
0:50 Host introductions
1:08 Introducing guest Shreyans from Cast Me Now
1:42 AI services for actors
2:10 How Cast Me Now helps actors
3:02 Early callbacks through the platform
3:38 The beauty of automating submissions
5:16 Origins of Cast Me Now
7:10 Discovering CFA through AI blog writer
9:40 Learning about the film industry
10:15 Actors' silent suffering
12:10 Entertainment industry's slow tech adoption
15:16 Silicon Valley vs. Entertainment industry
17:48 The "vitamins and painkillers" analogy
20:40 How Cast Me Now's parameters work
22:20 Hailey's swimming audition story
24:22 Customizing submission preferences
26:02 Upcoming features including voice agents
29:48 AI's impact on entertainment industry
33:30 Pricing and subscription options

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For our listeners, CFA’s teamed up with We Make Movies to get you a discount on production management services, including access to comprehensive production insurance and workers' comp for your next shoot. 

Visit wemakemovies.org/insurance and use code CFA23 on your intake form for 10% off your quote.

Calling all actors! Take 25% off your membership at WeAudition with code: CFA25

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Cinematography for Actors is a community aimed at bridging the gap between talent & crew through our weekly podcast & community events. Our weekly show supports the filmmaking community through transparent, honest & technically focused interviews with the goal of elevating the art of effective storytelling.


Meeting Shrayans from Cast Me Now

Speaker 1

Because he's.

Speaker 2

Beyonce-ed us. He's a star. He has the je ne sais quoi. This is the Cinematography for Actors podcast.

Speaker 1

More than a podcast. Cinematography for Actors is a vibrant community devoted to bridging the gap between talent and crew. Each week, our show offers transparent, insightful conversations with industry leaders. We unveil the magic behind the scenes, from candid discussions about unique filmmaking processes to in-depth technical exploration. Join us in unraveling the intricacies of filmmaking, one episode at a time. It's more than just cameras and lenses. We aim to inspire, educate and empower as we peel back the curtain on the art of effective storytelling. Now on to the episode. As we peel back the curtain on the art of effective storytelling. Now on to the episode. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of CFA Podcast. I am your host, hayley Royal. There's another host here. Who are you, hayley Royal? Yes, you are, we're both me.

Speaker 2

We love being the center of attention. We're both actors.

Speaker 1

It's Indiana Underhill over there. Yeah, it's me. We also have a guest Shrayans from Cast Me Now.

Speaker 3

Hey, hey very nice to be here.

Speaker 1

What's up, and we did decide we're going with a single first name only.

Speaker 2

Because he's Beyonce-ed us. Yep, he's a star. He has the je ne sais quoi.

Speaker 1

That's all you're due credit.

Speaker 2

That was my idea I said french term, je ne sais quoi, before this started rolling.

Understanding the Actor Submission Process

Speaker 1

Yes, I know, that's why I brought us back to it fantastic so it's cool because today we have been having kind of like an AI service for actors recording day.

Speaker 2

Yeah, isn't that cool. We started with an app called Raffi this morning that we interviewed.

Speaker 1

They're taking the self-taping drudgery out of the process. Taking the self-taping drudgery out of the process and what kind of drudgery are you taking out of the process with Cast Me Now?

Speaker 3

With Cast Me Now we help actors auto-apply to hundreds of acting jobs every single day. We save them hundreds of hours and get them a lot more additions without lifting a single finger. So we take away a lot of the pains of just scrolling through casting apps every single day. There's like three or four of them, big ones in the US and then what our app does is we pull in your information. We constantly keep scanning for best fit roles across all these platforms and if you find that it's a good fit, we just automatically apply you. If you find that it's a good fit, we just automatically apply you, and the next step for you is really just to get a self-tape email in your inbox. So that's sort of what we started with.

Speaker 2

And you've been using it. I've been using it and you got a callback through it.

