SELF-TAPE AUDITION

It’s the Real Thing

— Coke

The screen audition I am posting here is motivated by the idea that everything should be as real as possible so that the actor has to do as little work as possible. It is the successful self-tape audition that Thomasin McKenzie submitted for what became her breakout role in the film LEAVE NO TRACE (2017), co-starring Ben Foster and directed by Debra Granik.

Thomasin is my daughter and she and the producers have kindly given me permission to add this link to the audition-scene here. And you can see the trailer for the film here.

LEAVE NO TRACE

Like Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY AND LUCY (2008), Debra Granik’s work, such as WINTER’S BONE (2010) has inspired many great American social realist films. Recently Chloe Zhou’s award-winning feature film NOMADLAND (2020) explores this territory powerfully. As does the recent TV series MARE OF EASTTOWN.

In 2016, Debra was looking for a young teen to play the character Caroline in her adaptation of Peter Rock’s classic novel MY ABANDONMENT (2009). (The film inspired by the book was re-titled LEAVE NO TRACE). The US casting directors Barden/Schnee put out a world-wide casting call from Los Angeles. And all the way over in New Zealand, Thomasin received the brief.

What was the first thing she did? She watched Debra’s previous films to get a vibe of what kind of performance Debra was looking for and what shape the audition should take. And then she formed a team to help her achieve a great tape that would cut through — a local casting director who could also operate the camera, and a reader.

THE READER

Who is the most important person in the audition room? I often ask this question of actors. And it is surprising how often they do NOT answer “the reader!”.

In the room you might find the casting director, a camera operator, maybe the director and even the producer. But it is your relationship with the reader that defines your work on the screen. The camera wants to capture the power of the “space between”, the energy that is flowing between you and the reader.

“The reader is always the wrong age/gender…”

“But the reader often gives me nothing…”

These are responses that I sometimes hear from actors when reflecting on how important the reader is.

But in an audition room, you have to work with the reader you are given. I guess you could call the reader the “Given Circumstances” of the audition room, the challenge you just have to work with and make the best of.

The temptation is to try to erase the reader and substitute them with an acting-partner-of-your-mind. It is easy to let yourself off the hook by blaming the reader if something goes wrong in the room. But this is a trap. It is within your power to endow the actual reader with the qualities you need. You have to find a way to love the reader. Or to hate the reader. Or to be scared by the reader... whatever the role requires. For the actor, the reader is the most important person in the room.

I am from New Zealand. We are right on the edge of the world, and we want to support each other and lift each other up so that we can cut through to the centre. Here, being a great reader is an art. A lot of work goes into it:

— moving around the room to create an eyeline

— elongating or breaking-up feed-lines to create opportunities of white space for the actor who is on camera

— using appropriate props to interest the actor, creating eye-flicks and spontaneous responses

— changing pace, phrasing and emphasis to provide freshness

— offering an “invisible line”, later edited out, to enliven the first moments of the tape

— encouraging the actor to relax and be in the moment, with a game or a challenge

In a self-tape you often get to choose the reader. This opportunity gives you the great luxuries of time, rehearsal, repetition, complicity and a shared vision for the outcome.

THANK YOU, DOOR

In Thomasin’s audition, you can see examples of the work being supported by Vista and Objects. You can learn more about these concepts in my YouTube videos.

Here’s a reminder of what they are:

Once an OBJECT leaves the frame, once you can no longer touch, smell or taste it, I call it your VISTA, something you are aware of in the world around you, something you can see or hear. It is something that calls you, magnetizes you, beckons your attention.

The light switch, your dog, your car, the local prison, another city, the moon. Your vista is anything outside the frame that helps make your performance more natural by helping you to achieve unselfconsciousness.

In Thomasin’s audition for LEAVE NO TRACE, you can see the positive impact of Vista on her work. Something beyond the frame to her left is drawing her gaze, making her turn. In the text for the scene, we hear that over there is a room she does not want to go back to. The character says: “Can I not go into that room again? ... There aren’t any books. I feel like I can’t breathe in there”.

In reality, there actually was a door over to her left. No acting required. Thank you, Door. I was the reader for this self-tape and I remember we made sure to go into that room before we taped, to endow the room with the qualities of being boring and constraining. Luckily for us the room had no books in it — so all she had to do was tell the truth.

We could have gone further by leaving Thomasin in there while we set up, so she could really experience how limiting it felt to be in that room with no books. This kind of lived experience is called Embodied Cognition and I have written about it in one of my Substack subscriber articles about the power of location (Feb 18 2021): We know our minds change our bodies. Do our bodies change our minds?

There is something else that is drawing Thomasin’s attention in this scene. Somewhere else in the building is the character’s father, though she does not know where — so her gaze is more diffuse, less directional as she senses where he might be. We did not have an additional person with us to be that figure, so she imagined where she thought he might be, which gives her a listening quality. The corridor, the waiting room, the other offices, the staircase, the front door… It is these other invisible elements of the character’s environment that made the character seem so grounded in the actual space. Let’s remember that catchphrase from Coke:

It’s the Real Thing.

OBJECTS

You may well be saying to yourself, “But what about objects? Thomasin does not have any objects in this audition scene”. Aha! That is because in this scene, it is the READER who has the objects.

Here are the objects I brought to support my role as the psychologist interviewing the character, Tom. I made a chart — a “trauma-informed mental health assessment”. The chart was on a clip-board and I also had a red pen. My invisible action in the scene, ticking off various responses and answers to institutional questions, was helpful for Thomasin. The time I had to take off-camera to mark the chart was organic and authentic, impacting how Thomasin had to watch and wait for my actions as the reader.

There is a moment in the scene when the psychologist gives “Tom” some cards to read. We did not have the actual cards that psychologists use to assess young people. But I did not want to just give her some random playing cards or plain paper, which would mean that the actress would have to work too hard, creating images on the playing cards for her character to respond to. So, we used Tarot cards — intriguing, metaphorical drawings which do actually hold mysterious meanings. Here you can see that the objects are doing the work for the actress rather than the actress having to do the work to transform the object.

If you can respond to something real, the camera will catch authenticity in your performance. You will be relaxed. You will trust the reader.

This is only one of the 4 scenes Thomasin taped for this audition. We used something real for each one, whether it was an object or part of the vista. We had a toothbrush, a sleeping bag, a bottle of water, a book... We felt empowered to shoot the audition in this way because of the kind of films that Debra makes. This audition could have a bit of movement and wildness to it whereas usually there are specific instructions and parameters. Debra did not want someone who could act the role. She was seeking someone who was the role. In fact, in the original book and then the script, this character was called Caroline. But part-way through rehearsals Debra asked Thomasin if she would be comfortable lending her own name to the character as it seemed more authentic and lived-in. The answer was yes, and so Thomasin’s character became Tom. As they say at Coke...

It’s the Real Thing.

Every audition, every self-tape, every role is different. Every casting director is different. So, these are some ideas that might help you to make tiny choices that can enliven your next self-tape, to make it special and unique whilst obeying strict rules and requirements. To give it cut-through.

If you have learnt the text with flexibility. If you can make a connection and welcome the offers the reader gives you. If you can own the space. If you can chart a journey through the scene... then you will be free to take pleasure in the process.

And as they say in the advertising business:

Pleasure is the path to joy

— Haagen Dazs

THANK YOU to Thomasin McKenzie, Barden/Schnee, Loren Carla Taylor Tina Cleary and the Casting Company, Anne Harrison, Linda Reisman Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini