When four accomplished actors — Jessica Meraz, Walter Perez, Emilio Garcia-Sanchez and Eller Coltrane — gathered at the El Paso Film Festival to share advice for aspiring actors, one of the main takeaways was to relax.
Of the four, only Meraz lives in Los Angeles. But even in the industry hub, self-taping has become the industry standard for auditions since Covid. Self-taping can be a stressful, innately isolating experience. So the actors’ advice was to give yourself a break — because the sense that you don’t need a job, even if you want it very much, reads as confidence onscreen.
Perez, a 20-year industry veteran who moved from Los Angeles to El Paso, recently landed big parts on NBC’s Quantum Leap and Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction based on self-tapes, and thinks casting agents appreciated the realness of his auditions. He did a couple of takes on both, giving himself room to be loose.
“Sometimes that ‘I don’t give a f— about this’ kind of attitude’ takes away all that pressure that you kind of put on yourself,” he noted.
“It says a lot about our industry that when you’re like, ‘I don’t give a f—!’ they’re like, ‘Look that guy, he could care less. Let’s work with him,” added Garcia-Sanchez, a Bay Area-based actor whose recent roles have included Netflix’s The Society, Disney+’s Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and the upcoming HBO Max series I LOVE LA.
“That’s human nature, isn’t it?” added Meraz, an El Paso native whose roles have included TNT’sMajor Crimes and The CW’s Supergirl. “You’re attracted to someone who, whether you book them or not, they’re going to be just fine. It’s like with a romantic partner.”
Coltrane, meanwhile, tends to work with friends since their experience as the star of with the Best Picture nominee Boyhood, in which director Richard Linklater filmed them growing up over 12 years. Coltrane didn’t love the press attention that came with the role, and now works frequently with filmmakers in El Paso, near the New Mexico state line.
Ellar, a poet and artist as well as actor, lives in southern New Mexico, isolated from Hollywood stress, and their recent credits include Zach Passero’s animated feature, The Weird Kidz and Carlos M. De La Torre’s short film, “So, Who Was It This Time?”
Though Garcia-Sanchez has appeared in big shows, he lives inexpensively in a converted cookie factory in the Bay Area, which gives him the economic freedom not to take roles he doesn’t feel good about.
No one sees living outside of Hollywood as a problem: Perez and Garcia-Sanchez noted that Los Angeles is a short plane ride away when they need to go there for meetings or shoots.
Advice on Self-Taping
The actors got into the nitty gritty of their craft when a young actor in the audience asked for advice on self-taping.
In a live audition, the production provides someone to read the scene with the actor, so actors only need to focus on their own line delivery. But in a solo, taped audition, an actor has the burden of either finding someone else to read their lines, or recording the dialogue they won’t be saying themselves, either beforehand or after the fact. It adds a layer of complexity to an already intimidating process.
This isn’t a small thing: If you ask a non-actor friend to read lines, they may overdo it or place an emphasis on the wrong words, which can throw everything off. Or, if an actor records their own lines beforehand or afterward, they need to expend extra effort on timing.
(If you think it sounds easy to read lines emotionally and convincingly, while leaving space where you’ll later dub in yourself reading the other actor’s lines, well… try it.)
Perez has a low-tech but effective solution: He writes the other actor’s lines on a whiteboard behind the camera, and reads them silently before speaking his own lines.
Meraz sometimes tapes self-auditions after the stress of putting her young child down to nap (again, if this sounds easy, try it).
“I’ve done that recording myself thing, and I don’t recommend it, because it takes away the spontaneity aspect,” she said. “Have a roster of people, and use you mom if you have to.”
Sometimes that works great — for example, actor Mia Threapleton landed a starring role in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme after self-taping with the help of her mom.
But her mom happens to be Kate Winslet. If your mom isn’t as good at running lines as Kate Winslet, other options are available.
Meraz’s go-to reader for self-taping is a friend from Las Cruces who reads lines for her over FaceTime while she records. She also recommends apps like We Audition that allow you to hire scene partners from all over the world. (If you need a scene partner with a London accent, for example, you can hire someone in London.) The app bills itself as “Uber for self-tape readers.”)
“They’ll charge you a minimal fee. They all put their own fees up,” said Meraz. “It shows you who’s available at the time. And you can go through and pick your favorites.”
Main image: (L-R) George Perez, Jessica Meraz, Emilio Garcia-Sanchez and Eller Coltrane, all of whom spoke at the El Paso Film Festival’s actors panel. Courtesy of the El Paso Film Festival.