Putting a New Face on Networking

Techniques for casting movies and television shows have changed little since the days of Louis B. Mayer and Darryl Zanuck. Finding the right talent tends to be a slow, labor-intensive process, as casting directors spread the word about what they’re looking for and talent agencies respond with rosters of hopeful actors.

Starting this month, a new private electronic network, refined in collaboration with more than a dozen prominent casting directors, promises to revolutionize the traditional casting process by enabling casting directors to view talent from their office computers.

Star Caster Network, created by software developer Steve Brauner, is intended to simplify communications between casting directors and talent agencies, making the process faster, easier and less costly.

Casting directors can now send out complex descriptions of what they’re looking for--called project breakdowns--electronically. Talent agencies can quickly respond, sending head shots and resumes of hopeful actors via computer. Casting directors can then pick candidates and arrange auditions, all without shuffling any papers, picking up a telephone or hiring any messengers.

“This system will, at the very least, save a few forests, because on any given day some 30,000 pieces of paper are wasted in Hollywood,” says Brauner.

He speaks with some authority, having been a computer consultant to the industry since a modeling agency for children asked him to help automate their office 15 years ago. Brauner, who has a bachelor’s degree in computing sciences, decided to take what he’d learned and offer his services to other talent-related companies. After having automated more than 100 agencies, the next logical step for Brauner was to link the agencies to casting directors.

Earlier this year, his Santa Clarita-based firm, Microbyte Inc., started testing the Star Caster Network with collaborating casting directors and many of their agency clients. The inaugural launch of the network will include talent agencies such as Cunningham, Escott, Dipene; Sutton Barth & Venarri; and J. Michael Bloom. Among the casting offices online will be April Webster Casting and Chemin Bernard Casting.

One client predicts the new network will profoundly affect the way TV and film roles are cast. “The system soon will [be as necessary] as a fax machine, and ultimately every office in the entertainment industry will have to have it,” says Michael Hirshenson, vice president of business affairs at Casting Co., a Hollywood company that lists such hits as “Apollo 13” and “Jurassic Park” among its credits.

Brauner, 48, says his goal in creating Star Caster was not to change the traditional methods used by casting directors and talent agents, but to streamline the process. He chose a private, exclusive network as the backbone of his new system because he felt that an Internet-based system did not provide sufficient ease of use, performance or security. The subscription fee for talent agencies is $150 a month.

Star Caster automates other casting operations such as creation of film logs and union forms, plus job accounting and bookkeeping.

‘My operating mantra has been to make the system work faster and better with less drudgery, telephone tag and delay,” says Brauner.

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Name: Steve Brauner

Job: Vice president of product development, Star Caster Network, in alliance with Microbyte Inc.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in computing sciences, State University of New York at Stony Brook

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