Aaron Marcus shows actors how to shoot audition tapes at home with basic gear: a camera, tripod, white backdrop, three lights, and a lapel mic. He covers positioning the script near the camera, proper lighting to avoid shadows, slating your name and height, and compressing files to under 25 MB for email submission.
Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus. I'm America's premier acting and commercial modeling career coach. I've been making my living as an actor and a commercial model for over 26 years, and I'm the founder of HowToModel.com and the author of How to Become a Successful Commercial Model, now in its 5th edition. I've been finding that there are more casting directors who are open to allowing actors to shoot auditions from their home and email it for a casting. Now it is true, in the larger markets it's rare for that to be able to take place, but in other areas sometimes you can. So it's important to know how to be able to do this properly, and it really doesn't have to cost a fortune, but you do need some equipment and there are some very basic guidelines that you have to follow. So let me share those with you. One of the first things that I did was I got a hold of It's somewhat of an inexpensive camera. It's a little digital camera. I'm not trying to promote the name of the company, just showing you what I got. And that allows me to shoot the auditions. I have a tripod. I also purchased a white screen that I hang on a wall so it's a nice clean background. One of the problems that some people have is that they shoot with all kinds of different colors on the wall or photographs, things that are distracting. It's got to be a very clean background. I also purchased some lights so that way I can really make sure that there's a fill on my face, that there aren't dark shadows all over the place. So what I did was I just went to a camera store, told them exactly what I was looking for, and I purchased 3 lights. And, and what I found to be really helpful is to get the lights that do not get hot. Besides, you'll save a lot of money on electricity. The other thing too is if you're under those lights, you start to sweat and it creates all kinds of problems. So the one other thing you're going to need is a microphone. And what I did was I went online, I found a very inexpensive— it's called Audio-Technica, has a little clip here, and it sounds great. I just clip it right up to my lapel or my shirt or sweater, whatever you have. Don't worry about trying to hide it. People understand it's, it's an audition. Sometimes I might slide it up my shirt a little bit just so it's not distracting people very much as I'm doing the read. So just to kind of summarize some of the materials you're going to need: you need the microphone, you need a digital camera, you need lights, You need a tripod. You need a clean wall to shoot on, or if you want to purchase an inexpensive screen, that would be something else. And make sure you have some kind of program where you can either shrink the auditions so you can send them out, or, you know, find a company that will send large files out. But typically you're going to want to try to get things a little bit smaller, especially if it's a longer audition. Basically, those are the materials you're going to need. Then the next step is, what I like to do is if I can't memorize the sides, sometimes what I'll do is hold the sides, but I'll hold it— and the sides are the words that I'm auditioning with. So sometimes I might just hold it a little bit off to the side, not quite like this where you can actually see my hand and stuff, but it's over to the side, and that way I can glance over at it. Or sometimes I'm able to actually tape it right to the tripod. And as you're doing the scene, you're supposed to be reading to another actor in most cases. And so you're not looking directly into the lens of the camera if it's an audition for a film or television show. So you'll be reading to the reader. So what I do is sometimes I'll just have the copy just pasted up so I can actually look at the copy and it's in the same direction, which is slightly off to the side of the camera. The other thing that you have to keep in mind is when— after you shoot it, you have to save the audition in a very specific way, and your agent will let you know. Sometimes you're going to name the audition with your name and then dot the agent's name, dot or underscore the name of the character that you're reading for They'll let you know all about that. And the other thing that I forgot to mention is you also have to slate. And once again, every casting director wants things differently. Sometimes you'll slate your name, your agency, your height, the character you're reading for at the beginning, sometimes at the end, sometimes they just want your name. Once again, these are questions you need to ask your agent. Also, quite often they will ask you to tilt the camera all the way down and back up so they can see your body type. They want to get a sense of what you look like. So after you've shot it, you download it, you've got to name it properly, and then the next step is you have to be able to send it to the casting director or the agent depending on how it's being sent out. Now depending on how long the piece is, it could be a fairly large document. The best-case scenario, if you can make it small enough, like under 25 megabytes, you can actually email it, which is wonderful. There are also other companies, and quite a few of these are free, where you can send large files that you can't email, and you can send those to the agent. But if there is a way of compressing it, that's, that's always better. You never want to upload it to YouTube and just, you know, and send a link, because number one, the scene hasn't been shot yet, and I can tell you that the producers will not be happy about having their material out on the web before the scene has been shot. So you definitely want to send people the actual audition. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that information with you. I use it pretty regularly. Still, I much prefer auditioning in person, but there are times where I simply physically can't make it to that place. Either I'm booked out the day of the audition or it's just simply too far to travel to make it in time for the audition. So anyhow, best of luck, and if you have any questions at all, always feel free. You can email me at aaron@howtomodel.com, or you can go to my Facebook page, which is facebook.com/howtomodel. And you'll find on the Facebook page, it's a community of actors and models, other industry people who are sharing information about the industry. So if you have questions, that's a great place to go. Okay, anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. Hope you enjoy this. If you do have questions specifically about this blog video, let me know. I'd be more than happy to try to answer it for you. See ya.
