Founders

Perry Wolfe and Fulop Budavari, founders of Casting Exchange

Casting Exchange was built by two people who came at the same problem from opposite ends of the camera. One spent a decade building companies that run on logistics, licensing and unglamorous operational detail. The other has spent his career on the actor's side of the self-tape, recording alone in an apartment at eleven at night against a reader who was not there.

Perry WolfeCo-Founder · El Paso, TX

Perry Wolfe

Co-Founder

Perry Wolfe is a Texas-based entrepreneur who has spent more than a decade founding and operating companies across freight brokerage, automotive retail, commercial real estate, healthcare technology and software. He is the founder of Wolfe Worldwide Productions, through which he develops film and television projects.

His pattern across all of it has been the same: find an industry where the people doing the actual work are handed bad tools and worse terms, then rebuild the process around them. Casting Exchange came out of watching that dynamic play out in entertainment, where the barrier to being seen has quietly moved from talent to production equipment.

He leads product, engineering and operations at Casting Exchange, and built the platform's Self-Tape Studio.

RoleProduct, engineering, operations
BasedEl Paso, Texas
AlsoWolfe Worldwide Productions
Contactperry@wolfeworldwide.com

Fulop BudavariCo-Founder · Los Angeles, CA

Fulop Budavari

Co-Founder

Fulop Budavari is a Hungarian-born actor and model based in Los Angeles, signed with Wilhelmina. He arrived in the United States without the language, learned it, worked with accent coaches, and built a working career in front of a camera from nothing but that.

He is the reason the product looks the way it does. Every constraint that shaped the Self-Tape Studio came from his side of the lens: that a reader who rushes you ruins a take, that a file a casting director cannot open is the same as no file at all, that the tenth take at midnight should not cost more than the first.

He leads talent, creative direction and industry relationships at Casting Exchange, and tests every release the way an actor actually uses it.

RoleTalent, creative, industry
BasedLos Angeles, California
RepresentedWilhelmina
Instagram@iamfulop

Why we built Casting Exchange

The self-tape replaced the room. That change was supposed to democratize casting, and in one narrow sense it did: an actor in El Paso can now audition for a project in Los Angeles without buying a plane ticket. What it actually did was move the cost. Instead of paying for gas and parking, actors now pay for lighting, a backdrop, a camera that shoots something a casting office can open, and a reader who is willing to sit off-camera at an inconvenient hour and give them something to play against.

The reader is the part nobody solved. A scene partner who reads flat, rushes the cue, or is simply not available tonight is the difference between a take that shows what an actor can do and a take that does not. Most working actors end up reading against a friend on speakerphone, a roommate who is doing them a favor, or nothing at all.

Casting Exchange puts a real scene partner in the room. The Self-Tape Studio reads every other character in the scene in a cast voice you choose, waits for your out-cue instead of cutting you off at the first pause, and holds for a dramatic beat the way a human reader would. It records in a format casting directors can actually open, and it lets you rehearse a scene as many times as you want, because a scene is unlocked once and stays unlocked.

We built the version of this we wanted to exist when we were on the other side of it.

Try the Self-Tape Studio