Self-Tape Audition Adventures!

Fellow actors! As you probably know by now, self-tape auditions are becoming more and more common. A self-tape audition is where you are responsible for putting yourself on camera for an audition and submitting it to either the casting director or your reps. You are not auditioning in the casting director’s office, but rather, in a place you’ve set up for self-tape auditions: your office or a guest room or a studio room, etc. Self-tape auditions occur for a variety of reasons and I love to do them when the opportunity presents itself.

I had another self-tape audition yesterday (September 9th) for a feature film. I was thrilled with the part I auditioned for and I had a great experience from start to finish.

Looking back at my experience, I’m proud of:

*Being on go from the moment I received the audition notice from my agent. Being on go meaning that I jumped right away into the work and planned out when and how I was going to get my self-tape done.

*Keeping myself open to the audition preparation process (Subtees Process) and honoring my first impressions with good-humored inflexibility.

*Researching previous work that the director and writer of the feature film did to get a sense of their artistic aesthetic.

*Bringing someone else into the audition process that I trust to read the other characters in the scene.

*Me not questioning my choices.

*Setting up my self-tape station and deciding the best time to shoot it.

*Choosing my wardrobe based upon the headshot my agent submitted to casting. Because a headshot only captures the top half of your wardrobe, I used the clues that the writer gave to inform the bottom half of my wardrobe.

*Having a moment before. Having subtext.

*Being a real person in the scene having an experience.

*Shooting the self-tape audition in about 35 minutes. I had two scenes and I did three takes for each scene, plus a take where I slated and a take for my full body shot.

*Looking at the takes and knowing which ones I was going to keep and which ones I was getting rid of. And being able to look at the takes objectively with no emotional attachment. In other words, looking at the takes objectively to see if I was honoring the story being told and that I was also delivering my product. I was very happy with the product I created and that each take was only slightly different from each other. Every take was still in the same zip code.

*Quickly editing the takes and uploading it to Actors Access for my agent to approve and submit to casting on my behalf.

*My agent loving the self-tape audition and writing, “Great job!”

*Me sending a cool and clever tweet to the casting director afterwards to thank them for the audition opportunity.

*Celebrating my win with pepperoni pizza and champagne.

What was the last self-tape audition you had? How did it go? Or what was your most favorite self-tape audition? Let me know in the comments section below!