By Jenn Marie
At some point in time, someone thought it would be a good idea to line up a whole bunch of girls in one room and pick through them to find the best fit. I am guessing the idea was that if you kept it impersonal, booking agents could pick the best girl for the job and everyone would have an equal shot.
That would be nice if it were true.
Casting calls, or better yet cattle calls are actually a huge joke. They involve long lines of mostly unqualified people waiting around to be glanced over for a few moments. If you have ever been to one, you may immediately wonder how in the world anyone could choose from the hundreds of potential models that show up at these things.
They don’t.
In almost every cattle call, the models have been pre-screened or even pre-chosen prior to the event. Sometimes, the pre-screened model will show up at the casting call, just to look legitimate, but you can trust that she won’t be hanging around long. The real candidates are typically seen first and dismissed, or arrive late and whisked through nonchalantly. They don’t spend the hours everyone else does because they have already been chosen.
That is why it is crazy that these cattle calls even exist in the industry. Everyone knows that the talent does not come from them and that they are a huge waste of time. Yet, agents continue to send people to them, and young hopeful models continue to show up at them- fueling the lie.
Get caught up – believe – it’s only costing you the time you could have spent finding real work.
If you buy-in to the dream of getting booked from a cattle call, you are endorsing the industry’s disrespect for an actual model’s time and ability.
A working model should never have to spend 2-3 hours waiting to be considered for a job that doesn’t actually exist. If time is money, how much should the time wasted by the model at these things be worth? It is very clear that for those that orchestrate these pretend work opportunities it’s not worth much.
