How to Set Up A Self-Tape Studio

oh we're live now hey y'all welcome to who come sit welcome to our first live video of several over the next couple of weeks I am Jordan woods Robinson head honcho at book from tape acting studios and I'm Claire Lopez I'm the director of education and outreach so we're super jazzed to be here under the circumstances and to be connecting with as many folks as we can today and we were trying to think of what the first topic was that we wanted to tackle and we said it needs to be self tapes because we we've had many years of evolving our own process with our self tapes and we're gonna go over that of it today and we are also knowing that like many folks are going to be staying home and using their own self tapes right now you totally know that trying to come to a studio right now isn't ideal for everybody so part of our goals here is to kind of show you what we have going on this year how we got to it and so you kind of know what the goal is and what you're recreating in your home studio right you have some understanding of the choices that were made in our studio and you can try to aim for that as your goal in your own way in your own home studio yeah and I mean full disclosure like the some of the tech gear that we're talking about in the studio is expensive like if you wanted to recreate this like I mean just to be transparent you'd probably be about three grand in order to like with our one of our studios to be able to recreate that for yourself right so we're going to go over that but we're going to talk about why we're using that technology and then I also have two more alternatives for you one is going to cost you about a hundred and fifty bucks total are we actually sideways right now okay everybody oh we up right now see we got it now let's let's go ahead and head into the studio and we're gonna start to talk about our studio as its evolved to this process and I've been doing this guys have been doing this for like five years of trying to figure out and that's probably relatively new right but starting some of the equipment that I started on why it's evolved to the point that it has the ideal situation all right so Claire's gonna be woman hanging the camera for me at venturing forth following Jordan was Robinson head honcho and owner into our new studio space welcomed taping room one okay so step on in because one of the first things I want to tackle one of the most important things to me in any taping environment is sound and I don't know if you could tell by just walking the camera into the room or not but when you're here there is a huge difference in sound everything is just focused on me we've got these acoustic panels up this is diffusion right it scatters the sound when it can't be absorbed because one of the main sources of echoes one of the things that makes a room sound bad is when you have two parallel hard surfaces facing each other and sound bounces off one and back and forth and it literally turns into an echo chamber and then when you also have hard surfaces on the floor if you have a hardwood or tile or linoleum floor and if you have a low ceiling it's just a constant pinging of different sounds right and so that's when we start to hear echo that's when it's hard to discern between the actor and the reader behind the camera that's when it starts to sound Ecklie and when you don't actually have that those moments of vulnerability or dynamicism or whatever else is that that you as the artist know that you want to bring to the story but it's all getting completely literally washed over by the rest of the sound that's still echoing throughout the space right so some ways that we've combatted that is we've got absorption panels up here in the ceiling we've got them all around the walls and you don't have to you don't have to spend lots of money on this but be clever clever about how you where you're choosing to treat or where you're choosing to audition if you're in a room if you have a bookcase that you can set up on the wall that is no longer just the sole it's no longer just a flat wall to have a bookshelf where you put different layers of books in there where you can have maybe a couple but stuffed animals in there I'd have some softness have some have some hardness so that the sound is either being absorbed or it's being scattered and not creating a direct echo if you're standing on a hardwood floor or on linoleum or tile invest in a plush rug or like a throw rug or anything just to keep those fibers it might not feel like a big difference but those fibers are going to keep those echoes from coming directly back up to the microphone right anything else in the space a lot of voiceover people will record in a closet specifically because the sound there is no sound except for the sound that's coming out of my mouth and the clothes are actually nice absorption - yes the clothes absorb everything around you so that now the microphone is only picking me up so that when the engineer goes through later they have a relatively raw and dead sound file - which then they can add their own recording of their own or their own um reverb or EQ or anything else right but that's that's one of the main things for me now let's talk a little bit about lighting so Claire do you want to I'm trying not to wash out with all that light happening so let's just one light at a time let's start with our glaze so we have this backlight and you may ask why why Jordan great question the backlight is here to actually accentuate the wall it's here for two reasons one is what you can see as I get closer to the wall you can actually see my shadow right and but then if I get closer to where the light is I have the the light is actually dispersing that shadow so that as the light is coming on from me on focusing on me from the front this light is working to erase any of those shadows behind me right which is a really that just ends up looking like a little bit of distraction and sometimes just a little bit of a unprofessional or slightly amateurish thing just to have lots of shadows behind you right about there a texture unnecessary texture this nice way of saying it right um the other thing that we've been playing with here and this is a recent evolution is I really like the idea of just pointing out hey there's a back wall here yeah we're in a taping studio right and being like that is that's its own thing forget about it now you're just focused on me right I'm not trying to cover up any anything the the goal is that we don't have any distractions back here we don't were not in a living room we're not in a bedroom we don't have a painting behind us because at any point if that casting director stops looking at you and starts looking over your shoulder doing do they get that at Costco right you've already lost you've they have become disengaged just for a matter of seconds but it has distracted from your audition and from your opportunity to show them everything that you wanted to show them right so this backlight is here too to actually allow the actor to draw more focus and to come forward right another way that I've seen it happened that I used to play with it is to actually turn the backlight around so it's just hitting the back of my head right we can show you a little bit of what that effect is ya know a little washed out because of our phone setup that's streaming here yeah so we can kind of see a little bit of like highlight from behind Jordan right yeah and it's really subtle but also viewers note this as well that the smartphone the iPhone thinks it's smarter than us and so just by me moving a little bit the iPhone tried to correct it but then it ended up messing up the color balance in the room and the light balance in the room right even though this is an HD four case filming phone it's still gonna have some of that effect and distortion