Build Your
Casting Director Outreach File

I've attached my submissions list. I want you to build a new Casting Director Outreach file from it — a single spreadsheet, one row per casting director, that I can use to track relationship-building and outreach.

Step 1 — Understand the source data
My submissions list has a row per audition/submission, with columns roughly like: client/actor name, production title, type of production, role, casting director or company name, date, and which agent/agency submitted it (column names may vary — map them as best you can and tell me if anything is ambiguous).

Step 2 — Filter by production type
Only include submissions where the production type is one of:
- Feature Film
- Film
- Television
- Television Movie
- Web Series
- Short Film
- Promo

Exclude commercials, online commercials, stills/photography, corporate, idents, branded content, training films, and anything else outside scripted/broadcast drama and film work. (Tell me if you think I should include or exclude a type you're unsure about, rather than guessing.)

Step 3 — Identify unique casting directors
From the filtered rows, extract the casting director / casting company name for each submission. Deduplicate this list:
- Trim whitespace and collapse double spaces.
- Treat clear name variants as the same entity (e.g. "Jane Smith" and "Jane Smith Casting" — merge them).
- If you're unsure whether two names refer to the same person, flag it to me rather than merging automatically.

Step 4 — Research and build a profile for each casting director
For every unique casting director, actually run a live web search for them individually — don't rely on what you already know from memory, and don't shorten your effort for names later in the list just because the list is long. Then populate the following columns:
- Name
- Tier — Major, Mid-range, Indie / Shorts, or International, based on the scale and prestige of their body of work (award-winning CDs on blockbusters/prestige TV = Major; solid working CDs on UK/regional broadcast and film = Mid-range; mostly shorts, student films, or emerging indie work = Indie / Shorts; primarily based and working outside my home market = International).
- Who They Are — a 1–3 sentence bio: their standing in the industry, key collaborators or mentors, and anything currently relevant (e.g. a project they're casting now).
- Notable Credits — a comma-separated list of their best-known productions.
- Showreel Tip — a specific, tailored note on what kind of material from my reel would appeal to this particular CD, based on the genre/tone of their known work (e.g. "raw, naturalistic drama" vs "big studio physical presence" vs "arthouse psychological edge").
- Website — search specifically for this (e.g. "[Name] casting director", "[Name] casting official site"). Their casting company or agency's site counts as their official site, not just a personal one. If you can't verify one, don't leave the cell blank — work through these fallbacks in order: 1) an agent's site with a professional profile page for them, noted as such (e.g. "No personal site — listed via [Agency Name]: [URL]"); 2) a CDG (Casting Directors' Guild) or similar professional directory listing, noted as such (e.g. "No official site — listed on CDG: [URL]"); 3) only if neither exists, write "No official website found" so it's clear a search was actually done.
- Email — search specifically for a publicly listed contact: their own site, their agency's site, or a CDG-style directory. A shared company submissions inbox counts if it's genuinely theirs — note whose it is (e.g. "general submissions inbox for [Company]"). Never guess or fabricate an address. If there's no email but their site (or agent page) has a contact/submissions webform, write "No email listed — use the contact form at [URL]" instead of leaving it blank. If there's genuinely no public email or webform, write "Doesn't publish an email — all contact goes via agents".
- Social / Alternative Contact — search for an Instagram handle for them or their casting company, since that's usually the platform CDs are most active on for breakdowns and workshops. Include it if found (e.g. "@handle"). If not on Instagram, check X/Twitter or LinkedIn as a fallback. If none of these exist, write "Not publicly active on social media" rather than leaving it blank.
- Research Notes — extra strategic context: how they connect to other CDs on the list, why this relationship matters for my career stage, or anything time-sensitive worth acting on.

None of the columns above should ever be left blank — every cell should show that research was actually attempted, even if the honest result is "not found". Before moving on, go back over any row where a cell just says "not found" or similar and try one more specific search for it — don't settle for that just because your first pass was quick. (This doesn't apply to the outreach-tracking columns in Step 6 below — those are meant to stay empty for me to fill in.)

Step 5 — Add the production and role I was submitted for
For each casting director, pull every matching submission from the filtered source data and summarise it in a "Production & Role I was submitted for" column, formatted like: Production title — Role (Type, Agent/Agency) separated by semicolons if there's more than one, e.g.: Casualty S41 — Soraya Amaan (Television, Agent Name); The Gentlemen 2 — Waitress (Feature Film, Agent Name)

Step 6 — Add blank outreach-tracking columns
Include these columns but leave them empty — they're for me to fill in manually as I do outreach:
- Contacted Directly?
- Response Received?
- Response Date
- Outcome / Notes
- Follow-up Due

Step 7 — Structure and sort the file
Order the rows by Tier (Major, then Mid-range, then Indie / Shorts, then International), and alphabetically by name within each tier. Output it as an Excel spreadsheet (or spreadsheet-ready table) suitable for use in Google Sheets or Excel, with one casting director per row and the columns above, in this order:

Name | Tier | Who They Are | Notable Credits | Showreel Tip | Website | Email | Social / Alternative Contact | Production & Role I was submitted for | Contacted Directly? | Response Received? | Response Date | Outcome / Notes | Follow-up Due | Research Notes

Step 8 — Summarise
When you're done, give me a short summary: how many unique casting directors you found, how many fell into each Tier, and flag any names you weren't confident researching (so I can fill those in manually).