The process that led sisters Joana and Mireia Vilapuig to think, write and finally shoot Selftape, the series they both premiered at Filmin a few months ago, was long, but what they were clear about was that it would be called Selftape. In the series, self-tapes, that is, the videos that performers record of themselves and send to casting directors in order to land a role, are a recurring theme and a source of trauma. Both in fiction and in real life, they have both received a request to submit a tape aspiring to the same role. "We were very hard on each other - explains Joana Vilapuig - until we learned that we were not the best partners. It's quite a stressful thing and we got to suffer a lot. If you are working little, you put a lot of pressure on yourself", says the actress and screenwriter.
Despite this, he says he is not against this system, the use of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, when face-to-face castings could not be done. "I do a lot of them for projects in Madrid or London and I really value not having to travel. In addition, when we did the series it was very good for us because we could see many actors. What we tried to do is to take great care of everything. We wrote them a letter explaining the project, recognizing that it was a paradox to ask them for self-tapes, asking them not to be overwhelmed and to enjoy it...".
It is not a minor matter. Self-stopping is on the table in negotiations for the Hollywood actors' strike, which is led by the main union, SAG-Aftra. We don't want to eliminate them, because many performers value the flexibility they bring, but they do want to impose contractual limits. That no more than five pages of dialogue should be memorized for the test, for example. At the same time, a campaign called Auditions Are Work ("castings are work") is underway, driven by American performers who claim up to $541 a day for each casting for a film or series, whether in person or recorded. "Calling castings job opportunities does not capture all that they involve", they say in a statement posted on the Instagram account @auditionsarework.
They ensure that they invest time, preparation (memorizing, rehearsing), the performance itself and production, as the performers have to put the material and knowledge into the editing and post-production. Actress Tavi Gevinson, the former child prodigy who started her own fashion blog at age 12, signed an op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter in which she said, among other things, “Castings are not job interviews, they are samples of work commissioned by producers that we cannot reject for other work. I don't know of any other profession where workers go to so many interviews, with so many candidates, for jobs that may only last a day."
Some of the common complaints from performers regarding self-tapes is that they are sent a separate script with very little information about the role and the project. "As an actress, I've come across many roles that just said 'pretty girl' or 'sexy secretary'", points out Vilapuig. The most complicated thing he remembers didn't even have dialogue and was just action, and he had to shoot in his apartment, going in and out of rooms. Oddly enough, he got the job.
Carlos Iglesias, the Benito of Manolo y Benito, has also been on both sides, as an actor and as the director and screenwriter of the film Un franco, 14 pesetas. "I don't have to send many anymore because I'm a well-known person, but my daughter, who is an actress, is recording them all day. He has half the house occupied with the tripods”. He likes the demands of the performers in the United States. "I would like to be paid for the effort, you have to learn a text after all. It is normal for a job to be valued."
Amada Bokesa, an early actress, is used to recording dozens of self-tapes. She registers them with her mobile phone (she bought a better one so that they would turn out well) and she is usually helped by her brother, her friends or her partner. "The separate ones never explain anything", he complains. "you have to put together your own version and in the end it becomes almost a roulette. You don't have anyone in front of you to tell you: raise your voice, make me angrier". He acknowledges, however, that they work. Every time he's been called for a final round it's been because his tape has fit. Regarding the possibility of charging them, he believes that it is not entirely realistic in the Spanish industry and that it could turn against the performers, if this implies fewer opportunities.
One of the reasons that incited this revolt of the performers in the United States is that the casting agencies that were empty during the pandemic began to rent their facilities and equipment to the actors who had to record self-tapes, to some $150 an hour. "This is rubbish", actor Merrin Dungey, who has appeared in series such as Big Little Lies and Alias, tweeted a few weeks ago. "Now we have to pay to get a job." The SAG-Aftra union intervened and clamped down on the practice at casting agencies.
It does not seem that this level has been reached in Spain, but actors and actresses do make other investments. Bea Segura, the actress from Cites, who also appears in the last season of Black Mirror and has just finished filming Beguinas, an Atresmedia series set in the 16th century, paid for a course given by acting coach Manuel Puro , which required recording a self-tape every day for three weeks. "It gave me security. After that, they take me more", he admits. "But I had to make the investment." They are useful to her because she lives in London and thus does not have to travel to auditions in Madrid or Barcelona, although she sometimes finds it difficult to find colleagues to give her the line for the video in Spanish or Catalan. “The directions vary a lot depending on the project. Sometimes I have all the details line by line and sometimes it's something very vague. This is another problem with self-covers. In person, you have a casting director, or the director of the film himself who corrects you, asks you for a tone, and you as an interpreter have the ability to react and you do it. With a video, you can't". He understands that all the unpaid effort involved in trying to get a job also happens in other professions, such as architects preparing a project to submit to competitions, but he believes there should be some kind of compensation, perhaps being able deduct the hours invested.
And what do they say from the other side, those who do the castings? Andrés Cuenca, casting director of series such as El internado: las cumbres and films such as El Buen patrón, Terminator Dark Fate or Competencia oficial, believes that the self-tapes have made the casting processes more "democratic and accessible". When he was looking for very young actors for the reboot of El internado, for example, he found it useful to receive more than 600 videos from applicants. "It's an ideal tool, even with well-known actors. So you can see how they are physically, how they wear their hair, if they fit well for the role." Cuenca believes that with today's mobile phones there is not much technical difficulty in recording them ("you just need to stand in front of a window and record a short video"). Of course, he always tries to give the performers as much information as possible, he calls them with instructions. At Apdice, the Professional Casting Management Association, they propose to also offer courses and guidelines to facilitate the process. With regard to being charged for the castings, he anticipates that "the producers will not want to". "If you have to pay 50 euros to each person in a casting of ten thousand people, it will not be viable", although it would be good to consider it, he admits.
