I had a close look at it...and, yes, the sting in the tail is that £25 entry fee! Up until that point, I felt that the offer wasn't that terrible. True, my immediate reaction was, given that (literally) anyone (whether actor or otherwise) is allowed to take part, that they will no doubt get many entries, and they are handing out all of three prizes, the chances of getting anywhere with it are about equivalent to winning the lottery.
I always have an aesthetic issue with any setup where the criteria is (supposedly) that genuine actors with genuine showreel material can be judged as equals alongside inidviduals who have taken the effort to record themselves speaking to their mobile phone - but when I am realistic about this, I don't imagine in most cases, someone who has filmed themselves in half light talking rubbish is more likely to impress a panel of judges than someone who can present them with a finely acted piece of broadcast cinema material, whatever they may like to suggest. I also don't really hold with this nonsensical method of getting the public to vote on people's performances and then have them redo things for mass consumption so they can be commented upon - but only because it seems so pointless an exercise - it would be a very churlish actor who maintained that it wasn't part of their job to improve performance in response to direction, whatever the source it's coming from (though, naturally, the public may also not have a clue what they're talking about).
Still, my conclusion was: if all an aspiring actor has to do is select a snippet from a showreel that they feel is decent, transfer it or post it to an address, and wait to see whether the panel hold any interest in it, then why the hell not? There may be a principle at stake - i.e. that any competition that reduces auditioning to the level of a game, and encourages non-actors to gain jobs (potentially) at the expense of the trained, should be boycotted on sight...but, as I say, I'm not convinced the panel aren't pandering to populism in order to be seen to be popular, and throughly intending on only casting those they feel are genuinely capable (i.e. trained and experienced actors).
And then, right at the bottom, in the small print, comes the catch - £25 a participant entry!
This was especially galling to me because most of the people who are panel associates ARE actually well respected in the industry - in other words, it doesn't seem like it simply is a 'fly by night' short of setup. It's being taken quite seriously, is supported by industry bigwigs, and YET STILL is directly culpable in promoting the idea a) that acting training is now an irrelevance within the industry and b) performers should have to pay others in order to get the privilege of being seen. When you are faced with these kinds of attitudes, you begin to understand why the industry is sinking into its current parlous state. I was not impressed.