that we don't want to have happen trying to be smarter than us so if you're ever doing a self tape and using the native camera app on your phone it's more than likely going to be distracting for for the self tape okay so we're gonna come back to that a little bit but this is a nice thing and I've used it I still use this occasionally but just have a little bit text right here especially if like if the person is supposed to look a little angelic or something just a little bit of extra a hint of tightness or of fanciness right but for the most part we keep that turned around for the back wall now talk a little bit about separation yes of what the separation of the actor body's moving along can you see my feet here uh yeah because of this I'm wearing my Fox this which I'd love to do in the studio no reason to wear shoe you're acting there is what I've got about I've got about five feet of separation between myself and the back wall right now and then I have another four feet of separation between myself and the camera not everyone has this much space I totally get it there gonna be times when you're here and you're gonna have shadows that's it there don't worry about it right there you're not gonna do anything that is going to mess with you it's just if we can remove some of those interactions then all the better right but this just allows for the light to get even more focused on me and the actor and to just forget about that even more the camera naturally starts to blur out that background just as the human eye would and now it's just focused on me in this spot and it gives me room to play because when you're an actor our side-to-side movement actually it feels natural to us in the room it's how we would actually spend time talking to each other because we don't want to get too up close and personal and in someone else's space while we're in real life right so we want to feel like when you stay back here however that is exactly the relationship that that's the control that the actor has when you're in the self taping studio your whole relationship is from this back wall to wherever you're Marcus so the more space you can give yourself I plan it you want to talk to me no okay all right yeah what's up oh I gotta get running but I'll see you a little bit okay all right hold on to that thought right and now we just created a whole environment world for ourselves just by giving us those four and a half feet in order to play with the relationship to the camera that work well okay so continuing lights continuing on lines Thank You Claire what we have settled on recently this is where I played with lots of different lighting configurations what we have right now actually will it completely blow out if you come look at this from my perspective it does it does a little bit but I'll try to balance it out okay yeah there you go right so this is the actor POV right now right yeah so we've got these two well first of all I've chosen a ring light not a lot of other taping services offer this and it offers a very natural glow and and normal because if we have the two lights on the sides we inevitably start to see shadow on one side or the other right whereas this even on its demo setting just allows for a little spark behind the eye and it allows for that natural glow to continue to hit the actors face from the front as to avoid washing out too much I'm gonna just rotate ourselves around again I'll try to do it from the side maybe happens so these lighting kits these are not expensive these are from Amazon they really are and I've got will post a link to our blog post of all of this equipment with links to it you can go check it out you can find alternatives you can you can get exactly what we have whatever you're comfortable with each of these do have settings you'll turn off up to five bolts right so you can go through and control depending on skin tone or proximity to the actor or any of number of things even seen there have been times when we're filming a dark and dramatic scene and we will intentionally put shadows on one side of a person's face just to give him a little more grit right you can play with that there really aren't any rules for this as long as it's not distracting as long as it is clear and as long as continuing to tell your story right so we got the two lights there on the actor about 45 degrees here's something that's very important is the center of the light should be at about eye level of the actor if it gets too high and it shines down we end up looking we end up looking a little bit younger which in certain situations can be good however most of the time they just want to see you as you are and if we get too low of the actor we get two things we either start to focus on the shirt more than the face because now the shirts getting all the light or the light hits the cheekbones and then casts dark shadows under your eyes so you end up looking older right that's not what we want not what we want unless you are using it as a tool it can be a storytelling device however for the most part you want the sin those lights right to be at eye level same thing with the camera camera should be right at eye level if or maybe slightly higher maybe like the back of the camera slight petal so you get a slight tilt because of the conical nature of the lens it is it's a curve right and so sometimes we end up looking more natural depending on the actor you end up looking more natural on camera if it's slightly tilted down toward you rather than being completely flat on so that's something for you too so these two lights in combination with our backlight is known as the 3-point lighting system this is a really standard lighting practice with lighting designers and production companies as well as taping studios so this is not an invention of book from tape this is an embracing of a standard that is in the industry the ring light however is a little bit of a like plus plus thing and Jordans already talked a little bit about that but and everyone's kind of got their preference right but it kind of gives us a little bit of extra sparkle in the eyes and it's definitely a personal preference with a lot of people some people love it some people hate it but we've found that we like the front light that it creates for us if I'm going into the perspective of the camera I can brighten or mute so she's brightening the ring light right ring light but if we want to look at it on our monitor so there's here's Jordan this is full ring light brightness we would never do this this is just for like full body shots where we need some light up all the way back here we're gonna brighten they brighten it up right you can see everything but come on step back to the mark if you want Jordan take your glasses off for a second we're gonna just focus on his eyes for a minute but we can see this little bit of sparkle and shine in his iris right and it's not super loud it's not super distracting but it just gives a little bit of attention to the eyes look at that face these he's serving up but this is like an intentional choice we've made in this studio right that we we like not only the front light that we're getting so that it's not just like side to side light but we also really enjoy the sparkle because we've learned in our craft and in our career that are big communicators in our eyes everything is about being alive in our eyes and if we're I'm just a little bit of extra emphasis and attention to her eyes why not why not lean into that yeah I see I've got total with our setup here I've got total lighting coverage up until about here I can get this close to the camera if I ever need to both the time you're gonna be right here but then I can also come all the way back here you're right now starting to see a little bit of shadow right that's to spell that's dispersing now it's about gone right about now