The Short Answer
Follow the casting instructions first. Then frame yourself from the chest up with the camera at eye height, face soft light, stand in front of a plain background and record clean sound. For scene work, put your reader just beside the lens and play the scene to them, not into the camera. Look into the lens only for the slate or when the role talks straight to the audience.
A teleprompter helps with the slate and with direct-to-camera copy. For scene work it's a safety net for a line you might drop, not a way to skip learning the sides.
1. Read the Instructions First
Every casting sends its own. They say how to slate, what framing they want, how long the tape should be, how to name the file and where to send it. When they disagree with general advice, including this guide, the instructions win. Missing one is the easiest way to get skipped before anyone sees your work.
2. Frame and Light It
- Framing. Unless they ask for something else, shoot landscape, from about mid-chest to just above your head. Keep a little space above your head and leave room to move.
- Camera height. Put the lens at your eye level. A laptop flat on a table shoots up your nose, so raise it on a stand or a stack of books.
- Light. Face a window or a soft light, slightly to one side, so your eyes are lit and there are no hard shadows. Avoid a bright window behind you. There's more in how to look better on your MacBook webcam.
- Background. A plain wall in a solid, neutral colour. Nothing that pulls the eye away from your face.
3. Get the Eyeline Right
This is where most self-tapes go wrong, and it's the opposite of what you'd expect. In a scene you're talking to another character, so casting expects you to look at your reader, not at the camera. Looking straight into the lens makes it feel like you're talking to the casting director.
Put your reader, or a mark for them, right beside the camera on one side, at the height of your eyes. Your eyeline then sits a few centimetres off the lens, so casting sees both your eyes and your face reacting. Keep the reader close to the lens. The further away they stand, the more casting sees your profile.
There are exceptions. You look into the lens for the slate, and for roles that speak to the audience directly: commercial copy, presenters, narrators, and any scene where the instructions say so.
4. Record Clean Sound
Casting will forgive a plain background before they forgive muddy sound. Record in a small room with soft furnishings, away from traffic and fans. An inexpensive external mic close to you, just out of frame, beats the laptop mic. Ask your reader to speak more quietly than you, or stand a little further from the mic, so your lines are the loudest thing on the tape.
5. Learn the Sides Well Enough to Listen
Self-tapes often arrive with a day's notice or less, and casting usually isn't expecting a polished, word-perfect performance. They want to see you listen and react. You can only do that if you're not hunting for the next line.
Run the scene out loud with your reader several times rather than drilling lines silently. Learn it by beats: what your character wants in each moment, and what changes it. The words come easier when you know why you're saying them.
6. Where a Teleprompter Helps, and Where It Doesn't
Used in the wrong place, a teleprompter makes an audition worse: your eyes lock onto text instead of the other actor, and casting can see it. Used in the right place, it removes the one thing that breaks an otherwise good take.
- The slate and direct-to-camera copy. Here you're meant to look into the lens, so put the text right at it. On a MacBook, Avocado shows your script in the notch, next to the camera, so you can read commercial or presenter copy while looking straight down the lens.
- Scene work. Your eyes belong on your reader. If you want a safety net for a long speech, use the floating prompter, make it small and drag it to the edge of the screen closest to your reader, near the top, so a glance at it stays near your eyeline. Treat it as a backup for a dropped line, not something to read from.
- Scroll speed. Scenes have silences, so a constant scroll runs away from you. Scroll it yourself, or use voice-activated scrolling, which moves as you speak and stops when you stop. That's part of Avocado Pro, and the free plan includes three Pro sessions a week.
- More than one scene. Add a Script Marker at the top of each scene so you can jump straight to it between takes.
Avocado doesn't appear in screen recordings, so the prompter never ends up on the tape. With Pro, you can record the takes straight from your script in Recording Studio and trim them there. Taping on your phone instead? Avocado for iPhone puts the slate and direct-to-camera copy right under the front camera while it records.
7. Watch It Back Before You Send
Watch every take you plan to send, with sound, start to finish. Check that your eyes are in the frame and near the lens, that your reader isn't louder than you and that nothing in the background moves. Trim the dead air at the start and end, name the file the way the instructions say, and send it before the deadline. There's more on setups for actors on our auditions page.
