Self Tape Fundamentals

Jenn works as a coach and actor. Based in Atlanta, she has been self taping and coaching on tapes for many years – She works directly with casting directors based in the South East market including Paris/Feldstein, George Pierre and Marc Fincannon. Jenn has coached tapes for many shows including Ozark and Stranger Things.

Take this one- off class if you want to sharpen your self tape knowledge, need advice on set up’s, decision making and how to make it stand out.

Things that will be covered in the class:

* Equipment. What I teach is more in depth, going into how to set up and place your lighting, how to cheat if you don’t have the right equipment or are traveling, and the best stuff to travel with if you want to be able to tape.

* Marks and eyelines. What to do with your eyeline if you have more than one person in the scene that you’re talking to, how to work with someone walking away to get it to come across if there isn’t dialogue that says what’s happening, etc.

* What to wear, how to dress for the role appropriately and in a way that is comfortable and representative of who you are. Makeup tips, authenticity and what I call “dress to suggest” without going into the realm of costume or anything too distracting.

* Making decisions for your acting choices that work within the world of self-taping. When to use props, how to best approach action sequences, when to choose to walk in or out of a scene or come closer to camera, when to put a button on the end/add a line.

This one off class won’t involve a self tape in advance and will allow plenty of time for questions and feedback.

Those would be the things covered in a one of workshop format. (Within an ongoing class structure all of those things would be covered, plus each week students would pick a 2-3 page scene and tape them, and then be given feedback and redirects in class to either do again live or tape again for the next week.) If it’s something that people wanted to continue with me I would then get more specific by assigning scripts that are quick turnaround, procedural, monologues, etc things that students will feasibly be faced with auditioning to get them prepared. While it will go into acting choices and what could be the strongest emotional approach, this will largely still be technical and getting into the nuts and bolts of what will make a tape the best it can be versus delving into acting technique – I’ll save that for another class