right so this is the average spot find that glow for yourself but also know that if you do need to enter the scene you can start mrs. Williams hi hi I'm sorry to make you buy yesterday but I really appreciate everything you did for for my mom right that's it we've now created a whole environment while without without leaving the camera without making the camera refocus on anything and while still being completely within our light so we had total control over our story well lighting good lighting good let's talk a little bit about camera okay this is something actually you how do you feel about that how does it read if we're just there maybe here I didn't know if we want to do a shot of the camera so that's why I was you know I'll put it over front of this camera okay another cool trick with glasses cuz I wear glasses to things the lighting as Claire just pointed out it started to reflect right if I'm here the light is bouncing off of the glasses giving me a green reflection and blocking my irises right watch this take them off take the arm off your glasses tilt it up into about an inch above your ear okay it's actually on an angle the arm is now right here my ears right here okay I turn back the camera really can't tell the difference but now the light is reflecting off the lens and going down that way I have to go all the way up here in order for you to be able see that green what a cool tip and in a pinch you can use like mic tape or you can use a bobby pin if you were like hey I'm having trouble making my glasses stay there but in general a nice troubleshoot for that is when we talked earlier too about the lens being slightly higher and tilting down that also helps solve that reflection problem too right if we change just ever so slightly nothing huge but change ever so slightly the angle the camera we're now seeing less reflection in the glasses so that's tilt of our head that's tilted the glasses tilts the camera I've got three different ways we can troubleshoot it and have a series for that specific purpose I have a series of like reading glasses that I popped the lenses out of so that we just have the frames it's a common practice if you go onto any film set they're going to have glasses with either completely what's called reflection less lenses or they popped the lenses out and as the viewer we can't tell the difference between when you're just wearing frames or when you're wearing alo'so a Deschanel a new girl mm-hmm and Harry Potter most of the time most of the time he's just wearing crimes with no lenses okay this is one of those that can you see the focus on there this is the Canon 80 D this is one of the cameras that we use actually the one that we're filming on right now is a 9 d D it's the evolution of this one it's just it's got a little more resolution it's got a couple more you can see that it's actually focusing on one of my eyes if this eye is closer to you it's got the little sticker on it and then if I bring this eye closer it focuses on that one so it's always in laser focus but both of these cameras both of them have two dual focusing systems what I can't think what they're called right now but they actually most cameras will focus on you once but that allows for if I come forward it's only got one system it's going oh there he is oh there is but then I go backward it goes out of focus out of the area so it takes longer both of these cameras are nearly instant so that you have full control of being able to get really close to the camera and then being able to go back and it's constantly focusing on you that a DD is more budget-friendly you can find these on Amazon if you buy it new it's like eight hundred fifty bucks which is still a price tag however if you get it used or refurbished you can find it from much less than that and this camera will serve you for a very long time right the next thing to talk about is our microphones all right do you want to talk about the internal mic on that one first and then switch over into the yep so the internal mic on these cameras I'm just about any camera is gonna be fantastic the one thing is that it is omnidirectional meaning it's picking up sound from the entire room so that also means that my volume is just is gonna be just as loud as the readers volume except they're only one foot away from the camera whereas I'm four feet away from the camera so now the readers louder and also it's picking up echo bouncing off of everything all around you so if you've trouble shot all of your sound treatments if you've trouble shot everything you can with like trying to ask your readers step further away and you're still finding that you're having some audio issues you can invest in a shotgun mic and a shotgun it literally means that it's just it's pointed one direction and it's only gonna it's only gonna pick up what's in front of that one direction we've used a number of different shotgun links first I'm gonna start with the one that I do not recommend and this is important because it's one of the cheapest ones right this is called the rode videomic go Gio and it looks you know it's a shotgun mic if you take off this wind filter it's just a microphone pointing straight forward it only picks up with it whatever's in front of it however this specific microphone does not have an internal battery so as soon as the camera battery starts to get low at all you get lots of extra noise and hiss and it's actually more distracting to your video than it would have been if you were just recording in your echo room and unless you've got a resonant sound guy with earphones listening letting you know when that's happening you won't know until you finished yourself tape and you listen back and you're like oh wait wait I just ruined to take which happens it still happens to us all the time too because none of this technology instead of a mess it can just crap out on you at any moment unfortunately but the investment means that you'll be able to get more out of them this is one that I do recommend also biro this is called rode this is the rode videomic ntg it's newer and it has a built in battery system it still plugs into any smartphone or any camera just with the standard three on Jack right 3.5 millimeter the other thing is that I really like about this one can you see that I mean give me a second to focus no it just likes your face more than you can with this one you can manually adjust input so you can actually with a dial right here if you have a really quiet scene or really loud scene you can just tweak this just a little bit to say hey you know don't freak out when I get loud I'm gonna turn this down just a little bit and it still blocks everything else in the room what camera want to sleep yeah okay still blocks everything else in the room while allowing just you to be the main focus now this is one of my favorites a little bit more expensive it's about three hundred dollars okay but this is called a sennheiser and it's a dual shotgun mic so this focuses in one direction this has actually got two shotguns that are focusing focusing in two different directions and think about this as an actor who wants to have full control over their domain and everything if it's picking up audio in both the left channel and the right channel that allows for me to move around throughout the room and the microphone the microphone is reflecting all of that so right if you're watching me move to one side of the camera then the sound too is going to travel to that side of the camera as opposed to smartphones or or the other microphones that we've discussed today they're only going in in mono so even if I move it still just sounds like it's coming from Center and if you've got a three hander scene where you're it's three people in a saying you're one character and there's two characters and you're speaking to each one of them on either side of