Acting coach Aaron Marcus walks through self-tape auditions for out-of-town projects. Set up a clean close-up that captures your eyes, use soft lighting to kill shadows, attach a lavalier mic for clear audio, and pull back to show your full body type. Casting directors need to see what you actually look like and hear you clearly.
On. Hi, hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, founder of howtomodel.com and America's premier acting and modeling career coach. So I just got a phone call to audition for a feature film in Louisiana. I live in Maryland, so I am not going to be able to make it to the audition. So I just wanted to share with you some things that you will want to have accessible so that if you are trying to work in distant markets, you'll be able to send this stuff out and hopefully be considered for jobs when you can't make it to the audition. So first thing, I do have my sides. Those are the short portion of the script. I find that if I can, I try to memorize it. This is for a president and he is delivering a speech to the United States, so I want to go directly into the camera. I don't want to be looking down at all. So I've got that. You always want to start with a nice close-up shot, you know, short part of the top of the head down to the chest so they can see your eyes, they can see your eye color. You want to make sure you've got a little microphone so people can understand you as well. I always slate, give my name, character name, my agent's name. Then, and I've got my friend Tom helping me out here a little bit, I've got a couple of little lights set up, and as we're pulling back, you can see them on the side. I still need actually to get some filters for these things just to kind of COVID them a little bit so they're a little bit softer. It will look better. But my main goal is I want to get rid of a lot of the shadows that were coming all across my face. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that with you. You want some good lights. These have blue bulbs in them. They seem to work pretty well. I've got little clamps. I've got a little lavalier mic here that I can clip on that's connected to the camera. And as you can see, hey look, it's not a feature film here, but it's a pretty good, sharp, clear image of me. So people will be able to get a chance to really see me, hear me. And then at the end, these particular casting directors have asked that you pull back so you get a full body shot, or at least a pretty good section of your body. And that way they get a good idea of what your body type is. And just remember, don't hide it. If you're overweight, well, maybe they need somebody who's overweight. If you're thin, maybe they need somebody who's thin. Let them see what you look like. So for the read itself, nice tight shot so they can really see your face. And if you do have something that has dialogue with somebody else, make sure you've got somebody else reading with you, and you want to look at that person that you are reading to. So hopefully this was helpful to you, and also hopefully I'll get the part. Okay, thanks a lot.