Speaker 1

I have had a couple of callbacks through it. Now it's been really great. Honestly, I was so excited to start working with you early on, really before the model was ready even because I was in a place where I felt really comfortable just saying take my profiles, submit how you will and we can tweak things from there. Um, which I think is rare, because a lot of actors are worried about you, you know, submitting to the wrong thing or like looking stupid or looking like they haven't read the instructions. But I was busy with CFA so I was not too worried about it.

Speaker 1

But I want to talk about the beauty of that as well, as far as like what the actor's normal, like daily process is and how you're improving that. Because even though I was saying, yeah, mess stuff up is fine, that process still was taken out of my hands and improved even at that point. So an actor uh, for anyone who doesn't know will wake up in the morning, a working actor wake up in the morning and, like the first thing you have to do. It's basically like emails, like you get in and you go into three, four, sometimes five different online casting platforms where you have a profile, which we have a YouTube video of you doing this from early on at CFM.

Speaker 1

We have a couple of YouTube videos teaching people how to use these processes. But you wake up in the morning and you check for any breakdowns that you may have missed overnight and you scan through every single one to see if you're a good fit. If you're a good fit, you click in to them one at a time. You pick the correct headshot, you pick the resume you want to go with it, you pick the media that you want to go with it and you send it off and that takes five minutes usually. So you're doing that. Hopefully there are like 20 or 30 in the morning and then you should do it twice.

Speaker 1

So you do it again in the evening because there have been new breakdowns that have come out during the day. So you do it again in the evening, and that's. You sometimes submit to hundreds of things a day. So that's just a lot of admin and a lot of sitting at your desk and working and not focusing on your craft. That is stressful, because then you've sent all of these things out and a lot of the time you never get an audition request from any of it, but you still feel the workload you still spend all that time doing all that work.

Speaker 1

So then there's this beautiful app. So how are you pulling things from?

Speaker 3

multiple. Yeah, and maybe to start you, you gave a lot of context and I have to say we were very happy to work with someone like yourself because it's funny. We were experimenting with an AI blog writer and the blog was pulling together acting articles and stuff and it referenced your video. If you're doing casting networks, the same one you mentioned.

Speaker 1

Good.

Speaker 2

SEO. That's just so we know. Like I'm gonna have Lester editor pull a snippet from that video in because it's one of the first months of CFA at my apartment. We were at Indy's apartment. My Emmy was behind us in a box looking at the through the video the whole time as Haley did her casting.

Speaker 1

But I was sat in front of a big bay window because there was good lighting and I was like hi, I'm Haley. I'm an actor in Los Angeles. I've spent years trying to figure out exactly what I need to do to be the most effective working actor. With my co-founder, indiana Underhill, we started a company called Cinematography for Actors.

Speaker 1

And it's such a successful video because so many people are at a loss when they start and stressed out like they're like are we actually going to have to submit to every single possible role? And the answer used to be yes until until until you found our yeah exactly.

How Cast Me Now Started and Evolved

Speaker 3

Yeah. So we started off and, honestly, the way we started Cost Me Now is also very interesting. I mean, we had no idea it would end up this way. But Guru and I teamed up maybe early 2024. And he has a background in entertainment.

Speaker 3

He used to lead product at Spotify and a huge part of his job was to speak to up and coming artists and you know, and sometimes their agents, and that's when he figured out, well, a lot of these agents would rep 20, 30, 50 artists. And we heard stories like I know in my building we have a news anchor who lives there and I was speaking to her and she was like, yeah, I fired my agent like three months ago because he was charging me $5,000, and he was not doing anything. So then we found that out and we're like well, obviously these agents have an inside view of the industry, they have all the connections, they, they're obviously in some way irreplaceable, they're very core to the fabric of the industry, but they're also overworked. They're they're representing a lot of actors. You obviously can't do justice to everybody. You, you have high touch candidates that you well, you have high touch folks that you work with and you have some people who are still up and coming and you, just as a single human being, you're not able to do as much justice to everybody, right? So we understood that and we started off actually trying to build something for talent agents themselves.

