Things That Make You Go Hmmm

I ran into an old friend recently. Someone that really helped me begin to navigate the shark infested waters of LA when I first moved here. As always, he had some interesting information regarding the casting process. There is a point to all of this, so just bear with me...he recently helped cast an independent feature that had a decent budget. Decent enough that they were talking to some big name actors. Because of his role as CD (short for casting director for those of you that don't know the lingo) the production company set up an account on Breakdown Services for him. Breakdown Services is an electronic submission service for agents, managers and actors. Basically, they list all the roles for a project, with a description of each character and the agents and managers can send the headshot/resume of actors that fit those roles for consideration. Sometimes these roles are released to actors, but a majority of the time only the agents and managers have access to that information. A local casting director once figured out the average number of submissions for any one role. That number came to roughly 2,000. TWO THOUSAND PER ROLE. And that's just the electronic submissions. That doesn't even take into consideration the actors who don't have someone submitting for them and have to do it themselves. When the agents/managers submit, casting sees a thumbnail of your headshot. There is an option to click yes or no under each photo.
That information I already knew. Cut back to the old friend I ran into. He told me that when the agents submit, a folder is created for that agency and casting also has the option to click yes or no to the whole folder. What does this mean? You can have an entire team of people submitting you for a role and if you're not with an agent or manager that that particular office likes working with, you're not getting seen. Period. I couldn't understand for the longest time why people who gave up their entire lives to move here and do this would give up so easily. But, when you start getting information like this, it shows you that they really do everything they can to stack the odds against you. Unfortunately for Hollywood, all it does is make me even more determined to find the loophole in the system. And there's always a loophole : )