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★ VOTED BEST PITCH BY THE CLASS — QUESTROM PITCH COMPETITION
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Overview
CampusCast is a casting platform that bridges the gap between acting and film students on campus. It allows film students to post project listings and acting students to apply to them, giving students an easier way to discover film opportunities and communicate.
My Role
I discovered a need for the platform when directing a film for a BU film club. I then conducted customer interviews with film and acting students at BU, and based on their responses and my own experience, created the entire platform with the help of AI and debugged it. I also created an outreach plan to contact various campus communities and plan to start marketing at the start of the Fall 2026 semester.
Tools & Tech
The Problem
A common problem film students encounter at BU is not being able to source actors for their film projects. I Similarly, acting students are often actively looking for experience to add to their résumés. For BU in particular, since acting students are under the College of Arts and Sciences, but film students are under the College of Communication, there is surprisingly little overlap in acquaintances and social circles. I discovered this while directing a film for the BU film club REDLIST. Even though the production had over 25 people, collectively they knew only 2 student actors from BU, one of which we ended up casting. The rest of our actors came from a platform called Backstage, which BU students often use. It allows people to post film project listings for a fee, and then actors can apply to those listings. However, the applicants for BU projects are rarely BU students, and submissions range from colleges within a 30-minute radius all the way to New York. This makes it increasingly difficult to coordinate with people on dates and get actors for free, since transportation becomes an issue.
BU REDLIST Film Set
The Solution
A casting platform that allows film students to post project listings and acting students to apply to them, giving students an easier way to discover film opportunities and communicate.
Find Roles
Actors can filter projects listed on the platform by genre and filming date, and roles by gender and age, making the process of finding fitting roles easier.
Every user has a CampusCast profile, which they can fill out with their experience, relevant personal details, and media. The application process is then expedited by automatically submitting the actor’s CampusCast profile to the film director, so that they don’t have to continuously upload their materials. This also gives actors the chance to view the profile of the film director before applying to a film to give them an idea of the director’s past work.
Find Talent
Once a project listing is created, the director has the option to keep adding roles to the project. The application manager in the platform then lets film directors easily manage role applications and shortlist, reject, or accept them, the latter two of which notify the actors immediately. It also gives the film director the option to request a self-tape audition as a method of additional screening, to ensure that actors are fit for the role before they are accepted.
An additional "Find Talent" page allows directors to browse the student actor profiles on the website, and reach out to actors directly for their projects as an alternative.