Speaker 3

We were trying to build this you know platform that takes away a lot of the admin work out of being a talent agent. So you know that included everything from. You know when an artist books roles, a certain percent of their earnings go to the agent. You know the billing process, the taxation involved there and the split is kind of complicated there. And you know there's the entire roster management component of these things. So we started off with this. But the more we try to reach out to these people, we realized, one, they're really busy. Two, they're not very tech forward at all. It's a very still reasonably in our world it's called legacy. It's like a legacy business where they're still stuck on old systems, like a lot of the agents that we spoke to were using billing systems built in the early 2000s that some programmer built for them, right, and we're like well, this is something that we can help with. But the biggest issue we found is that they were just.

Speaker 1

They just didn't have enough time they don't have the time to switch over, even like Like something like that, like a billing system or a CRM, like the company itself is too busy managing their clients to even be able to have the time to switch over.

Speaker 3

So they have to stick with what they're like.

Speaker 1

This is what works and we have to stick with it, because switching it over is.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So they were very busy. They were like, yeah, we can get on a call with you, we can help you out. It was just like the cycles of iteration were very, very slow, you know, and we're like, ok, this is moving very slowly. We need to like really figure out what moves the needle for us faster. And then we had this entire phase where we sort of revisit. So the reason we started even is they're in tech my background is in technology and finance and stuff is they're in tech.

Speaker 3

My background is in technology and finance and stuff. And in tech. You have a platform it's called levelsfii or whatever, and they have this entire database of compensation metrics for every level of engineer that you are in these industries and it's very transparent. It's very open. There's a community around it. There's a lot of statistics of how people were able to negotiate certain numbers, get more insights, things like that and sort of the vision we started off with.

Speaker 3

Well, can we build something like this for entertainment, because a lot of these actors, a lot of these artists, are underpaid? You know there's a lot of there's no like it's very opaque. You don't know what people are getting paid. You don't know what the benchmarks are. So then we revisited that, right, and then we're like well, it seems like these, a big portion of the actor's day is going in this process and can we fix this?

Speaker 3

And my instance is like no, I don't think we can, and that's what most people think. It's too embedded in the workflow, it's something that cannot ever be changed. This is how it is, this is the quo. Right, like this cannot change and that, honestly, is the mindset for a lot of people in everywhere. Right, because things have been going the same way for so long that disruption is is not the norm. Right, and then we were outsiders. We actually we never. We did not know a lot of these things. So the moment we found out about this, we were like well, can we build some technology that really like works for the artists, like who's suffering here? That was the question we asked.

Speaker 3

Like what is the? So we have this analogy yeah, we have this analogy of vitamins and painkillers. So whenever we're building, like you know, whenever you start a company or tech company or startup, it's like you have these vitamins, it's like, oh, it's nice, I guess it's fine, right, it's cool. Then you have the painkillers that solve a real problem.

Speaker 2

That really like you know what are our vitamins and painkillers. Our painkillers is the film challenge yeah, and fiscal sponsorship yeah.

Speaker 1

And our vitamins are probably workshops workshops and podcast yeah, podcast is a real vitamin, yeah, real supplement, supplement protein shake, you know the life-changing vitamin.

Speaker 2

Yeah, wait can I ask you something yeah the blog writer, thing right yeah, hayley's video can you talk to me more about that? So what happened? It pulled and you looked at the resources that it pulled from when you found Haley's video. Yeah, yeah, can you talk to me more about that? So what happened? You looked at the resources that it pulled from and you found that video.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so in the New York Bay Area tech scene you have all these people sharing all these apps, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah.

