How to Manage Your Cover Letters

When you use Back Stage's online submission system to apply to a casting notice, you have the option of including a cover letter with your submission package. Including a cover letter is a good way to engage the interest of the casting director, express your enthusiasm for the project, and include extra information about yourself and why you'd be a great person to cast.

To access your cover letters, visit your "Manage Your Resumes" page.

Then scroll down and click on the option labeled "Click here to access all of your cover letters" to visit your "Manage My Cover Letters" page.

On your "Manage My Cover Letters" page you'll be able to see and edit all of your cover letters and create new cover letters. Click on the View/Eye button next to any of your cover letters to view each cover letter in full – the way your cover letter looks in that window is very close to how it will look to casting directors as well.

Quick Tip: The casting directors only see the text you wrote in the cover letter – they don't see the cover letter "Name." The "Name" is just for your reference, so you can quickly remember which cover letter is which.

When you're applying to a project on BackStage.com, you'll be able to choose from any of your existing cover letters or you can write a new cover letter on the fly.

When you choose a cover letter (or create a new cover letter) when submitting to a project, the cover letter gets attached to your "submission package," which includes your resume (including any photos, reels, etc., that you have visible on your resume), the time/date of the submission, your email address, the name of the project you're applying to, and the roles you're interested in.

The casting directors will receive all of this info packaged together in a regular email and in their Résumé Submissions Inbox & Applicant Manager system, all at once, so you don't need to repeat this information in your cover letter. However, you can use your cover letter to emphasize certain aspects of your resume; for instance, you might want to list some of your recent credits in your cover letter or tell the casting director that you'd prefer to be contacted at a particular phone number or email address.

For the most part, you'll probably just want to use an all-purpose "general" cover letter that you can use over and over again. Something like, "Hello, I'm very interested in acting in your project. . . ," and you could include a little extra info about yourself, or whatever you think sounds the best. You could even create a few reusable templates like this, each tailored for different types of projects: One cover letter for films, another for theater or dance projects, another for modeling or singing or comedy gigs, etc.

But for specific projects that you're especially interested in, you might want to create a unique cover letter just for that project (e.g., expressing why you'd be great for a certain role). Or if a casting notice asks actors to include extra information that's not already on your resume, then you could create a new cover letter just for that (e.g., if a commercial casting notice asked actors to include a statement about why they love a particular product, then you could talk about your love of the product in your cover letter).

Visit your Submissions Outbox on BackStage.com to see a list of the projects that you've applied to via Back Stage's online submission system. Your Outbox includes a record of all the projects you've submitted to, along with a copy of the cover letter and resume you used to apply to each project.

Note: Updates and corrections that you make to your cover letters and resumes will affect both future and past submissions  –  within the online casting system, casting directors and employers will see the most up-to-date version of the cover letter and resume you submitted to them. So even after you've submitted to a project you can still make changes to your cover letter and resume, and these changes will be visible in the employer's BackStage.com Inbox and in the your Outbox. However, the copy of your submission package that is sent to the casting director via regular email remains static  – the emailed version of your submission package (resume and cover letter) cannot be retroactively updated after you've completed your submission.

 

- Luke Crowe, National Casting Editor, Back Stage