the camera it's actually going to help your sound as your voice and your body and your face points in the direction of your invisible scene partners on either side right great so is there anything that I'm skipping out on here have there been any questions that come up no questions we're just like kind of checking in what's the name of the duel shotgun again oh it's called Sennheiser this has also got a link in an hour in the blog post that we will post in the comments I got all these on Amazon I love I love this right some other folks are sold on the lapel mics you know just being able as you would on a on any set having a lapel mic that comes up to hear me personally I'm not as sold on it I think it does unnaturally sound too close to the actor in a self tape setup right if we don't have an engineer there somebody to mix it for us all that other stuff I find that it does get we we miss out on too much of the room right and for me for me my opinion is just a little bit distracting right and do we notice any kind of distortion with the reader if they're not on a lapel mic and you are that's the other thing some other taping studios will have both people out an old pal mic and then they go through and they mix it later so it's also just a lot of extra work so if you can find a shotgun mic that works well for you then it is the for me the simplest option without investing in lots of other equipment I think if you want we can start moving into the other space okay and we can continue to talk about spacing and other self tape rigs and things like that but we can do you want us I have one thing that I want to go up to you and you want to start that conversation and then yeah I'll be Serina just go for a little walk my friends I know it's not as interesting as seeing Jordans beautiful face but we're gonna just set this camera back up to where we were and where we started we're just gonna point it this way hey guys welcome back to our group space so we a couple things that we didn't chat about in at space but we wanted to kind of just keep things moving we talked a little bit about the spatial distance between the actor and the camera we talked a little bit about eyeline it's really important to have the camera at the same eyeline as you it's also really important to be aware of having when you're speaking to somebody you're not speaking direct to camera unless it's it's a commercial audition or it's a character in which you've been directed to speak direct to camera if you were to use rapport or something like that but in general that you always want to place your eye lines on either side of the camera but being aware that we're never gonna aim to be directly in profile so even though Jordan's right next to me and I want to talk to you like this if it was a self tape situation you've lost so much of my face and most of both of my eyes so we're just cheating those eyelines kind of are our three point lighting system helps with that right because where the lights are kind of gives us the boundary in which how far we can look whatever left so it's just like another little tip fun fact about in your own taping setup as you're trying to figure out where am I looking a lot of us already know yeah I don't look at the camera duh but a lot of us don't realize that sometimes we're cheating ourselves too far over and we're over correcting so just another thing to sort of consider and think about is setting those things so that your body and your face and your voice is open to camera as you possibly can be and speaking to a person on either side of camera without it being too close or too far away yes absolutely speaking of which you're right on edge of frame so I'm just gonna just this real fast okay now check this out so like I said before that's all crazy expensive right and you can get more expensive you can get less expensive but at a certain point you know just have to you just have to know why you're making those choices but as promised I want to introduce you to something that is about a hundred and fifty dollar alternative at least for the camera right and this turns any smartphone into a pretty dang good camera this is an anamorphic lens by a company called moment M om ent will put the link into into the notes into the the conversation underneath right so this little lens is made of actual glass you can get actual lens flare and this little lens is about a hundred and twenty-five dollars okay you can take it with you you can take pictures with it you can take videos on it it the way it works is it attaches to your phone with the special moment case and you can see up here it's actually got a way that you just take it and screw it into the case and now it's connected completely to your cameras are to your iPhone's camera or to your Android's camera they make a special case for any of these phones and so when you upgrade your phone all you have to do is buy a new $25.00 case and you still get to keep the same lenses right but what this does is when you go into this app it allows you to control focus you can say I only want it to focus on this one person you it allows you to control lighting which is what we were finding with the iPhone earlier when it was trying to be smarter than us it was adjusting the contrast and the lighting and we say no no no don't adjust anything I want to move around the room without the looking like the room is changing right and you can say good only focus on this light and lock that in lock in lock in this wall right here right so that even as I move around the room now it still keeps the room looking exactly the same and more importantly this gives a beautiful wide-angle lens which is what you would get on a DSLR or any other camera and so it's just making things more standard and so you can with this I've used this to fit to shoot beautiful videos I also take it with me on vacation if I find if I'm ever in a hotel room or anywhere else like this is a massive lifesaver for any actor who is consistently doing self tapes or video blogging or hosting or anything else so check it out I think it's moment lenses calm but don't hold me to that we're gonna figure out we're gonna put it into the show notes but for 150 bucks you could have this you can also buy they sell a little stand that has got these adjustable tripod legs to it you can put this on to like a wall sconce a at a hotel and then adjust it to have your camera facing you so that you don't need to have a tripod you can I've adjusted dist whoops I put this on like tree limbs and stuff before right so whatever you need to do now lastly if you don't want to if you aren't in a position to drop even the 150 bucks on the lens you should not be doing anything on your phone in the native camera app period it's just not it's not worth your time it's not worth your investment however there is one app called filmic Pro again we'll put it in here fi lm IC pro i think it's 19 or 20 dollars in the App Store or on Google Play and again it gives you all the same controls where you can see sound metering you can see everything else that you're going for but you can with this you can lock in focus you can lock in aperture you can lock in brightness you can even edit within this however I wouldn't recommend it I'd still export it to whatever editing service that you're using please edit on your computers whenever possible our phones even the best editing apps are so limited and honest honest to heavens I don't even have that big of fingers but trying to scrub through footage and crop and edit its really really limiting so we always are going to edit on a huge screen where you've got the space to play with it and really see what's happening yeah it'll save your sanity and your time and I don't think your data yeah and most most phones don't allow you to name it as I guess most no iPhones do androids probably