The Tech Outsider's Perspective on Hollywood

Speaker 3

And one of them came my way and it's like well, we can improve your SEO by writing blogs for you that are very relevant for your business, right, and improve your SEO by writing blogs for you that are very relevant for your business, right. And I was like, yeah, I'll try it, I'll give it a shot, because we were pretty new back then. It was like I need someone to take this off of me.

Speaker 1

So you were writing blogs for Cast Me Now to get people to be able to find it.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it was called SEObotaicom.

Speaker 1

Oh, SEObotai yeah.

Speaker 3

And it was like uh, I was like sure, I'll give it a shot, I don't mind, yeah, I don't have the time to do this, like, let me just do it. And then, funnily enough, your video must have really good seo, so we picked it up that on purpose.

Speaker 1

Here we are here, we are just indiana and they're typing in the right words. I think I have like my four dummies.

Speaker 2

What's the best SEO?

Speaker 3

Yeah, so that's how, and I went and looked at the blog that it generated and then popped up your video and I was like, well, I really this is great, that's really cool.

Speaker 2

Right AI's learning off of you.

Speaker 1

Honored.

Speaker 2

Really honored. Honored guys.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Fox listening on this video. Thank you, Thanks, Fox, listening on this video.

Speaker 3

So that's how I found out about Haley, and I reached out to you guys on an email that you had on YouTube, which I think was outdated, oh it was Contact Topanga Collective.

Speaker 1

It's still on there, the Topanga Collective. We need to change that. We can't. I've tried so many times YouTube. Please email me because.

Speaker 2

I've tried so hard, maybe mail forwarding.

Speaker 1

We need to turn mail forwarding on. We have mail forwarding on, but the problem is we can't ever change the email that is connected to our YouTube. That's really annoying.

Speaker 2

Anyway, thank you for telling us again.

Speaker 1

Yeah, because we need to do that.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I just have the board over there.

Speaker 2

But okay, so you found that and then you started to obviously build the platform up. What has it been like learning about this film industry?

Speaker 3

Because you're not in the same industry. Yeah, I'm an outsider and yeah, like I was saying so, we revisited our thesis and we're like well, the people who suffer the most are the actors, the artists, right Like absolute bottom.

Speaker 1

You can say that again, right, and we're like the people that suffer the most are actors are suffering they are and it's hard for people to um believe that I think actors are suffering and they're left to suffer because once you make it big, you never suffer again. So it's hard to be like, but there's this whole other class of working actors that are, and the whole reason we're here is the shock.

Speaker 3

Exactly. Yeah, that's what people don't see. The 99% are actually silently suffering. There's a lot of pain.

Speaker 1

I'm silently suffering. Well, because also there's a little bit of You're not silent. There's a lot of shame too, and being like I chose to be an actor. It's hard and I'm having a bad time because it's like, well, do you want to do it or you do, you know, is a lot of that like there's a mindset around that of like exactly that I found very interesting as well, where it's like oh well, this is the way, this is how it is like, just suck it up too bad too bad, right too bad, and we're like yes, yeah, fine, we get it, but like we could do better guys it's one of those, like you said what's been different?

Speaker 3

I think the entertainment industry for well, for some reasons that I can talk about, has been pretty slow in adopting technology yeah, we, we think a lot.

Speaker 2

there's a lot of ai companies that are streamlining different parts of the workflow, not just for actors, but, like you know, imagine and stuff. And the adoption rate is so slow and low, you know, because you have to keep pushing it at people, being like it will make your life easier.

Speaker 3

It's a better way to do it, like you know people find the way they like to do things and like keep doing it that way and it's hard to pick the same for everyone, which is why it's very hard to build a business in this place, right, it's very hard to build a sustainable business for the same reason that it's yeah, adoption is very difficult, right? And a voiceover artist we were speaking with months ago when we, when we started building this. He was like this entertainment space is a small garden with a very high wall to climb it's kind of like an inside.

