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I recently saw a weekend workshop being advertised. An established casting director says you’ll spend 4 hours exploring, unlocking, discovering, learning; your auditions will improve markedly; etc., etc. Also, because this CD is well established, you know you’ll be on the coveted short list if you impress him. Learning plus access! The flyer explicitly says the opposite: the usual disclaimers, this is no promise of anything. But 25 actors will see the name of the CD and sense that the disclaimer doesn’t apply to them and/or that this block of time will unlock that one last lock. So they attend.

Let’s do the math. CD Bob brings in 25 actors at $200 a pop, for $5,000–not bad for half a Saturday’s work. And you get to spend 4 hours with CD Bob. 4 hours. That’s a deep connection there. Except.

Except there are 24 other actors there, of varying caliber. The teaching is likely to cater to those of lesser talent. And even if not, they’re all there networking away, too. So you paid $200 for 1/25 of Bob’s attention for 4 hour, so you hired an expert at the equivalent rate of $1,250/hour.

That’s pricey.

One alternative: take some material to CD Bob (on your own or with an appropriate acting partner of your choosing). If his coaching rate is $100/hour, for the same two bills you could get 100% of his attention for 2 whole hours, and both the learning and the networking sides of things are likely to be higher.

To me, it’s a no-brainer that the workshop is overpriced. Furthermore, if you’re dying to give Bob $200 for some reason, this alternative is far better. But I fear 25 actors out there will behave differently, every time.

Dallas Travers has a lot of good ideas for actors. Her latest initiative is a revisiting of last year’s 42-Day Book a Job Challenge. Please take a moment to read that post before continuing here.

[pause while you read]

Okay, you’re back. As you saw, last spring 150 actors under her tutelage found focus for 42 days, took the bull by the horns, and totally beat the odds during those 6 weeks. This is significant, remarkable, worthy of attention. But — and there’s always a “but” — let’s look at the dollars involved. I think I’m going to blow your mind. I think I’m going to blow your mind wide open.

In order to blow your mind wide open, I admit that I’m going to have to make a lot of assumptions about the $$ involved, because I don’t know what these actors did or paid during the 42 days in question. I’m going to try to be open about my numerical assumptions, and open about the precise numbers we know, as well. Feel free to tweak my numbers and redo the math if you know better.

First, assume all 150 actors bought her book at $15. Next, assume 1/3 of them only did the 42-day project, which currently goes for $247. Assume that 1/3 are big fans of hers so they also bought her more-expensive “blueprint” program. I think I heard that it’s about $700. The other 1/3 of these actors probably bought another of her less expensive offerings, let’s say maybe “gold” membership, which goes for $37/month, and let’s say they signed up for 12 months. These are all wild guesses, but I’m guessing that these guesses will yield a fairly accurate total of how much money Dallas made with this program and the additional income for other programs that this program’s success generated.

Now let’s think about other costs to the actors. Assume that the 6-week push included paid casting director workshops. Beyond talking, sharing, manifesting and the like, I really have no idea what these actors did for those 6 weeks, but I’ll assume most of them hit CDWs harder during that time. Now, CDWs can be had for under $30 with careful shopping, but when hitting it hard, you can’t shop around much. So let’s assume these actors paid $50 per CDW, and let’s assume that on average they went to 15 of these paid workshops over the 6 weeks in question. Again, total SWAGs here.

There would be other expenses, too. I’m sure printing, postage, travel and miscellaneous expenses varied a lot per actor, and it may or may not have been significantly higher for these 42 days than the rest of their acting life, but I’ll assume most printed and mailed and traveled more, and I’ll just assume these 150 actors spent — pulling a number out of the air — $100 more per actor during those 6 weeks than they would have otherwise. I could be way off, I have no idea. You’ll see it doesn’t matter much when we do the math.

So much for my assumptions on what actors spent. In terms of income to actors, 47 of them had bookings. Nice. A few might have been lucrative, on-going gigs that paid really well, but I think’s it’s safer to assume that these bookings were one-day jobs at union scale, which is about $800/day. Some paid more, some paid less, but that’s a pretty good assumption. If we don’t take into account a 2nd commission for those with managers and if we don’t take into account taxes for Uncle Sam, we see it’s a pretty generous assumption. Great residuals could boost it further, but that’s never known until way down the line.

Okay, so let’s run the numbers on who made how much money from those 42 days. To repeat, I’m making lots of assumptions here. But I bet I’m not too far off in the aggregate, and even if I am, the principle behind these calculations is still valid.

Actors paid Dallas Travers $15×150 + $247×150 + ($37×12)×(150/3) + $700×(150/3) = $96,500.
Actors paid workshop operators and the casting folk there $50×15×150 = $112,500.
Actors paid Argentum, USPS and Arco $100×150 = $15,000.
Actors received $800×47 = $37,600. Let’s round that to $40,000, just for the hell of it.

So there you have it. Total cost to actors: $224,000. Total earned by actors: $40,000. Is your mind blown?

It’s not surprising that Dallas is excited that she just launched the 42-Day Book a Job Challenge again. The last challenge brought her about $100,000 of income. Of course she’s excited!

I bet the people running workshops around town are excited, too. This challenge is going to bring them about $100,000!

Other people will receive $15,000 in additional business, but they probably won’t be excited about it. It will be more of an every-day nature for them.

