Casting directors see both sides of the table nobody else does. Auditioning or casting a project? Ask a CD on HAL. Are you the CD? Get paid answering these.
A person, not a performance: specific choices, real listening, and the sense that you'd be easy to direct for six weeks. Talent gets a callback; talent plus zero drama gets the booking.
Bad audio (worse than bad video), reading TO camera when the scene isn't direct address, apologizing in the slate, and 4 takes stitched together. One clean take with a choice beats a highlight reel of hedging.
Do good work where CDs actually look: reputable showcases, well-cast indie shorts, casting workshops taught by working CDs (the legit ones), and targeted, rare, professional emails when you genuinely fit a project — not newsletters.
Breakdown goes out, agents submit (hundreds per role), CD selects sessions, callbacks with producers/director, chemistry reads, then offers through business affairs. The actor sees 5% of a process that's mostly negotiation and list-making.
Truthful credits (CDs verify), real training with named teachers, actual special skills, and current photos. Padding gets remembered the wrong way — a thin honest resume with strong tape outranks an inflated one every time.
Write a specific breakdown (age, essence, one line of inner life), post on Actors Access/Backstage, watch tapes for behavior not line readings, and always do a callback with direction — how they take an adjustment IS the audition.
The honest ones are classes, not job interviews — and New York regulates pay-to-audition hard. Take a workshop for the craft feedback from someone whose taste you trust; treat any promise of bookings as the red flag it is.
Prepared, on time, no excuses, takes adjustments, and — underrated — good in the ROOM: kind to the reader, no post-audition spiraling emails. CDs build stables of reliable people; being one is a career strategy.
Specific enough to be castable this year, loose enough to grow. Know the 3 roles you'd book TODAY and market those relentlessly — range is what you show after they already know why to call you in.
The CD works for the production, finding actors. Agents (franchised, ~10%) submit and negotiate. Managers (~15%) guide careers and open doors. Only one of them is the buyer — treat CDs like clients, not gatekeepers.
Specialists on HAL set their own rate and schedule. Move the sliders.
Show real expertise — no audience needed.
Set your rate, categories and availability.
HAL routes people to you and handles payment.