Speaker 3

Well, I like that you're really coming with those guard that's what we found mr springsteen, yeah, we did find it to be very guarded like. So in tech, right, like in tech at least you know where I come from people are generally very willing like you can, like literally you know that's someone. People hop on a call with you and share. Because I think and this is a little bit of a controversial take- but this is me just like analyzing things objectively Get ready I think there's some sense of an abundance in tech.

Speaker 3

just because it's a new industry. There's like just so much attention with there and there's like there's always a lot like people in tech are like delusionally optimistic.

Speaker 1

There's a lot like people in tech are like delusionally optimistic.

Speaker 3

There's a lot of optimism, yeah, right in silicon valley and you know, yeah, yeah, you see that in people raising money like funding yeah yeah, like in new york city and success, and they don't even have anything that one will take off yeah, there's just a lot of this delusionally optimistic right like and we, we come from that world and then I think when we saw entertainment, we're like obviously it's a very established industries.

Speaker 3

I think a lot of the easy pickings have been yeah you know, trimmed off and uh, there's obviously a lot of competition. This is not to say that there's no competition elsewhere, or in tech or anything, but it's almost like, like you said, it's like this is how it is, this is how you have to do it, like suck it up. It's like it kills the spirit a little bit. Yeah, you know that's what it really does. So I won't say there's a sense of scarcity of some sort, but it's like, yeah, I think people are more guarded, people are more like.

Speaker 3

You know they won't give you too much very easily yeah, and I think that is one challenge that we continue to face, honestly, uh, but that, that, I think, was a stark, stark departure from the style that we were used to.

Speaker 3

So the moment you sign up, you have this auto apply. So we've changed it after we got a little bit of. It's like people are saying, hey, I'm getting submitted roles that I'm not a good fit for, and then I look at their profile and they just haven't set their preferences. So we're like, well, we're just working off of the data we have. You need to be telling us exactly what we want. So the moment you log in and you connect your accounts, you're routed to your auto-apply preferences and you specify just like you would to an agent or like a human being. It's like, hey, I'm based in Los Angeles, I'm not willing to work for roles under $200. I am only interested in, say, supporting or principal roles. Cool.

Speaker 3

Your union status, status which we're great so you can be like you are, are are. We don't have like an intake form. You know, we you have these intake forms that if you're represented by an agent they have you to fill out and they're very long, very tedious and I think our generation, the younger generation, hates that. We don't like fitting out big forms no one likes when we.

Real Audition Stories and App Features

Speaker 3

We know that, right. So we're like whatever, we're just gonna make super sleek, like super quick, right, and uh, we're adding a new feature soon uh, I don't know when, but soon is we're using, we're integrating new voice agents into the app. Uh, with where you know, you click a button, um, you probably get a text or you can do it on your computer where you can speak to our voice agent just like you would converse with the normal human being, and it asks you a bunch of questions and you can just tell it and then our system just knows. It's one of those things where we notice this a lot, where we have actors, obviously a lot of our actors on cast.

Speaker 3

We now our rep. They have agents and Actors are in this mindset that you know well, especially those getting started, is like I like for them, they're the center of their universe and they feel like the agent is like very special, is giving them special service. But it's, at the end of the day, the agent is running their own shop, they're running a business, they have finances, they have a lot of actors, they have to rep, they're doing, they have a lot of other things on their hand.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Until you're making the money. Yeah, your career is your own responsibility, exactly so it's. It's like well, it's great that you're repped, and obviously I think the way we saw the industry is like you sort of need an agent when you get to a certain point. Right, so that's fine. What you also need to be doing is finding every edge that you can to succeed in an otherwise very competitive industry yeah this is a very competitive industry.

Speaker 3

So we have, like some of our power users have been playing like I think you would somewhat qualify as a power user where you were playing around with the preferences, changing you're changing, changing your, changing your parameters, seeing how the our system reacts well, applies you to more roles, less roles, very specific roles, and I think that's where you can build the edge, like we're. You know, we have this amazing tool that we can give you. You know, some people come to us like oh my god, I cannot believe this. I got submitted to like 150 roles just in one week, right, like. And they get like like 20s and 30s of callbacks a week. And that's amazing, right, that would have never been possible, humanely possible, because it's just life Like life comes to you.

