Why choose Audition Support Oz?

Audition Support Oz services are designed to be accessible to Australian actors from anywhere, at anytime.

Acting, for stage or for screen, is a beautiful form of self-expression & exploration.

It exercises the mind, voice & body, and encourages empathy & compassionate behaviour towards others. Acting can also strengthen short-term memory function, reading stamina & language comprehension skills.

Whether you pursue it as a hobby, as a payday, or as a profession, acting allows a person to experience & explore people, places & ideas with liberty that they otherwise may not.

Our goal is to ensure that each of our actors can approach their performance with confidence in their creative decision-making & abilities, and with the technical knowledge to become an asset on film, television and commercial sets.

Production schedules can’t always to cater to real life - and now they don’t have to.

Whether you’re cooped up in a hotel room on an away job, waiting for the kids to go to bed or simply need screen-acting support outside of office hours - we’ll be ready to roll when you are.

Why online?

Following the COVID pandemic, the screen-acting landscape has changed globally. It has become difficult to justify having casting professionals travel from one major city to another, and another, and back again, to conduct the preliminary casting sessions for a project. Nowadays, it is far more common that a screen-actor would either send a recorded performance to casting initially, or meet with a casting professional via video conference in the very early stages of casting.

Knowing how to best prepare for these meetings, and having an appropriate way to set up for them is more important to screen actors now than ever before.

Self-tape or audition?

It is considered to be an “audition” when a casting professional invites actors to attend a face-to-face meeting at a pre-arranged time & location, where the actor will have the opportunity to perform their prepared part.

A self-tape is considered to be when a casting professional invites actors to send them a recording of their performance of their prepared part.

There are pros & cons to both.

During an audition, actors will get to meet the casting professional in person, and will receive feedback or direction throughout. However, they may only get the opportunity to perform their prepared scene two-three times at most.

Whereas, with a self-tape, the actor will have the opportunity to perform the scene as many times as they’d like. However, there is no real-time feedback or direction from casting.

Self-tape or self-test?

Same thing. It’s just different phrasing/perception.

Self-test is a term coined from a casting perspective. To “test an actor” for a role is to invite them to perform to see if they’re the right fit for an upcoming opportunity.

In this instance, the actors are ‘testing” by themselves initially (without real-time guidance from casting) - so it’s become known as a “self-test”.

The term “self-tape” refers to when we recorded video on film, rather than digitally (most popular from roughly the late 1960’s through to the mid 1990’s). Tape is the magnetic film within a recordable video cassette that stores the visual & audio information.

Many moons ago, these same sort of tapes were also used in personal & commercial cameras. Casting professionals would receive VHS tapes of performances in the mail to watch.

And the phrasing has just.. stuck.

Self-tape simply means the actor is responsible for recording & sending the performance to send to casting.

I disagree with something my character says/believes - what should I do?

Film & television is a visual storytelling medium, and at the heart of every good story is conflict.

A common source of conflict are characters with different perspectives on life, love, war, politics, race, religion, sexuality, etc.

These perspectives may be different than your own, and it’s important to remember that as an actor: giving a voice to a character that holds those views is not the same as you as a person endorsing those views.

It is impossible to tell a visual story about (insert any controversial topic here), without demonstrating that behaviour to the audience in some way.

Please bear in mind that often controversial topics, characters, ideas, behaviours, phrases or beliefs are essential to the story itself due to historical accuracy, cultural differences or social standards in a different time period.

 Please exercise your best judgement to decide what is necessary to tell the story & what you are comfortable with.

 You are always welcome to request a different scene in a learning environment, or to decline an audition opportunity in a casting environment if you are uncomfortable with the material.

Do you use AI?

PIA-GRACE MOON: “No. Never. Ever. EVER.

It would be a frosty day in the place of eternal damnation before I would permit or endorse the use of artificial intelligence to help my actors to better emulate or understand human behaviours. That simply defies logic, to me.

The most unique thing about any performance is the person behind it. Your unique look, ideas, experiences, instincts & perceptions are what set you apart from other actors.

You should not be asking a machine to form an opinion for you.

I am so firmly against the use of AI in the pursuit of art, that if I said ‘I love AI & I use it all the time’ - you could safely assume that I have been kidnapped and am trying to communicate that to you cryptically.”