a reality for producers

With the January launch of DirectorSelect, a Toronto-based software company is adding to its repertoire of cd-rom-based services for producers who don’t want to siphon through reels, portfolios and demo tapes to find talent for their commercials.

Created by Digital Criteria Search Technologies, the DirectorSelect database is made up of 2,000 to 3,000 directors from across North America.

On the menu-driven system, the user can search for a director using any number of criteria: visual style, specialty, awards they’ve won, to name a few.

Barbara Griffin Walker, executive producer at Apple Box Productions, and Ken Rodger, senior vice-president, head of production at Leo Burnett, were instrumental in designing the selection screen to ensure the format matched the needs of the community, says Allan Shiell, president of dcst.

Once the system narrows the selection as per the user’s criteria, biographies, pictures, and four full-motion samples of the director’s work come up on screen.

A producer may not make a final choice from the group, but he’ll wind up making a short list of four or five reels to watch rather than dozens, says Shiell.

DirectorSelect is part of a group of software dcst markets under the umbrella of Peoplefind. The other two systems of virtual talent selection are VoiceSelect and ModelSelect, which work in much the same way as DirectorSelect.

For example, to use VoiceSelect, which logs voices from Toronto, New York, l.a., Vancouver and Montreal, punch in ‘female, five to eight years old, British accent’ and the system will select the talent on file that meets that criteria.

The cost for production houses to get their roster on screen on DirectorSelect is $100 per head. For agencies, the system is available for $3,000 a year if either VoiceSelect or ModelSelect is used. DirectorSelect alone is $4,000, and is updated every three months.

DirectorSelect works on any relatively new Macintosh (68030 or better) with cd-rom capabilities. dcst is also a hardware supplier and can upgrade existing systems to accommodate the software at cost, says Shiell. To install cd-rom capability would be about $300. A multimedia-ready system with color monitor and printer and full-motion capabilities would run about $3,000.

Canadian directors shouldn’t fear being lost in the system among colleagues from New York and l.a., Shiell says.

‘When Americans look for a kind of work, Canadians will show up. Everybody gets chosen based purely on their qualifications, not by where they come from.’