Speaker 3

You have a million other things to do. You're not thinking about applying the rules all the time, right? So I think if you consistently are able to offload this after tuning your parameters on the app, I think you can rest and you can work on things that actually matter.

Speaker 2

I'm only gonna do parameters with horseback riding amazing because we're gonna learn horseback riding and I only want to get practice on a horse. That's one of your skills, isn't that?

Speaker 3

uh, yeah, yeah I can ride a horse?

Speaker 1

not well, we're gonna take lessons together. But one thing one audition that I got from Cast Me Now a couple weeks ago was something I have wanted for many years. I can say I'm an expert swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer for many years. I'm confident I can jump in a pool at any second. She's crossing her arms like I can do it at any second.

Speaker 2

You just let me know and I'll do it. I'll jump in.

Speaker 1

If you would like me to jump in the water and do a beautiful stroke, I can, yeah, and I always wanted to swim on screen. I wanted that to be a role. So I got like this great audition that came through. It was a surprise, I hadn't even looked at it, I hadn't been thinking about it and I audition um. It was also the worst audition in my life for other reasons. Wait, I'll tell you guys the story. Um, please, the breakdown said you know that the wardrobe was a tiny bikini that we would be wearing um on the shoot day. And then when I showed up, the woman said and so we're gonna be doing it on our swimming suits. And I had thought before I left the house, maybe I should take a swimming suit just in case. And I was like, nah, they can't ask us to like disrobe on a first audition. And then I got there and everyone was in a tiny bikini and I didn't have one.

Speaker 2

So what did you wear?

Speaker 1

My underwear, which was a really, really old, dingy bra and revealing underwear from Teemu, and Indiana knows this. I'm going to share this with everyone in the world right now. No, I have terrible acne on my butt when I sit for too long.

Speaker 2

I still don't believe it. By the way, I haven't seen that.

Speaker 1

Oh, really bad, really badass acne that day, oh no, so I didn't get the part, needless to say, um Andy's eyes twitch you stressed, about this.

Speaker 2

I can't even imagine what you had to go through that day. It's so wild. It's so nice that you guys are simplifying that process, like because now you can worry about that, your butt symbols.

Speaker 1

I don't have to spend time sitting in front of the laptop doing hours of submissions. She can go to a dermatologist to fix her.

Speaker 2

I have time to walk around and air it out a little bit.

Speaker 3

Yeah, pretty much. I need to add to your preferences. Please apply me to sensitive detergent.

Speaker 1

Sensitive detergent company. The before. It's a good before picture, oh no, oh God. But I want to talk about parameters, because you do set them, yeah, but they're not permanent. So if your life changes, if you join a union, if you become ficor and you can all of a sudden accept non-union work, if you become pregnant, if you age, if you want to, move which we have an announcement I'm definitely not pregnant. Um wow, a flashed before my eyes but, I don't have time.

Speaker 1

Yeah, but those filters aren't permanent though. The filters aren't permanent, so it's not like you're setting it forever and like it has to be perfect, like you can go in and play with those things to see, like are you getting the auditions you want? Are you getting auditions you don't want? Do you you know? Like, are you? Oh no, we're spiraling, we're having we're having a lot of fun thank you for allowing us on this podcast sometimes they're so serious.

Speaker 2

Sometimes we just love hanging out and talking about it. Yeah, it's great okay, what's coming out, so you have the voice thing yeah.

