|
From Playback - Canada's broadcast & production journal
By Peter Vamos
Don't be fooled by the name. Canadian Actor Online may have been created with Canuck thespians in mind, but it has quickly evolved into one of the most comprehensive Web-based Canadian production resources around.
The brainchild of actor/author Lynda Mason Green, Canadian Actor (http://www.canadianactor.com) is set up as a portal with more than 2500 links to sites with information on the film, television and theatre industries.
"Almost anything that has to do with the business, we're trying to get attached in a link to the site," says Green, a 25-year acting veteran whose series work includes War of the Worlds and Night Heat.
Green originally set up a Web page for her book Standing Naked in the Wings: Anecdotes from Canadian Actors, co-authored by Tedde Moore. "When we were doing the book, we were very much inspired by how much of a community there is [among actors] even though people are distributed across the country," says Green.
A website, they decided, would be an excellent way to facilitate such a widespread community.
While actors were foremost in their minds, Green created the site rich with links to just about any area you might want, including professional associations, TV and film production houses, and screenwriting resources. The list also includes links to film and TV services such as animation, special effects, distribution, post-production, lighting and laser effects, and equity listings for directors.
There are also a number of links to resources in the U.S. and around the world, including the American Film Institute, Writers Guild of America and British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society.
"We've also put up information on government agencies and funding resources. That's the kind of information that can take you days or weeks to find. Now you can go directly to the source," says Lima, Canadian Actor's webmaster. "Instead of going to a search engine and finding one or two, we've done all the searching, we've done all the categorizing and organizing."
"We also try to have a lot of original content," she adds, "news relating to Canadian actors and the film, television, theatre industry." There are, however, limitations to what one person can do maintaining an entire website and keeping up on the day's breaking news stories. As a result, the same news story might end up leading the site for several days.
Still, the costs and time involved in building the site are surprisingly low. Green began brainstorming with friends in June, 1999 and a version of the site was up by July. The site already received 2,000 hits between Aug. 1 and Sept. 1, and 15,000 hits per month for the same period a year later. The site now generates an amazing 250,000 page views per months, with millions of hits.
The page views really grew when CAO add its lively discussion boards. There are now over 25 subscriber-based ($30 per year) discussion forums, covering a myriad of topics, for actors, parents with kids in the biz, models and writers and others in the industry.
"We've only just scratched the surface of it," says Green. "We have all kinds of ideas about what we want to do in the future."
|