do because they do stuff like this but iPhone doesn't allow you to like name your file when you export it so you still end up with image 149 3000 rendering it can be challenging and if you ever have to change the sizes because sometimes casting directors want a specific file size and don't you're you're just really limited so whenever possible have even if it's an iPad something that's larger that you can work with in your phone and guess what here's a clue if you get that taping room right you don't have to do any extra work in the editing program you don't have to go in and adjust lighting or adjust sound or anything like that if you get that room right then all you have to do once you put it onto the computer is cut off the beginning where you go through it you know and it cut off the ending where you go we all do tape anything cut off the very end we go I don't know I don't think that was a good take right and then if you cut out those things and just send off the rest then everything is gonna look and sound perfect without adjustments another really quick fun fact one tip in terms of tripod so the tripod we're filming this on right now is like a twenty twenty-five dollar Amazon tripod you can switch it out to hold a camera instead of a phone although because it's like aluminum and very hollow I wouldn't recommend it if you once you've started to spend upwards of five hundred dollars on your camera you should be prepared to spend upwards of 50 to 70 dollars on your tripod it makes no sense to spend $800 on a camera and then twenty-five dollars on a tripod and hope that it lasts right it's just not worth and if you're tall almost tripods they're not relaxed for that much aren't tall enough anyway but I will say that if you are using something like this there's a lot of ways to target right eye all the time we'll put it on my Ottoman so it gets the right height there's a built-in little sort of level in there but the other thing I really recommend is if you're on an iPhone and I think Android has this - there's actually an app that has a level built into your phone so before I do any self taping on my iPhone I'm always going through the app I set up the level and I go is this actually level like sometimes it's level to the floor but the tilt forward or back isn't quite right so I check that first it's just a small little thing it takes 20 seconds but I do it before every self tape that I do on my iPhone just to make sure that nipping that in the bud and I'm not in my edit going wow I'm a little like off and how do I fix that right it's just a small thing that I think is really worth doing I think that's great so let's move on to the second we're gonna talk about comment pitfalls that we see in self tapes and also share a couple stories personal experiences with our own self tapes then we're going to get into a Q&A so here's what I think could work will you share your story your self tape yeah and then maybe you can start perusing some of the comments and you have some questions yeah I talk okay so my first self tape ever was over a decade ago it was before yeah it was before self tapes were really common it was part of a screening process to get into a conservatory program there wasn't this just wasn't anything that was happening but I did have a shot at a professional camera so that was cool but I had no idea what my framing should be I was way too five it had it I had a singing component I was way too far away from the mic I'm pretty sure not only could you see my entire body in the foot in the framing but I'm pretty sure depth wise I was like I don't know over ten feet away from the camera it was bad I booked it was fine um but it was kind of a miracle like I really I really could have lost out on a really good opportunity because I just didn't know and honestly that I didn't have a place to look like there wasn't a bunch of youtube stars out yeah doing stuff I didn't have anything as a reference point so I quickly quickly learned after that and since since then working in the business like your framing is very important so many times either we see people filming in portrait mode which we have to do for live videos apparently you're not not in a sub T not real life not in real life it should always be landscape and there's a reason for that the main thing is that we already know that when we watch a movie when we sit down in the movie theater and watch a film it's films that way that's how actual movies are and when you film in portrait it creates those like black bars on either side and we just see less of you and we see we're not able to see into the scene and just like a headshot we want our face to be taking up a certain percentage of the frame we want our eyes to be in focus and we want to be able to connect with you as a storyteller and we can't if we see all of this negative space around you right so we just want to minimize that negative space we always our general framing is is a medium close-up great and different people will have different opinions of what that looks like depending on people but ideally yeah it's that mid chest too like an inch half inch above the head you can give yourself wider framing if you're comfortable in your editing skills to crop back out and get it a little bit tighter but in general that's what we aim for if you're not sure we're mid chest as I say start with your armpit that's a really good point of reference you see we see collarbone and we see you know part of your chest but it's it's that our focus is on the face so that framing thing apart from just like the space of the the camera from the body that's huge but more importantly it's seeing that cuz we've got a good camera you could be farther away and zoom in and it's fine but if you don't know that framing that's hard and I think the second part of it is that angle of the camera to the eyes that's a huge huge thing yeah so many times I see people there's a lot of like really cool things happening on the internet right now with like self taping challenges and modeling Mondays and it's really awesome to see everyone's work but it's really limiting when you see the camera and it's looking up at you and you've clearly set it on a desk and you're acting down this way and it's just really distracting and confusing and it's off-putting for your audience so it's really important to have that camera right at your eyeline the lenses right at your eyes if not just a little bit higher but in huge but nothing there's not a lot of wiggle room right and again if you're filming from above it's also really distracting it's really strange like the looking and just distorting it ends up it makes your neck look unproportional enlarge in your head look up proportionately small just like weird stuff and it doesn't end up looking like you it's just not helpful yeah so in a pinch like medium close-up framing camera at the same height your eyes you're looking on either side of like the lens for your focus yeah and making sure you're in that landscape mode but all those things are super important along with the things we've already talked about with having that plain background the main goal here is just that the focus is on you yeah that's really everything comes to you can summarize everything we're talking about here to say the goal here is that there is nothing getting in the way of the story that you were telling if if there's something there's lots of rules that can be broken or bent a little bit depending on the situation but at the end of the day it has to be sort of able to break them you will have a story so at the end of the day this and this kind of applies to head shots and everything else all right if if it's serving the story of you if it's communicating and we're able to see into you cool but if we were hearing noises if we're seeing stuff in your background if if we're looking