Speaker 3

So that's that's coming out and we've been heads down working on, I think, a feature they're very, very excited about, where it's called find a rep, where we've partnered with somebody just like yourself, uh, who's given us maybe 10 years worth of their data for every you know um agent that they know in the us across different sort of workhorses and segments, and we're like, hey, he's like I am in this business, I want to know, I know where all these agents are going and they are looking for very specific kinds of actors and let's partner and let's do this together. So we're launching a find a rep feature that lets any artist who signs up on Cosby Now connect with you know curated list of agents and we've actually used it's like the whole point of Cosby now is being artist first and using AI to actually flip the script.

Speaker 3

You know, there's a lot of FOMO and Silicon Valley and it's like, oh well, ash is going to be replaced and this, and that I'm actually very we're taking. The more easy this becomes, the more junk that there's going to be produced. It's just going to be a sea of garbage where it's like you're going to be producing a lot of these things that don't mean anything. Right, these things pretty much lack soul. Anyone can do it. The bar for something well-produced goes up really, really high.

Speaker 3

I think there's a use case for it. Like. I think one use case we see is you know, I think there's a use case for it. Like. I think one use case we see is you know, you have these script writers who try to pitch their story or whatever. I think you know, with these AI models, you can build like a quick movie, like a quick hacky movie, where you can feed in the script and it produces a movie that you can show and pitch it in a much more compelling manner. Right, you can have parts of your script that really pop out when you pitch your script, but of your script that really pop out when you pitch your script. But I think that's one use case. I think that is great. I think to some extent commercial casting could use some AI element, but everything else I think it's just like.

AI's Impact on the Entertainment Industry

Speaker 3

I think real actors are going to be like a premium as time goes on, just because the more democratized, just well movie making where anyone can make anything yeah, I think, the barrier to producing really high quality and I think, as as someone who's not even from the space right and is very ai forward and is in the loop about everything, yeah if I go and see a play or a movie or whatever, I actually want to see a human, I want to see the implications, I want to see like you, want it to be relatable.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Everything with AI and everything these models have been fed are sort of perfect images of perfect things, and you know it comes out with all sorts of crazy things. I don't think that's relatable to people, right? And I think there's an element of that. I think that we're going to see start coming up where people are like oh, enough of this, I want to go back to yeah, like normal human I saw last night a bunch of asmr that was made all ai.

Speaker 1

It was just like ai engines replacing. They were like like you said, like ai is gonna replace asmr artists. Yeah, all of all of the videos were like painful for me to listen to. Like it's, it's different, like there's a. You can feel it when it's real. Yeah, yeah the um.

Speaker 2

Do you have um? What is? What is it called like in parameters or your settings? Can you say what words you don't want included?

Speaker 3

yeah, you can like, can like, you would to a human like. Please do not apply me to roles that have.

Speaker 2

Like make me a terrorist or like a spy or something. All of that stuff that's great.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you could do like anything you could think of, like, just like you would tell a human, you would tell our settings and, like you said, like it was painful for you to listen that come. That brings me to another element of you know, while we were building cost me now there were a lot of nuances about the industry or the process that we were just not aware of right, like some, it's like we were working with you hand in hand and you're like, hey, these certain roles that have the word real means real.

Speaker 2

Yeah, if.

Speaker 3

I'm not a real.

Speaker 2

You have equity, I am not. I'm not a veteran Hand in hand. You heard it here. It's recorded man Equity.

Speaker 1

Yeah, how's your cap table looking? We get it.

Speaker 2

We talk off the pot, yeah exactly, but anyway, so real and stuff Well to be fair.

Speaker 3

We did give you free access to the platform for life.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I do have unlimited access forever.

Speaker 3

Forever, forever. Yeah, everything We'll talk after the break. We're going to keep talking.

Speaker 2

Anyway. So the lingo of like real meant video. Yeah, so real.

Speaker 3

That was one example. Then there's the big union thing that I think we had to work together.

