I’ve written about self-taping auditions in the past. While I love going into an office for an audition and getting to work with a casting director or assistant directly, self-tape auditions are becoming more and more common. And they are even more common with auditioning for the smaller parts. Because they are more common, I’ve slowly been upgrading my self-tape set-up at home. I now have a tripod that I can use my iPad with (it’s not my best camera, but it’s close to the best one) and I have a backdrop that I can use on a wall in my house so that it looks more professional. So when I have an audition that calls for a self-tape, I feel pretty comfortable that I can do it.
The only thing I need to find is someone to help me tape the audition. It’s not too hard since most of my actors friends are willing to help out (because I would do the same for them), but I still usually have to ask around to find someone who is available when I am to be my reader. So when I found out about a self-tape audition I needed to do this weekend, I immediately started to text my friends to see who was free. And my birthday twin, Joanna, was not only free but she also had a self-tape audition that needed to be done!
She mentioned that she had a self-tape set-up at her house, so I was happy to go over there to work on our auditions. I had my tripod and iPad with me to use as a camera and I wasn’t totally sure what her set-up would be. I knew it would be fine, but I was so impressed when I walked into her house!
It was so professional looking! She not only had the backdrop and tripod, but she also had lights and a microphone! I knew this was going to be one of my best self-tape auditions as far as looks go. And I was really excited to get to spend an evening working on auditions with a friend.
Joanna was going to use her phone to record her auditions (it was just easiest for us each to record on our own devices) and since that was already set up she went first. We rehearsed her scene a few times so she was comfortable and I was familiar with the lines that I would be reading for her and then we started recording. We did a bunch of takes because I wanted Joanna to feel completely certain that she got the best take that she could do. And I was having fun being her reader and getting to have a little bit of silly acting before doing my audition.
Then we switched things up and it was my turn to do my audition. My audition had some unique rules about how they wanted everything to be done so even though my scene was significantly shorter than Joanna’s my audition was taking longer. But she had the same patience for me that I did for her and we did a bunch of takes until I felt like I had the audition that I wanted to submit.
After we were done doing our videos, we decided to take some silly photos. We both were going to post about spending our night self-taping auditions and we might as well have pictures to go along with it! We were doing pretty normal photos until Joanna discovered how cool it looks to have the iPad screen covering my face so you see my face on the screen.
And of course after she took that photo of me I made her get in front of the iPad so I could do the same for her. We were just having fun and being so silly after working on auditions and it made the night so much more fun. I love getting to hang out with a friend and getting to do any form of acting, but turning this into a photo shoot was an added bonus that made my night.
I started to edit my audition to cut out my best take the next day. Since my scenes were so short I told Joanna just to keep the camera running between takes. We had to pause sometimes because her neighbors slammed a door or there was a plane above us so the noise was distracting, but that’s just how things go. When we were pausing for noise she and I usually were talking about random things. And while watching my videos to find my best takes I was laughing at all the crazy faces I made while talking to Joanna just as me.
I don’t love to watch myself on camera, but the more often I do it the easier it gets. I found my best takes and got everything edited the way the casting director instructed us to do. I did have some problems submitting my audition on the website we needed to do it through, but fortunately my agent was able to do the submission for me so I didn’t miss the deadline. I did get things straightened out with the submission site the day after the deadline so hopefully I won’t have this problem again. But I was just grateful my agent could do it for me and wasn’t upset that I ran into trouble.
I’m so glad that things worked out so well for Joanna to help me with my audition. And I was so inspired by how awesome her self-tape set-up was as well! I’m now looking into some things that I can hopefully get in the future to make my self-tape set-up at my house as close to what she has. I know that when casting directors ask for self-tape auditions they don’t expect them to be super professional, but they shouldn’t look like they are completely amateur either. I want to find the perfect balance and I think adding a few more things to what I have will take things much closer to looking like they were done at a casting office.
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