How to Self-Tape a Scene When the Reader Has the Long Speech

You open the sides and count. The other character has a speech that runs most of a page. You have a line before it, two words in the middle, and one line at the end. On a self-tape, the camera is on you the whole time, and the person doing all the talking is a voice off to the side of the lens.

So for a minute, maybe more, casting watches you not speak. Actors often respond in one of two ways. They freeze into a polite, attentive face and wait, or they start nodding, frowning, and gasping so the camera can see they’re “reacting.” Both read badly on tape, and both come from the same worry: that nothing is happening.

The short version: something is happening, and it’s thinking. Learn the reader’s speech nearly as well as your own lines, so you know what hits you and when. Keep your eyeline tight to one point beside the lens. Brief your reader to read at a real, steady pace, softly. Don’t cut the speech unless the casting instructions say you may. Then rehearse the listening, out loud, until your reactions are specific.

Why a listening scene is a gift on tape

A long speech from the other character can feel like the scene was written for them. On screen, it often belongs to the listener. In an episode of his casting podcast on the silent scene, casting director Jeffrey Dreisbach says directors often cut to a silent reaction shot because it tells the audience what to feel.

The UK school Actors Studio makes the same point about auditions in what casting directors notice before your first line: in TV drama the camera often stays on the person who isn’t speaking, and silence reveals thought. Good listening, the piece says, isn’t waiting politely for your cue. Each new piece of information creates a response.

That’s your job for the length of the speech. Not a face, a series of thoughts. The speech tells you things you didn’t know, asks things of you, and hurts or pleases you a line at a time. If you let each of those land, the camera has plenty to watch.

Learn the reader’s speech as if it were yours

You can’t react to news you’re hearing for the first time on take three. You can, though, hear it fresh if you know exactly where the news is. That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s how listening works on stage and on set: you know the speech, and you let the character not know it.

So work through the speech line by line and mark it. For each sentence, write one word in the margin for what it does to you: news, a blow, a question you can’t answer yet, a demand, a lie you can see through. A long speech usually has a few real turns in it and a lot of connective tissue between. The turns are where something shows. The rest is you taking it in.

Here’s a classic case. In Act 1 of Hamlet, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father tells him who he is. Hamlet gets almost nothing to say:

GHOST. I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

HAMLET. O God!

GHOST. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET. Murder!

GHOST. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 (Project Gutenberg)

If you were taping Hamlet, the speech has clear turns. I am thy father’s spirit is the first: the thing in front of you is your dead father. But that I am forbid is a second, smaller one: he won’t tell you what he suffers. The long middle, about hair standing on end, is a description you’re living through, not a list of new facts. If thou didst ever thy dear father love sets up the demand that follows, Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder, and Hamlet’s “O God!” is where the listening breaks the surface.

Notice that Hamlet’s two short lines are both reactions. That’s typical of a listening part: the writer has put the character’s words exactly where the listening overflows. Your face in the long stretch before them is the build-up those lines pay off.

Think the thought; don’t show the face

Once you know where the turns are, the temptation is to illustrate them: a widening of the eyes on the news, a shake of the head on the lie. Resist it. Dreisbach, in another episode on listening without reacting, names the skill as “the ability to listen without performing your listening.” The Acting Coach Scotland blog is even shorter about it: the fake reaction looks fake.

On a self-tape you’re usually framed close, from the chest up. At that size, a thought reads. A nod reads as a nod. So give yourself something to do inside instead:

• Want something the whole time. Hamlet wants to know what happened. A character being dumped wants to stop it. Your want doesn’t pause because the other person is talking.
• Answer silently. At each turn, think your reply in words, the reply you’d say if you could. Don’t mouth it. Just think it in full sentences.
• Let your breath change, not your eyebrows. Breath is the honest part. If a line takes the air out of you, let it.
• Stay still in between. Stillness isn’t blankness when the thinking is running. It also keeps you in a tight frame.

For the bigger picture of playing a scene where you barely speak, our guide on how to react when you have no lines goes further, and how to listen instead of waiting for your cue has exercises for the habit itself.

