Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and blogs are the streets, laneways and hidden passages that create the social media network we have all undecidedly become members of. In today’s society, we are the rock stars, celebrities, models, modern day poets, photographers, filmmakers, reviewers and the critics. We have also become qualified professional voyeurs, but not entirely in a bad way.

About 12 months ago, street casting for a campaign meant physically walking the streets for days searching for that particular look and the chance luck of crossing paths. Today, casting directors have discovered that they can access “virtually” everyone from the very tips of their fingers and without ever leaving the comforts of their studio.

Creating pages for open casting calls on MySpace proved a success with film director Gus Van Sant. Preferring to use “real” people rather that professional actors, Sant simply comments “trained actors lack innocence”. His latest (multiple award winning) film Paranoid Park was cast through setting up a MySpace page. It was a call for males and females aged 14-18 who were skaters, cheerleaders, punks, artists, athletes, leaders, followers, shy kids, and class clowns. A total of 2,971 people auditioned.

A UK street casting agency also found all their talent for the Playstation campaign for a new version of Buzz and NYC street casting extraordinaire Douglas Perrett from COACD uploads all casting calls through their Twitter account. Most mornings, he tweets a meeting point and time call for open castings. Casting directors from all over the world have jumped on the e-bandwagon using their status update on Facebook to post new castings and creating groups to post new campaigns where street casting for a fresh new face is needed. So, wave goodbye to the days of being discovered shopping at the mall or in the supermarket, and just remember to “un-tag” those bad photos of you, because there just might be a casting director on your page.

Paranoid Park movie trailer

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