Casting By: We participated in 25 projects in 2023, and 14 this year

With internationalization as its focus, Casting By managed to expand frontiers and participate in around 20 to 25 projects in 2023, which became the best year to date for the company founded in Miami in 2017.

“Since we created Casting By, the idea was to be as international as possible. The more international we are, the more we contribute to our clients, and this year we took care of several projects in different countries at the same time,” said Jessica Caldrello, founder and director of Casting, and Guillaume Fonvielle, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of the company.

Caldrello pointed out that in 2023, they ‘reaped the fruits of so many years of work.’ “It was a great year with many projects.”

They reported that among the projects in which they participated, there are films from Spain and the Dominican Republic and series from Colombia, Mexico, and the US.

“We are very proud of Griselda. We did all the Latin American casting; Casting By did everything spoken in Spanish. We are also proud of One Piece, a Japanese manga where we selected the protagonist, Iñaki Godoy, and Madre en Alquiler, which was a huge hit on Netflix last year. We discovered Shaní Lozano in Xalapa. These are things that marked us last year,” they said.

For this year, Casting By is already part of 14 projects, one in the US, called Kiss of the Spider Woman with Jennifer López. “We are looking throughout Latin America, Spain, and Miami for Molina’s character, the leading role,” they said.

Another relevant project is Los 39, about the Spanish conquest, by Secuoya Studios, which is being recorded now in Santa Marta, Colombia. “We are looking for all the talent of indigenous and Spanish origin,” he said. Another project in Colombia is the 12-episode series Perfil Falso 2 with Netflix.

They are also doing the casting for two films and “surely” in a 10-episode series, both projects in Spain. “In Mexico, we have a 20-episode series for Netflix, one for HBO, and a third one for ViX. We also have a short film in Miami,” they noted.

PRODMEE PLATFORM
Caldrello said a large part of this high volume of work is due to the free-casting tool Prodmee. “Prodmee gives access to all the actors in Latin America, who cannot pay a monthly fee helping us have this volume of projects and this efficiency,” she said.

Fonvielle added that this efficiency has also to do with the speed at which they can respond to clients. “Before, it could take us a month or three weeks to reach interesting proposals; now it is only days.”

POST CASTING SERVICES
Casting By also offers post-casting services, in which once the actor is selected, the company provides negotiation, hiring, and even monitoring of the actors’ payments. “This spares the production company from having a team dedicated to that. We contact the selected talent’s manager; if the talent directly does not have an agent, we negotiate the fee, and once that negotiation is settled, we draft the contracts aided by lawyers until the contract is signed. Once the contract is signed, we track payments, allowing the actors and production companies to send the money at the times agreed in the contract,” explained Fonvielle.

They pointed out that this service has been a source of growth for Casting By “because we are helping clients a lot in their operations.”