Video Age International October 2016

26 October 2016 V I D E O A G E H ow many viewers can you deliver? How many followers do you have on social media? These are some of the questions commissioning American TV channels ask producers nowadays. And casting agents ask talent the same questions on behalf of producers. “[Today] when producers talk to the [U.S.] TV channels, since now they are not doing promotion for the films, they ask, ‘how can you bring me viewers to our channel?’” Reported Los Angeles-based Chevonne O’Shaughnessy of ACI- American Cinema, who continued: “That is why we at ACI [filmed] the ‘Love Finds You’ books published by Summerside Press. ‘The Love Finds You’ series has 59 books that sold two million copies atWalmart superstores, and the publishing company releases in the U.S. a newsletter to six million people monthly. ACI filmed three ‘The Love Finds You’ books out of the 59 published. “After we made the movies the channel that usually has fewer than one million viewers got 4.7 million viewers with our movies, due to the grassroots campaign we did in-house,” said O’Shaughnessy, then she explained: “The grassroots we do is hitting all the Christian book stores and all the Web moms, both Catholic and protestant that are looking for good movies for their families. Plus, we hit all the dating sites for the romance books.” In 2010, Connecticut-based Guidepost bought the “TheLoveFindsYou” rights fromSummersidePress and three years later it closed the imprint. Now, Guidepost is publishing only through the Internet and a lot of the rights have gone back to the writers. Commented O’Shaughnessy, “I don’t know exactly how many books have gone back. Now George [Shamieh, ACI partner] and I are doing different things, like three bookswithWaldenMedia that are their first TV movies like the ‘Nancy Drew’ series of mystery books. I have Walden Media doing the marketing for us and the books are must-read for girls from 12 to 13 years of age.” Actors are also not immune to the social media yoke. Los Angeles actor Lauren Spartano reported: “When casting series leads and reoccurring characters, producers, studios and casting agents will look at the talent’s social media and base the casting off of who has a bigger fan base to pull in. “Apparently at most levels of castings (co-stars through — more importantly — series leads), it’s written in contracts that the actors have to post updates (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or whatever other social media sites may be currently trending) from the set, and [alert followers to] when episodes and movies are airing. “It’s all about pooling resources and attracting pre-existing audiences that each actor has accumulated via social media. That’s also why many YouTube shows have made it to cable over time. Pre-existing audiences mean easier advertising sales. It forces actors to ‘stay relevant’ and in the limelight, so social media numbers stay up, and work keeps coming in,” she said. However, the spokesperson of a major Hollywood producer commented: “That [social media] question is better answered by a casting director, because [they] are the people who find the actors and then bring them to the producers to audition for a role. The producers then hire the actors based on the quality of their auditions and whether they are ‘right’ for the part.” So, VideoAge contacted New York City casting agent Donna DeSeta of Donna DeSeta Casting, who said that social media is a fixation of younger casting directors, while the older ones prefer to see the actor excel in auditions. Specifically, DeSeta commented: “I must admit, I do not look at the actors’ followers, although I have recently worked with two producers who actually booked actors based on their followers. “In both cases it was a disaster. In one case the role had to be recast because the actor simply was not up to the demands of the role. In the other case the actor dropped out at the last minute. He did not have the necessary discipline that is required of a trained actor. “However, thesewere for leading roles. For non- leading actors the followers or IMDb ranking are not a consideration. For me ‘followers’ are never a consideration, but I am just a casting director who is influenced by talent, not social media.” Then she concluded: “I like looking at an actors’ work, preferably in an in-person, in-the-room reading, or viewing reels that are submitted. My personal preference for finding ‘new’ people is attending theater or live performances.” But,MarcProvissiero, oneof themajorHollywood talent agents, reported that agencies too are pushing their clients to be active on social media “very much [especially] Twitter and Instagram.” New York City-based actor and VideoAge contributor Carmine Raspaolo, commented that in his case “an [Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database] IMDb ranking is more important than ever, even though the ranking changes every time you acquire a film or TV credit. For example, I was number 500,000 a few weeks ago, but because a film I’m in was just released, I jumped up about 250,000. “The ranking on IMDb goes in order of how well known of an actor you are. For example, if Tom Cruise were number one, recently I became number 56,429.” IMDb’s Star Meter leverages the entertainment web site’s 65 million registered users to measure six million people, according to how many times each person is visited. Social Media is Now Above the Line. Producers, Talent Alike Bear The Brunt Product ion Reaches the Web Actor Lauren Spartano ACI’s Chevonne O’Shaughnessy Carmine Raspaolo’s IMDb page “Social media is a fixation of younger casting directors, while the older ones prefer to see the actor excel in auditions.” – Donna DeSeta