Hello and welcome to Amy and Gilbert’s self-tape tutorial for LAMDA 2020 auditionees.
Now we’re in for extraordinary times and that means that we’re changing the ways
we run the auditions, which means that we are no longer able to meet you in person and
get to know you a little bit face to face – which means no more warm-up games…
Just one you say? Alright. So my name is Amy and one extraordinary fact about me is that
I cannot roll my Rs. Literally I just can’t do it. Rrrrlll – Pathetic. Gilbert?
My name’s Gilbert Junior which is interesting because my dad, who is also called Gilbert,
is 5 foot 5 and I’m 6 foot 6 so you can imagine I’m coming for the senior title.
Hopefully he doesn’t pass away but [Laughter]
Despite our physical distancing measures we do have the ability to see some of your work
and get to know a bit about you as an actor through the medium of smartphones. Enter stage
left: the art of the self-tape.
The cameras on your smartphone are more than capable of capturing a high-res video of you
doing your audition speech and uploading and sending it are very simple, even for people
who just like to play drama school games like us.
We’re going to talk you through what you need for your audition self-tape and the simple
steps to get it done.
So there are two main areas that we want to talk about with self-taping. The first one
is your camera phone, framing and eyelines. And the second one is location, acoustics
and light.
That’s it. Let’s start with number one: your phone and something to rest it on.
Camera phones: it doesn’t matter what phone you have as long as it has a camera so please
please please shoot it in landscape not portrait. To clarify, if you shoot in portrait – which
is like this – your video will show up with tram lines down the side of it.
‘I have come to bury Caesar not to praise him!’
Whereas if you shoot in landscape - like this - your video will fill the whole screen.
‘Her father loved me, oft invited me, still questioned the story of my life from year
to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes I have passed’.
See much better.
Camera position and framing. If you are seated you want to position your camera to get yourself
on a medium close-up. The easiest way to define this is a shot from the mid-chest to a few
inches above your head. If you have movement in your speech and you want to stand or walk
around then the easiest shot to go for is a mid-shot. The easiest way to define this
is a shot from the waist or hips to about a foot above the head. This will include a
lot more body movement so if you are walking around or expressing yourself physically then
this is probably the one to go for. It is entirely up to you which one you want to use.
If the speech is intimate, directed to one person and it’s about a person to person
connection then it might be more useful to go for a medium close-up.
‘I hurt and hurt and times a haemorrhage. My heart, my heart it wants to escape from
me before it breaks’.
Ultimately it’s entirely up to you. Experiment. See which one feels better when you watch
it back but those are two tips that might help you to decide.
Keep the camera steady. So to keep the camera steady you can ask a friend or a relative
but we don’t want to see a wobbly video.
‘I just think that what I need is you’.
A wobbly video can detract from your work and distract us. If you don’t have someone
to hand then you can rest the phone against a sofa or against a pile of books. It doesn’t
really matter, as long as the video is steady.
So moving onto eyelines, when you’re recording your audition speech don’t look down the
eye of the camera. It will probably throw you off. I can look down the eye of the camera
now because I’m imagining I’m talking to you but when you’re in character it would
probably make more sense to take your eyeline slightly to the right of where the camera
is. If you can just see my eyeline has slightly shifted away from being directly in contact
with you. Be careful that you don’t go too far out of the frame of the camera because
then we lose your thoughts, we lose the work that you’ve been doing. Make sure that it’s
just to the right of the camera.
So to make that really clear, if you are filming and the phone is facing you this way – this is where
my camera is – you want to be looking around about here. So couple of handy tips for eyelines.
You could ask a friend or a family member, whoever it is that you’re isolating with to stand
just to the right of the camera lens. So I’m just going to shift my eyeline now. And you
could address your speech to them so that you’ve got something to focus on and you can also,
once you’ve done that, ask them to take a photo of that particular position so you
can have a look and check the framing and the eyeline and make sure it’s how you want
it to be.
‘Her father loved me, oft invited me, still questioned me the story of my life from year to year
the battles, sieges, fortunes, that I have passed’.
‘I ran it through, even from my boyish days, to th’ very moment he bade me tell it and
this to hear would Desdemona seriously incline’.
Number 2: locations, acoustics and light.
So you want pick somewhere that you can work, that you won’t be disturbed too often. Bathrooms
are quite tricky because they have hard surfaces that makes the room quite echoey.
So if you can be in a room where there are some soft furnishings to absorb the sound
so we get a nice clear read on your voice, that’d be great.
In terms of lighting try and pick somewhere where you get a good source of natural light
– so I’ve got the sun coming on my face at the moment.
If the light is from a natural source like a window you want the light falling onto your
face. You don’t want the sun behind you because all we’ll be able to see is your silhouette.
Try to shoot against a background that isn’t too distracting. We want to see your performance
and your work rather than hundreds of photos of your family, regardless of how beautiful
they may be or that jazzy wallpaper you’ve got in the second bedroom.
‘of course I’d be here, who’d you think they’d phone when you started going crazy?
'I... I don’t know’
If it is tricky to find a blank bit of wall you could always try taping or hanging a sheet
up behind you just so that you’ve got a nice clean space that we can see your work against.
‘Our wars are done’.
It’s important to remember that this self-tape is with a stage script rather than a screenplay
so we’re not looking for a television performance with realistic props and costumes. This process
should work equally well for you if you are doing a speech from Henry V or if you are doing
a more contemporary monologue, for instance one in which a mum contemplates home-schooling
her four year old for the next three months.
Gilbert and I are both working actors and self-taping is something we do in our professional
lives and we both still find it a bit daunting so please don’t worry, we’re not expecting
you to be experts at this. We want to make it as easy as possible for you. And on that
note try not to worry too much. Do three takes and if you’re not satisfied, take a break
and come back to it.
Thank you for bearing with us and we look forward to seeing your wonderful work very soon.