up your nose because the camera angles weird like all of those things are distracting from your performance in the story that you're telling so that's where all of these things kind of come from awesome thank you all right so Claire's go look for some questions we're gonna get to some QA so now is the chance if you have a question if you have a comment if you want something for us to talk about please just add it to the comments right now and Claire's going through and starting to gather some stuff so in Norton now I want to completely contradict myself because ADA also at a certain point like don't worry too much about your taping setup because here's the story so I I know two very good friends who were auditioning for the walking dead okay they're auditioning for the same role and one person got their audition and went out and hired a whole production crew to to actually like to this scene in an alleyway where they got hijacked and then the people held them at gunpoint and all that stuff and like they edited that and they sent it off and it looked good and another friend was in a hotel room and had their phone holding it in selfie mode and they were talking to just off camera but they were literally holding their own phone as an eyeline guess who booked it the selfie person thank you it's a rhetorical question but wearing this okay I hope that's clear but it was the selfie person so like at a certain point like if you're the right actor for the job you're gonna book it no matter what no matter no matter if you screwed up your line no matter if the lighting was distracting no matter if bla bla bla bla and so you can have a terrible audition and be still booking you can also have the best audition and not book it and each of those things are completely out of your control unfortunately the two things to think about there is one we're in the business of setting ourselves up for success so there's something within your control ie your setup and your preparation that you can do to make it the best thing you can present it like do it do that right that's what you have control over for sure and then the other side of that coin is this is like more of a - anything I think's still really important and valid when it comes to self tapes it's like i tec personally i'm of the belief that like the things that are for you will be for you right like so it's why sometimes when we're not in the best of circumstances we come in and we're not off book because we got a new script change which i've had happened to me likes a new script change happened me the date like that day on set or things other other stuff happens and you can still book at or still make it successful and it's because if it's the right thing for you it'll work itself out so I think coming into yourself tape with this like I'm gonna control what I can control I'm gonna be prepared I'm gonna set myself up for success and then also I'm gonna say I'm gonna let myself off the hook for worrying about how how well it turns out or what it is that you're trying to recreate anything that I aimed for it to be because at the end of the day if it's for you it'll happen yeah I mean your job is to show up and tell your stories and like it's not your business but they want to do with that if they want to incorporate into the film or not like that's not my problem it's not my job my job isn't to cast the project your job is just helping provide options give you an option and be the potential solution to the problem that is they're casting puzzle yeah so I think there's there's some value there so we have questions okay well one of the questions via hell yeah girl hey thanks for watching um she was asking if we're still filming this weekend during rescheduling we okay so in there's two answers one is in connection to good correlation with Orange County Public Schools all of our classes are postponed for the same length of time that they are postponing for the spring break so we aren't having any group classes out of respect for like with holding this like countywide decision that's been made for businesses however we do we are still taking appointments for tapings and this is like a one on one thing right you're not in a room with like 40 actors it's you and me or you and Jordan Purell everywhere everywhere everything Claire but so much Purell before all of this happen so yeah absolutely if you have a self tape that you want to do we will tape you we're still open for business don't regard we're also offering Skype coaching and we're offering that discount right now on any Skype coaching is that where you want to do so if you're like hey I don't feel comfortable being out in the world but I love someone to read lines with me or to prep this audition like yeah happy to do I worked with two folks this morning one was looking for a new scene to put up on actors access so what we did was we used this you know this time to go over scenes and to start working on them and then in the future and next week or in two weeks then she's gonna come into the studio and we're gonna put it on tape right but we didn't have to have that one-on-one in the room time in order to do that and then another then I've got another person who I do work with every week in the space but now we are focusing on script analysis more so than like exploring on our feet and we're focusing more on the industry and we're focusing more on making sure that his actors access and his website and everything else are all up to date so that when we do hit the ground then we're off at a full sprint and there's nothing holding us back okay so we do have one other question and it's about wall colors and so the question is like I saw you blue do you change our colors or whatever so there's so many answers and I think this can be unpacked in many ways but yeah one is yes we have our light like eggshell blue and that's been like our our color for a long time but we also have the color option of like this like slate gray and some of that is for we want to make sure that whatever background we have is not a distraction right we're not blending into the background but we're also not the color isn't pulling focus away from us the actor and the storyteller so we have the blue is a little bit happier approachable it might be for something more commercial or comedic but it's still really neutral doesn't project anything like super loud and the gray is a little bit darker could be used for drama could be used for thriller I've used grey personally in my own self tapes for Reagan for commercial stuff right I just like the look of it so it gives it some options depending on your skin tone or your wardrobe for that day so we do have a couple options and we're continually building and discussing all the time like ooh yeah but one of the things I wanted to talk about is like we see really all the time this like chroma key green or chroma key blue right and there's like such a divide about it right a lot of studios it is available in the Fobo tech background backdrop the collapsible thing yeah which is a great resource just if you don't have if you don't have like a place in your house that is like really great you can buy a it looks like one of those like a windshield solar block around your car right just folds up and like this little disc right but then you unfold it it's a four by six or so like panel yeah and it's not made out of it doesn't wrinkle easily yeah and I think it collapses down and they make it with two-sided colors so sometimes some of them are black and white some of them are blue and green some or blue gray I personally own the blue and gray one so I love gray so much and there's some studios at the end of the day when it comes to backdrops I think people worry a lot more about them than they should so a lot of the time people like should I bloop should I have green everyone