Susan Fox
Casting Workbook is looking forward to global expansion opportunities, led by its Founder & CEO Susan Fox, who has been in charge since 2004. Fox talked exclusively with Señal News while on Content Americas 2024 about the industry's evolution throughout these years and the opportunities ahead.
Casting Workbook provides a network, infrastructure, and a suite of actor resources to bring talent up and through the system. In addition to offering a platform for aspiring actors, they also work with production houses, providing a dashboard to facilitate their casting processes. Looking back at the company's evolution, Susan Fox mentioned, "We are proud of being a pioneer in the entertainment and casting industries over two decades, having evolved as a tech company in the industry and expanded this product to around 60 countries."
The platform began offering its services in 2004. "At that time, nobody else was doing it. When we started, they were using fax machines and couriering headshots; there was no video. There was one company in Los Angeles that was spending a quarter of a million dollars a year on couriers.vWhen we came in, we thought there had to be a better way," Fox explained. Today, the industry and its players have transformed and adopted these new technologies, providing insights to develop tailor-made solutions. "We're meeting with content creators and learning a lot about them and, of course, their productions, helping us to understand their unique needs. Based on this, we developed a tool to help them aggregate all of their casting and production into a single dashboard. This helps the decision-making, especially at a time when the ground is moving. We also have the ability to integrate tools already used by the users, like IMDb Pro or Zoom, into the platform and allow them to have everything in one place."
Casting Workbook's revenue model is based on talent, who have to pay a small fee for full access to the platform, including an app they can use to quickly film their audition and send it to their agent or casting agency. However, a free limited version of the platform is available. The company also has a license model for the content creators for the project. Regarding exposure and taking the Spanish-speaking market as a reference, Fox explained, "We have a network of 450,000 Spanish-speaking actors, and we can reach 10 million views a month. This is us facilitating the casting director."
Looking forward, Susan Fox explained the company's opportunities in the Spanish-speaking industry: "We observed over the last few years the content creators moving into Latin America and Spain and saw that they did not have the infrastructure, the technology wasn't there. I realized that we were going to have to build some of the infrastructure and teach, working through the universities and our programs where we bring the knowledge base. So we're really about educating and assisting to bring that in. We do not just come in and have a passing platform; we build infrastructures. We are doing that in Latin America, but we are also learning. Our whole platform was built on listening and understanding the particular needs of each country and adapting the product."
Related to this, the company recently announced the launch of an online certification program aimed at training and certifying casting professionals, which covers essential topics such as casting best practices and casting software and provides working knowledge of exclusive products and services. Graduates of the certification program receive a certificate of achievement from Casting Workbook and are promoted within the platform.
By Federico Martinez and Diego Alfagemez
