David Chiu

Now that my theatrical agency has made their choice on what photos to use, my next step is to submit a digital copy of the photos to LACasting.com. As I have mentioned before, LACasting.com is the online casting service that both of my agenices use for submissions. I was actually surprised when my commercial agent told me that 80% of agency submissions and casting is now done through LACasting.com. Hollywood is definitely going high-tech.

So today I pulled up LACasting.com to get their phone number and was greeted with a small Quicktime video showing an actress posing for the camera. Next to it appeared an ad for Moving Headshots. It definitely got my attention so I checked out the website. Basically, Moving Headshots is exactly what the name implies. A short video clip that is shot like a photo but is actually a short video clip. Clever idea, but it feels a little “gimmicky”. I feel it could be done better. My other question would be, how many casting directors and agents have Quicktime installed? The price to have this done also seems really expensive - $300 for one “moving headshot”. For that $300, you don’t even get a high quality photo for submissions. Instead you have the option for a headshot to be created from a frame of the video. The question would be - is it really worth the money? I think what would make it more appealing is if those new 8 megapixel digital cameras could capture photos at 16fps or 30fps. Then you could get a high-quality photo + a few seconds of video.

Overall, I think Moving Headshots is a great idea which I think will definitely mature and probably become the standard as technology gets better and better, but right now may not be worth the money.

Geek note: With the evolution of digital photography, high-definition video and electronic paper, we could see in 10 years, paper headshots which actually display a short video clip. Wild isn’t it?

Side note: I’m a little bothered that the Moving Headshots website displays “U.S. Patent Pending” at the bottom of the website. What exactly are they trying to patent? Have they developed some new process or are they just trying to patent the use of a video clip as an online headshot? If it’s the latter it bothers me. It’s just like Amazon.com getting a patent for “1-click” shopping. Or Trump trying to patent the words “You’re Fired”. There is nothing new here, just a re-naming of something that already exists.

Actually, I should patent the use of putting rocks in a garden I am now officially naming this “process” as “ground weighting”.