Men who look like Vikings, middle-aged women who can play the violin, veterans who look like gauchos, red-haired models or young people who are over six feet tall are some of the very specific requirements that may arise to work in advertising. Until now the search for people with these or other characteristics was the task of casting companies, modeling agencies or production companies. But the requirements often do not match the characteristics of those who are part of the databases. That's when they resort to calls through non-traditional means, such as social networks, or they go out to look for them in public places.
Casttor was created to simplify this search. It is a platform to search and manage talents or common people who want to work in audiovisual productions, events or promotions.
It was developed with its own investment by Inmind, a national software company specializing in mobile applications, which was born as a final year project of Systems Engineering, pre-incubated in the CIE-ORT.
Casttor has been available on AppStore and Google Play for a month now. When you download it, you must complete basic data and others associated with physical appearance (age, height, musculature, skin color, hair and eye color). You must answer if you have some kind of talent; if you have a particular style; or if you practice sports. In addition, current photographs are requested.
Juan Arrillaga and Omar Saadoun, partners with Julio Ruiz, acknowledged that the "big challenge" they have ahead is to generate "a good community" in which many people participate and where the information is "quality". They are not satisfied if someone registers but fills in two pieces of information and doesn't put any photos. They are looking for complete profiles.
After registration, you start to access information about castings. At the same time, you will receive invitations to participate, because production companies and casting companies can filter profiles and call them, if they consider it appropriate.
Preselection
In the case of an audiovisual production, the final selection of the actor or actress is made after seeing his or her performance in front of the camera. In this way, the application does not cancel the work of castineras, production companies or modeling agencies. "The application doesn't work if the castineras and production companies don't feed it. In other words, we don't go out looking for castings, we don't provide that service," Arrillaga said.
However, they did make a call, since they are looking for "the face of Casttor" -both male and female- in order to boost the registration of the first users. And from June onwards there will be new external castings.
The reception on the part of the production companies has been positive, since "they see that it adds up and that it does not interfere in the daily operations". And even, they point out that it is something that should have been working for a long time.
"In Uruguay we are testing, seeing that the model works, that it is accepted, but the idea is to grow abroad". Juan Arrillaga, Partner InMind.
From the Audiovisual Chamber of Uruguay highlighted the work developed by different actors for the "professionalization" of the sector. They pointed out that the castineras are "relatively young enterprises" because in the 90s they only talked about "model representatives", but then new spaces and ways of searching were created. Today there is no data on the total number of agencies and castineras existing, since in addition to the established companies there are freelancers who offer services for audiovisual productions.
Long range
Although the platform aims to "democratize", to allow people to participate in castings who otherwise would never go, both partners recognize that in Uruguay the number of users who register will be limited, so they have as a short-term goal to reach other countries.
In Latin America "there is nothing" similar, because in their search they found some experience of websites, but "it does not work well and is not maintained". Nor did they detect anything with these characteristics in Europe. They did see that there is a similar experience in New York. To continue growing they are in the stage of raising capital either from investors or funds for technological development, and they also plan to grow in services. The application is free and the basic services will continue to be free. In the plans is the development of a tool to coordinate the payment to the actors through the platform, which will have a rating system for both parties involved. This will have a cost for the user.
In addition, they will develop a premium paid version with extra features such as the ability to manage profiles of other family members, whether children or seniors.
Source: The Observer
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