How to Get Cast (in a CamLock commercial)

Are you an actor, voice over actor, or interested in these roles?

Do you want to get on a CamLock Commercial set or cast by other production companies?

The first thing I want to note about commercial film production is that the production company and the director do not have final say in who is cast. To understand commercial casting, you need to understand the Agency and Client model. The Client will hire an Agency to handle the creative, strategy, and/or media buy for them, but ultimately the Client has final say on the assets that go live. And yes, the Agency and Production Company both have a lot of influence on what will ultimately get produced, but final approval comes from the Client. So what does that mean for you? Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how great of an audition you had, how much you vibed with the director, or even how good of an actor you are - if the client thinks you look a little too similar to an ex-boyfriend they had in high school, they could choose to “Go in a different direction.”

With that being said, how do you make it to the “You’re CAST” email? Is everything hopeless?? Of course not. We are always looking for good actors and maybe you did have that great audition or completely vibed with the director. Maybe it didn’t work out this time, but your name comes up the next time for a quick turn, closed casting. Those relationships don’t go to waste and great auditions are remembered.

There are three main ways that we cast at CamLock. 

1. Casting Through Official Channels (i.e. Casting Directors & Agents)

2. Open Casting Call via Social Media & Backstage

3. Working directly with talent and/or their Agents (i.e. closed casting or straight booking)

Official Channels

When we have a big project at CamLock with lots of Agency & Client input, we always hire a casting director to handle finding cast. We’ve used Burton Casting, Vicky Boone, Beth Sepko, but there are many different Casting Directors and it’s important to be familiar with them all if you want to get cast through official channels. Represented talent in Texas typically will work locally in the three major cities (Dallas, Austin, and Houston) if the project is non-union and the rate is reasonable. If you have an agent, make sure that they are submitting you to work with local casting directors. 

On our end, when working with a casting director, we send them specs (i.e. age, ethnicity, gender, tattoos or not, etc.) and they gather self tapes. I know that every actor is totally sick of self tapes and guess what - we’re sick of watching them, but it is honestly a very very important part of the process. The director watches every single self tape and makes their recommendations from there. 

The first step for being considered for these types of projects is to gain representation if you haven’t already. Your agent would then be able to help you land these roles. If you don’t have representation, it is hard to be cast through a casting director, but not impossible. An easier avenue would be to respond to Open Casting Calls (see below).

We do have some tips though for landing more and better roles through self tapes. Check out our blog on tips for giving yourself the best possible chance of getting cast through self tapes.

Open Casting Calls

The best and easiest way to land your first gig with us is by submitting to our OPEN Casting Calls. This is a super common way that we get to work with some fresh faces.

We list all open casting calls first on our website, and then submit them to Facebook groups like Texas PAID Crew and Casting Calls and list them on Backstage. You can follow CamLock Casting on Facebook to keep up to date on casting calls or CamLock Films on IG to keep up to date with the general happenings at CamLock.

There’s a couple of things that will make you stand out when submitting to our open casting calls and some watch outs - 

Do:

• Read and follow the directions on the casting call. We never include superfluous information.

• Respond in a timely manner if/when we reach out with follow ups. Don’t make us nervous!

• Keep track of the casting calls you’ve submitted for. There’s nothing like “What project is this for?” that makes us feel like you’re mass submitting for projects (which you very well might be!)

• Generally take a little bit of time to make sure that you’re within the demographic and are submitting accurately. We get it - we typically are only casting one person and many many folks are submitting, so it can feel like entering a lottery, but I can tell you that we disregard over half of submissions simply because they didn’t follow directions, have a bad headshot that we can’t show a client (mirror selfie, I’m looking at you), or aren’t in the right demographic. The people we do end up casting always have a great first submission.

• Keep on submitting. Just because you didn’t have success the first time, doesn’t mean that you aren’t right for the next project.

• If you’ve worked with us before and you know us personally (you know who you are), please still submit! We want to work with you again! We need to give our clients options and we have a big network of talent, but you’ll be at the top of our recommendations list if we already know that you are great. Just because we didn’t reach out directly, does not mean that we don’t want to work with you. There could be many other reasons - we’re not sure you’re available, we don’t know if you’re open to the rate / terms offered, or you just may not be top of mind when we’re making the casting call. Please don’t think it’s anything personal. We always love seeing familiar faces!

• Hold our shoot dates for about a week after submitting. If you haven’t heard from us in about a week, it’s probable we’ve moved forward with someone else. 

• If your availability changes, please do let us know ASAP so we can remove you from consideration.

Don’t:

• Submit if you aren’t fully available and interested in the job. *We will not consider you for the next one if you burn us on this one*

• Submit if you don’t match the demo. It’s a waste of your time and ours.

• Email us or DM us - Unless you have a question that is not answered with the casting call or trouble submitting, we will disregard any attempts at contacting us outside of submitting for the casting call. 

• Follow up if we haven’t reached out. We will contact you if we’re interested. 

  • Unless your availability has changed. It is fine to email once and say “I have another job looking at the same dates and wanted to check if I’m still in consideration.” Checking in multiple times is ineffective.

• Submit a headshot that doesn’t match your current appearance. Please make sure it’s reflective of how you currently look and your current age. Please no headshots of the YOU that is 15 years younger with hair!! And if you frequently switch up your hair or have gone through a drastic change recently, it’s ok to submit an old headshot as long as you also include a current photo. 

• Email directly or submit a general contact form on our website. When I’m casting for “25-35 man, any ethnicity, with no hand tattoos” in two months, I will not remember you exist. I won’t search my email and I definitely will not look at your resume. 

We get hundreds of submissions for every casting call and yes, we do go through all of them. With that being said, just because we didn’t reach out for a callback on this one, doesn’t mean that you aren’t right for the next one. Please keep on submitting. We do keep a record of everyone who has submitted in the past, so once you have submitted once, we do have your info on file for future projects. Please though, continue to submit! We want to ensure you are available, willing & interested in the project, and that you are top of our minds as well!

For voice over, we have a form you may submit with your demo anytime - https://airtable.com/appeREB0aZ1256olQ/pag23ycew9HQ0nWmi/form

But Morgan, how do I know if I’m just submitting for no reason and I should stop because I’ll never get cast? Well, I do think there is a project for everyone, but if you’ve submitted to 5 CamLock projects where you are in the correct demographic (i.e. you aren’t a 45 year old man submitting to a 6 year old girl casting call), and you haven’t received any follow ups from us - no requests for more info, confirming availability, or requesting additional tapes, consider taking another look at the material you’re submitting. Maybe your headshot is not the best - selfies in the mirror will almost never cut it.

Check out out our other blogs on headshots and self tapes to learn more about this!

Closed Casting Calls

More than half of the projects we produce are through a closed casting process. This is where we either already know who we want to work with or have an idea of a couple of actors who would be great for the job and we work directly with them. Usually these are people we’ve worked with before or seen in other projects. Unfortunately this type of casting process is tough to get involved in if you haven’t worked with us before, but we do often ask other actors, directors, and producers for recommendations, which we take very seriously. For this reason, your reputation is EVERYTHING. If you are easy to work with, reliable, a good sport, and have good rapport with other folks in the business - even if you’ve never submitted for a casting call, you could still end up on one of our sets. And conversely, one bad word from the right individual could preclude you from working with us. 

Even with these types of casting calls, we still need to get approval from the Agency & Client. We always give a couple of options here, so even if you’ve worked with us before, best practices with headshots and self tapes still apply!

Do you have any tips and tricks? Was this helpful?