Actors are excited about the challenge, too! I know. I talk to actors all the time and if one word describes the feelings they have for Dallas Travers it’s “excitement.” So, an additional 150 excited actors are going to get together for a 6-week push to spend approximately a quarter of a million dollars and in return, they will probably book some awesome jobs and earn $40,000. That is a ROI of so many negative percentage points that I don’t even know how calculate it — but I guess that a negative ROI is what they mean when they tell you to invest in your career.

An additional point I’d like to make is that the jobs booked were jobs that would have been booked with or without the 42-day program. The program did not generate any actor employment, even if it did have some impact on who got the jobs. Even so, I’d guess most of those 47 actors were on the verge of booking already.

Any of the 47 bookers want to weigh in? Better still, any of the 103 that didn’t book? The comments section of my blog is wide open.

Warren Buffet says we need to stop coddling the super-rich. This dude is as rich as they get, and we should pay close attention when he says — stating the obvious — that “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

Wurd.

Dear Casting Networks aka LA Casting,

Let me get right to it: Please include all dates in notification emails that go out from you to actors. Currently, dates for callback auditions and shoot dates are not included in emails that actors get via their commercial agencies, yet this information is known to you and can be viewed manually by the agencies.

If you do not include callback and shoot dates in notification emails because of some business decision, that is, if you are doing this by choice, reconsider that choice! You are doing an immense disservice to the acting community, to the thousands of actors that you rely on to make a profit. That alone should be reason to change.

If it’s for technical reasons, please hire me to fix it. Are you currently understaffed? Is it some other reason? I don’t know, but I do know this: I could fix it easily and quickly, so easily and so quickly that I would be willing to do it for free. You do not have to pay me to fall off a log, is what I’m saying.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to a change very soon, or at least an explanation. The acting community deserves one or the other right away.

Respectfully,

Kevin Ashworth
http://www.lacasting.com/kevinashworth

P.S. In case you’re wondering, yes, I took a very big hit last week because of this issue.

P.P.S. If you don’t receive these notices and are curious to see what they look like, I’ve uploaded a few sample screenshots of emails I’ve received over the last year in this addendum.

A visual addendum to my open letter: a gallery of 4 emails I’ve received via my commercial agency. I’ve removed my info, their info and the casting folks’ info, but you can still see the basic trend.

Upper left. A year ago, callback and shoot dates were included.

Upper right. They briefly switched to a notification system where the subject line gave you all the info you were going to get except by going to their site. On their site currently, “alerts” are prominently featured in red and they are archived … and they have no callback dates or shoot dates listed.

Lower right and lower left. There are 2 iterations of the current version where you get no future dates, just audition dates.

The oldest email (upper left) looks a little clunky and doesn’t have the Casting Networks logo, but it’s clearly got the most complete information. Bring back the information!

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was surprised to find out how important it was to agents and casting directors that such-and-such actor had just worked on this other TV show. It seems to be a very good way to get an audition for an episode of X, to have just shot an episode of Y. Wouldn’t the producers of Y be more interested in fresh faces? Well, it’s not how the entertainment industry works. Or rather, it’s now how society works.

In Job Seekers Find Bias Against The Unemployed, a recent NPR article, find mention of the “numbers game,” which certainly applies to acting, and general discussion of how the working find it easier to find work than the unemployed. Ponder how this is another thing that is not unique to The Biz.

Article Five in my occasional series on things that many people in Hollywood talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities. (For more, see Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.)

Before today, it had been a long time since I washed my car. I’ve never gone anywhere near that long without washing my car — in southern California. It was filthy. It was gross. It had a disgustingly thick film of filmy thickness all over it.

“Oh well,” I’d said to myself. “I’ll save a few bucks, it’s not hurting the car. Maybe I’ll wash it to celebrate my next booking, maybe not, we’ll see.” I didn’t really make a hard and fast promise to myself about that. I’m not saying that. But I am saying this: today I washed my car. Know what I’m saying?

As I flew back to Los Angeles last December, Delta bumped me and gave me a $400 voucher. Which I Tweeted. Which I told myself I wasn’t going to forget. Which I forgot completely, of course, as I bought a ticket several weeks ago.

Well whaddyaknow, late last night I was cleaning — minor miracle — and saw the voucher as I reached the bottom of a pile. Couldn’t believe it! And since it’s about to expire, I quickly schemed to buy a ticket for Thanksgiving. I wasn’t going to travel for Thanksgiving, you see, in order to save some $$$, but my crappy memory ended up serving me well inasmuch I’ll be home for T-day! I am thankful for forgotten vouchers. I am thankful to be losing my edge.

As you may know, Los Angeles has a blight problem: too many billboards. As a counterexample, Santa Monica is a much better city today than it would be if it had LA’s lax billboard laws. Imagine Ocean Blvd done up like the Sunset Strip. Ick! But back in LA, the latest looming evil is projection billboards. Recently, an evil corporation ran tests projecting ads on the sides of large buildings at night.

Oh look, we’ve become the hellish future portrayed by Phillip K. Dick, author of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which 27 years ago was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Dick is turning over in his grave, and crazy replicants like Sean Young the actress not Sean Young’s character may as well be on the loose all over this town. Run, people, run!

Checking receipts, I realized today that sales tax in California has gone up one percent to a whopping 9.25%. An increase in what is obviously a regressive tax is not what we need!