seems to like this one right and I think it's a little bit of maddening and crazy making right a lot of the time we're putting a lot more we're giving away our power and our mental energy to something that isn't as big of a deal as it should be so I just want to preface it with that at the end of the day every technical question could be answered by is it distracting from me telling the story like at the end of the day right so for some reason you're like hey I really like this shade of blue against me I know I pop I've gotten a lot of compliments but then by all means you say blue right but the thing I wanted to say about especially the chroma key especially about the chroma key green but blue is included in this is that like it's really important to understand sort of the history behind it right this thing that we think of like this is a standard and everybody seems to use it like I'm gonna do that cuz that's a standard it actually isn't really a standard right this was developed with new stations and technical production companies and it was for the purpose of replacing that background right we have this chroma key green not because it's flattering to the skin not because it looks natural not because we all look great against it we have it because it's a loudest color that we possibly can happen no one will ever look like in their Skinner and their clothing that we can replace digitally right if you're not working with a special-effects digital artist to replace your background watch for yourself tip you really shouldn't be even if you can I know something I've had that question I have the capacity to do this can I do this and I'm like please don't like I want the most amazing stellar thing about your audition to be you and not how cool your technical skills and is replacing your background yeah and that's me when I'm casting projects anyway that's it so the purpose of this green was never for it to be something that people look at and go wow that's a great color green it was never meant to be looked at by the human eye ever it doesn't exist in nature in existence which is why it makes it easier to remove it because you won't find it in any of our so it's it's super it's literally supernatural yeah right so um just don't use so don't use it right and and blue is a lot more complimentary and it's beautiful and I've used it in a pinch if I'm like I really want to wear gray for this and I don't wanna use my gray background implanted so I'd use my blue for that and I think with the right lighting you can soften it a little but the blue isn't too far behind the green and it was like a naturalness or in the fact that it was never intended to be used for the purpose that it seems to be used right now it's good and there's some studios who are like this is what we use because this is what we have access to because they're small home studios that are like somewhere in between your home studio and what we offer right there's some studios who are like I'm a one-woman show starting my own small business and this is what I'm doing and it's fine it's okay but our our goal is to give you like beyond fine if you have any say or control I personally if you're going online and getting your own backdrop I lean into that grade yeah white I think is too stark and unless you have a lot of good natural light it's got to get creep your bounce stuff and depending on your skin color it's gonna be strange you might be washed out by it black is equally problem yeah unless it's a drama or very specific choice so I personally feel like most casting directors request a light blue or light gray yeah so that's what we've noticed obviously there's going to be different industry trends in different markets and if you're like hey I'm going for a fact this casting office uses this so I want to use this color because that's got to be what they're used to seeing fine it's a strategy at that point but it but there's also strategy to be saying I know everybody else's in person studio was like I know like Martha Mullins I think it's blue right in his backdrop so if I know I'm just doing a self self tape from our Mullins I know I could do blue and match all of the tapings that he did in a studio or I could purposely go I'm gonna stand out and I'm gonna use a different color so it again that's just like strategy just problem-solving and making some choices as an artist but at the end of the day if your acting is where it should be it shouldn't really matter they shouldn't notice that I shouldn't you're doing your job right um again set yourself up for success make good choices you know don't don't come off as like completely green in a newbie by by not being aware of these trends but by by the end of the day like don't don't like stress your heart out around things like well I did great so they're blue or I did like we'll be okay yep yeah see if we have any other questions is any blue shade okay I have the blue-green portable backdrop option of the blue and the blue is more of it yeah so we are so Dallas yes all of that was for you as well like is the blue between the blue and green would either work yet the blue is I would default to the blue and only use the green if there's something really specific but yeah the Blues gonna be great yeah looking good in the new studio thanks time yeah trying to think if there's anything else I didn't touch on this earlier but even if you don't have a great lighting kit natural light can't be beaten you don't want direct sunlight but if you have a window that just has natural light streaming in you can use that and it's gonna get you look like I I'm using these lights to try to recreate natural light right that's that's the goal so we're hotel room when you're traveling house better lighting because of almost every hotel room has at least one external wall so sometimes I'm having to make pick a battle between like well this wall is clearer but this lighting is better and sometimes you have to make this hard choices so okay I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna take the frame off the pre mounted frame off of this wall and I'm gonna lean it to this good light because I would rather be seen and if there's a little like light switch in the frame oh well either crop it out or figure it out and if they know when they requested it that I was booked on a thing like they'll know right um so I saw a lot of time lean into the light yeah at that point just close the sheers you know there's always like this year and then the regular curtains and a lot of hotel rooms just close the sheers so it's not direct light its diffused that way you're not getting any harsh miss on your skin and I've seen folks buy this is really accessible like if you go to a Michaels or a craft store or Office Depot and pick up just like a poster board like a white poster board I've seen people literally use that as balance they're like I don't really have this direct light in the I can't find a good wall or whatever so we'll use natural light and they'll literally like if they can the hold it is bounce and they'll literally reflect it up with themselves and they'll do the little stuff taping it's challenging cuz like you don't have access to your hands and stuff but where you could prop it off solve it but there are ways there are ways to actually make a really beautiful self tape without a lot if you have your on-the-go tripod and you've got like a good app to record to you know that or a lens or but yeah yeah it's all possible cool all right let's see if we have one more question maybe if there's the people that come into something yes we do so you this is a kind of a shift thing right so in our old spaces we had the option of like either you can get coaching and taping or you can get just taping but one of the things we've sort of upgraded with the upgrade of our new space is that