How to Prepare a Self Tape Audition in New Zealand

Start With the Brief, Not the Lines

The first instinct with a new script is to start learning it. Resist that for ten minutes and read the casting brief instead. The brief tells you what the production thinks the role is: the age, the function of the character in the story, the tone of the show. It also carries the practical instructions, such as how to frame the shot, how to label the file and when it is due. A tape that ignores the instructions is a tape that makes extra work for the person watching it.

Then read the scene for what it is for. Why is this scene in the script? What changes between its first line and its last? One of the aims of the classes at this studio is a deeper understanding of the script and of the casting brief, because every later choice rests on that reading.

Make a Choice About the Character

Casting directors watch many versions of the same scene. The ones they remember are specific. That does not mean odd. It means the actor decided what this person wants and played it.

The Michael Chekhov technique offers quick ways to get there. Find a psychological gesture, a single whole body movement that expresses what the character wants. Do it fully a few times, then hold it inside while you play the scene sitting still. Ask what the atmosphere of the scene is, and let it work on you before you speak. Each tool is explained on our page about the Michael Chekhov technique. They suit self tapes because they are fast and because a close frame reads what is held inside.

Learn It So You Can Forget It

Know the lines well enough that you are not searching for them. If your eyes drop to the page at the important moment, the camera sees you leave the scene. If you cannot be fully off book in the time you have, hold the pages low and out of frame and use them openly rather than half hiding a glance.

Set Up the Shot Simply

• Sound first. A quiet room matters more than a good camera. If they cannot hear you, nothing else counts.
• Light on your face. A window in front of you, or a lamp either side of the camera. Avoid a bright window behind you.
• A plain background. A bare wall or a hung sheet in a neutral colour.
• Frame from the chest up, with the camera at eye level and held horizontally, unless the brief asks for something else.
• A reader beside the lens. Your eyeline should sit just to one side of the camera. The reader should be quieter than you and should not act.

Record Fewer Takes Than You Think

Do a take, watch it once, adjust one thing, and go again. After three or four takes most actors are repeating themselves or getting tighter. If the brief asks for two takes, make them different in intention, not just in volume.

Choose, Label, Send

Pick the take where you were listening, even if a line is slightly off, over the one that is word perfect and empty. Name the file exactly as asked, check that it plays, and send it before the deadline rather than on it. Then let it go.

Know Where You Stand

Self taping puts the cost of the audition, the time, the space and the equipment, on the actor, so it is worth knowing what is reasonable to be asked for. Equity New Zealand, the union and professional organisation for performers working in this country, is the body to ask.

Practise Before You Need It

None of this is difficult to understand. It is difficult to do well at short notice, which is why regular practice matters more than a perfect setup. The studio's Friday self tape class is improvisation and on camera practice with television commercial and drama scripts, every week of term. For a single audition, private coaching is available in person at the studio in Parnell, Auckland, or online.