Speaker 3

The big union thing, yeah, to work together. The big union thing, yeah, there's all these sorts of crazy like you know, it's like if it's this, then it's that, if you're a certain type of you know SAG, then you can do this, but you can't do that, and these are things that AI is never going to get Like unless you were part of the industry, unless you know you're never going to be able to do it. Know from users like hey, like, why did I? Well, this is a real one. Why did I get? Like? We submitted one of our users to a role for a pregnant lady and she's like guys, why did I get submitted to this?

Speaker 3

I got that yeah and I looked up the breakdown and it said that, um well, pregnant ladies are preferred, but we do hand out. Uh, they can do the belly, yeah, belly. And I was like, well, there you go. And in her preferences it said open to playing roles like young mother.

Speaker 1

That's why she was a partner so she was actually correctly submitted, correctly submitted, but it's like you know yeah, it's difficult yeah yeah right.

Speaker 3

So, uh, we're not perfect either, and I think you know very well that we're not perfect but she says it all the time.

Speaker 2

They're every day.

Speaker 1

Yeah, we're still not perfect she says it all the time, every day we're still not perfect. Waiting for perfection.

Speaker 3

And that's the one thing that I think we are also working on. It's just because we're a small team and we're working on all these features. I think what we want to go back to is there's always this thing in Silicon Valley, and I think it's changing now to some extent just because of AI and everything. But I think the general thesis is that if you build like a great product, and a great product like people will come you know, if you build it they will come field of dreams you like really understand their pains and really build something that gets those nuances and takes it in account.

Future Features and Finding Representation

Speaker 3

Yeah, like it will show, like people will know yeah, and I think we're still getting there. We're not there yet, but I think some of the early efforts of you know, filtering off some roles and like getting this like every day. Every day I get an email like hey guys, I want to submit like multiple reels to uh all my uh applications. I know you submit only one per application, which made life very easy for us.

Speaker 2

Right, right.

Speaker 3

And we have an option that's one or all. We don't have one in the middle and every day I get, every other day I get like can I please do this? It's like is a very heavily requested feature. I hear you it's coming soon.

Speaker 1

Coming.

Speaker 3

You know everyone has their own process that they've been following for many years, so they want to be able to mimic that they want to be able to tune that right, Like someone had all of their work split out into different reels and they submit all reels all the time. That's just how they submit.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And they're like yeah, great, so we have buttons like submit all reels, so that lets you submit sort of everything at once, Everything. And then, yeah, we have the union stuff where you can toggle all of those settings. And there's more that we're coming up with the more we hear from our users on what they want. Basically, but, yeah, I think, find a rep, I think is the big one that we're coming up with and we're selling it at. Well, the point is to be we're always artist-friendly, so, and we're selling it well, the point is to be we're always artist friendly, so it's like the price point, like it costs me now, right now, is $12 a month. It's like. It's like, well, maybe like just below the price for coffee in LA or New York City and that's for unlimited, unlimited solutions, the highest tier, so as many as you are a fit for per your parameters.

Speaker 3

They'll submit you for all of them, and our basic plan is five dollars a month, which is insane. We probably, at some point we're going to start offering that for free forever which we want to soon basic is how many submissions five a day

Speaker 2

five a day and how and what, and they can use our code too, right?

Speaker 1

yeah, we have a code.

Speaker 2

You get a month for free amazing and we'll put that in the show notes. Yes, please use the cfa sign up and how can they find you cast me now ask me now, dot co co. Love that easy, awesome trans. Thank you so much for coming in today and being here for one day in la with us before going back to new york. Um, he loves cast me now it's saved.

Speaker 1

It saved me so much time, and so I can spend my time working on CFA for you community programs, workshops, podcasts, raising money send in those emails yep alright, bye. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 4

Bye, shreyan, thank you, thank you Join us in bridging the gap between talent and crew. Start by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on vendor discounts, community events and new podcast releases, and educate yourself through our free course releases on YouTube. It all starts at cinematographyfractorscom and, if you like this episode, consider leaving a review to make it easier for other listeners to find us.

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Haeleigh Royall

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Indeana Underhill

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