now every time you tape you're immediately getting coached and we are super flexible on that like if you come in and you're like I know what I want to do and I don't really want to play with it right now that is totally cool right but but we're super available now everybody is trained and has already been doing this anyway but now included in your taping is coaching and feedback so we're there to give you some options and play with it and try some new things on and and to be like a consultant and a collaborator with you on building whatever the piece needs to be yeah so yeah for sure that's something that you and it's not a it's it's almost never out of like a we're gonna fix this kind of context it's out of hey we you know we are fellow actors as well and have you know our muscles are quite in tuned to picking up script analysis clues as are yours and oh my gosh I just noticed this new clue I'm just gonna throw that at you right what do you think about that and we just go again right it's pretty pretty located um so we've got one more question and then we can maybe it's best way to hide or soften shadows if we don't have filters we really sure about the filter part of it but we already know proximities is our biggest ally or enemy right so the closer you are to a light or to a wall the stronger that shadow will be right the more emphasized we will see your outline of your shadow to the wall which is why we're always playing with that depth right I even a pinch in my own like if I have to self tape at home and I can't go to our beautiful studio I have my three point lighting system and that separate little light if you don't have it like you can get a lamp something just give a little bit of pop on that back wall behind you to separate your body from the wall helps align and that height thing right whether or not you've got something to soften or filter it having the light be the height of your eyeline is really really important to minimize the shadows that you're gonna see on your face Thank You Yangs pretty and flattering I've seen people who take lampshades and take bedsheets and put things over them like that's another way to sort of diffuse or control light in a different way yeah obviously it's it's limited right if you're not using good daylight natural light or natural light bulbs you're gonna have some warmth and some stuff that you may not want yeah or you might be yellowed but that's in a pinch I think that your best friends are having just like a white bed sheet and having something you can throw over a lampshade that you can give yourself some light without risking like a fire right we want to not put it directly on the bulb but yeah something like that and that's that's how I'm gonna interpret Stacey's question similarly but it's slightly parallel is that I'm wondering if she's saying because when I first started out I went to Lowe's and I bought like one of those work lamps you know it's like orange with the grid across the foam is a strong white I'm gonna use this because I didn't know where to go look for soft boxes and stuff right and that is the death of that is just when it's directly on your skin then it's way too harsh but if you can find a way to balance that off of something so that what's hitting you is now diffused so that is just really well you can bounce it off if you have like a light wall nearby if you have I'll just go out and like set up a white poster board and have the the light bouncing off of the poster board so that light is hitting you it's gonna be softer and it's gonna be less distracting and Amazon has we looked at we have the softbox lights here but I we also have like sort of cowboy lighting that I use at home that's basically the same thing but instead of a softbox it's like an umbrella um I don't love it as much in terms of the look but it's nice in terms of like in your home studio it's a lot easier to open and close an umbrella than it is to open and close this oh yeah those need to stay out they basically are lights are softbox lights just stay up the whole time because trying to break them down it's kind of a pain in the butt yeah but I I have the ones with a little umbrellas because then I can just set it up open the umbrella and it's ready in 30 seconds over too bad check this out I was just at IKEA and they sell a number of LED wall panels that are like 2x4 wall panels and they're like it's like the size of a wall-mounted mirror but it's all LEDs and they're dimmable and that like if I were looking to like reimagine some of the ways that we do things I would I would consider those two because one of the problems with LEDs is that they're just hella bright they're way too bright it's gonna be distracting for your actor in the scene to try to act with those around right however if if they're dimmable and if they're at a point where you're not squinting when you're looking toward them then those are super cheap to maintain right they're this thin you can put them behind a door or something and then you just get them out and hang them up on the wall when you need to and you could probably get a pretty dang good results from that but this lighting kit that we're using you can find it on Amazon for like a hundred bucks like really like if that is an investment that you're concerned about I say it's a worthwhile investment and I will say I'm in the process of like buying my own version of a ring light because I feel this way too like if I'm like on the road and I can't be here that the lighting almost before I do I different camera order different sign lighting is one of my biggest things because just having this I was using natural light for a really long time I really loved it but then I was really limited to like okay it's six o'clock and I have to do a self tape and I literally can't it's nighttime I have terrible light in my house so I think the lighting is a great investment because you can do so much with a nice smart smartphone iPhone combination if you use the right apps and you can do a lot with the internal mics but you can't really make light exists where there isn't any if you don't have yeah some kind of setup so I do think it's one of the best investments and are pretty affordable but we we probably have a couple more questions but um the most part we've answered it right so let's like focus on wrapping up here right um the good news is is that this video is now alive and once we put finish it'll be here for a replay and we're gonna continue to monitor so throughout the rest of these next few weeks here at March we're gonna continue to monitor these things and come back so if you're watching it on the replay just do a hashtag replay ask your question we will be coming back through this thread pretty much on the daily answering any questions that pop up and adding any links that we think are relevant but our next few videos we're gonna focus on different things so every day we'll post something and infographic some information a blog post will start threads where you can post things for feedback and then the next time we do a video will be able to unpack like what we found and what the trends were and how we how we kind of start evaluating that so that's kind of our goal here so thanks for joining us like your facebook lives um feel free to give us a buzz we're happy we're around work years I don't it wasn't done anywhere I don't know we live here um so if you have any comments or questions you know you know how to find us on the interwebs and let us know if you have anything else that you're interested in learning or discussing here with us we really want to be offering stuff that is valuable to you so if there's something that pops up for you they love a Facebook live on this yeah let us know don't make that happen yeah come on alright thanks y'all I gotta figure I could turn this off now okay bye [Music]