True Hollywood Story
Extra Action, Extra Adventure, Extra Glamour and Extra Mystery the Extras Alerts True Hollywood Story has none of those exciting things, only background casting data made in Hollywood.
Hello Background Friends, I am Chris Bond and this is Extras Alerts, my solution to a uniquely complex problem and here is a simplified summary, not the whole story and not technical, just a very short briefing of why Extras Alerts.
Some years ago my wife started doing background work, it was about the same time the casting companies started posting more and more casting notices on social media. Without a doubt constantly checking social media posts was better than constantly calling voice message lines but this was still far from perfect. The actual user experience went something like this,
“Every time the phone made noise my wife would have to immediately check it and the vast majority of the time the casting notices did not even come close to matching her, making the whole process a frustrating waste of time more often than not.”
However, if the casting notice chaos on social media could be brought under control then any background actor could easily find work.
I created the first version of Extras Alerts to match background casting notices found on social media to my wife’s union status, gender, portray-able ethnicity and email her the information, saving the time and frustration of dealing with so many casting notices that did not match her.
Extras Alerts worked so well that my wife’s friends started asking to use it and soon their friends where asking too.
There was a definite need for Extras Alerts among background actors. Therefore, I expanded the system with more servers, programming and eventually growing into a BETA test open to all background actors.
I conducted the BETA test for twenty two months to prove Extras Alerts as a solid solution for a large, diverse user base and by the end of the BETA test Extras Alerts was making it much easier for thousands of background actors to find work every day.