May 21, 2012

iActor Gets an Upgrade

by Kyle Rupprecht | Published January 12, 2010

Screen Actors Guild, the nation’s largest labor union representing working actors, recently announced new enhancements to its popular iActor online casting database. The new features allow actors to create profiles that reflect their talents more accurately than ever before. The upgrades also make talent searches easier and more focused—a major benefit for casting agents, producers and others looking to cast their projects.

“iActor is part of an ongoing effort to utilize technology to better serve our members and our industry partners,” says David White, national executive director of SAG. “We will continue to refine our approach and find ways to upgrade the experience, which adds value to the casting process and provides another useful tool for actors to have in their tool kit.”

Steve Graham, national director of digital marketing for SAG, says, “We recognize that the modern casting process has been refined over many decades, and our goal is to extend the best features of time-tested casting methods into the online space.” Continues Graham, “We’re committed to refining iActor on an ongoing basis to support its functionality and position as a go-to source for the entertainment industry.”

The enhancements will allow actors to further personalize their online profiles (which include detailed resumes and multimedia files) to better capture their unique attributes that will influence casting decisions. The changes will also improve the functionality of the site by reducing the number of steps needed to perform common tasks. The enhancements include:

Profile enhancements
• Improves published resumes by providing both PDF and HTML formats for more flexibility
• Offers additional options for actor body type, ethnicity and special skills
• Adds description fields for “voice quality” and “sound-alikes” to voice-over resume
• Adds a new integrated media slideshow
• Updates options for gender
• Adds the ability to create custom credit types for more control and flexibility

Functionality enhancements
• Adds drag-and-drop functionality throughout the site for superior ease of use
• Allows the ability to include a mini headshot on printed resume
• Allows the ability to update business contact numbers within iActor
• Combines “Actors to Locate” with iActor search to provide results for all SAG members
• Adds the ability to publish multiple resumes to public sites
• Changes the way languages are selected; adds options for proficiency and accents or dialects
• Allows additional cross-platform interfaces to share data with third-party casting services

For more information, visit http://www.iactor.org.

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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by Morrie on 1/13/10 at 2:41 pm: This is all great but when is SAG going to have producers and casting driectors who want to use SAG actors only go through them for casting? I’m a line producer and almost every actor trying to make it pays for these silly services instead of going through their union to get auditions.