Keep your eyeline tight for the whole speech

A long speech is where eyelines drift. You’re not speaking, your mind’s busy, and your eyes start to wander to the floor, the lamp, the corner of the room. On camera, that reads as a loss of attention, or as an actor checking the next line.

Set one point and stay with it. In self-taping tips from casting directors, Lauren Evans suggests a point of focus to the left or right of the camera, not straight down the lens. Emma Sylvester, in the same piece, puts it simply: “Keep your eye-line nice and tight.” She asks for the reader left or right of the camera.

Put your reader’s face, or a mark at their eye height, right beside the lens, and listen to that spot. You can let your eyes leave it for a thought, a glance down when something hurts, a look away when you can’t hold their gaze. Then come back. Those departures mean something only if you come back every time.

If you want to check the frame for a scene like this, our guide on acting for shot sizes shows how small a reaction can be in a close-up.

Brief the reader: steady pace, soft voice, no performance

On many tapes the reader’s lines are short, and a weak read costs you a few seconds. When the reader has the long speech, their delivery sets the tempo of your whole tape. A reader who rushes leaves you no room to take anything in. A reader who stops to act every sentence drags the tape out and pulls focus.

Acting Magazine’s guide to the perfect self-tape reader sets out what helps. The reader should read with good pace, speak clearly and softly, and stand near the lens to give you a good eyeline. The writer has seen casting directors skip a tape because the reader was too loud. A long speech is just where that happens, because the reader is at the mic for a minute while you’re silent.

Before you roll, tell your reader four things:

1. Read it at the speed a person would actually talk. Not fast to get through it, not slow for effect.
2. Read it softly, as if to someone a few feet away. They’re right next to the phone’s microphone; you’re not.
3. Mean it, but don’t perform it. Talk to you, not to the room. No accent, no big swings.
4. Wait for your lines. If you take a moment before “O God!”, they hold until you’ve said it.

Run the speech once with your reader before the first take, just for pace. If you’re reading for a friend instead, our guide on how to be a good self-tape reader is the one to send them. If no one is free to read, our page on how to self-tape without a reader covers the options.

Can you trim the reader’s speech?

This is a question actors often ask, and the honest answer is: only if the instructions let you. Casting chose the sides. A long speech is often in there precisely because they want to see you listen. Cutting it may remove the part of the scene they were most interested in.

Start with the breakdown. Sylvester tells actors to read the casting director’s instructions carefully and thoroughly, and to check them again after recording. Acting Magazine’s piece on self-tape instructions actors overlook makes the same point: each detail was placed there for a reason.

If the instructions ask for the sides as written, tape the whole speech. If they give a time limit and the full scene would overrun it, that’s a real conflict; ask through your agent or the casting contact before you decide for them. Acting Magazine’s guide to how long a self-tape should be says self-tapes should run one to three minutes unless otherwise specified, and says to start right before your first line and end right after your last.

Trimming the edit is different from trimming the text. You can cut the dead air before the first line and after the last one. You can’t cut the reader’s words out of the middle on your own and assume it’s fine. The same guide says to remove dead air unless the pauses are scripted, which suggests a rule for the speech too: if it’s in the script, it stays.

Rehearse the listening, not just your lines

Actors often rehearse a scene like this by saying their three lines over and over. That’s the least important part. What you need to rehearse is the minute of listening, with the speech coming at you at the pace it will come on the day.

That’s easy to do with a friend and hard to do alone, because you can’t read the speech to yourself and listen to it at the same time. Upload your sides to Offbook and pick your role, and realistic voices read the other character while the app waits for your line. The video below shows the pacing controls: set how fast your scene partner talks, and add a beat before any line, so the speech arrives at a real reader’s tempo and your reaction lines get room.

Run it several times and change one thing each time. On one pass, think your silent reply in full sentences at every turn you marked. On another, keep your eyes on a single point beside your laptop’s camera and notice where they want to wander. Then try Dreisbach’s exercise: hold a silent reaction for ten seconds, watch it back, and note what reads as real and what reads as forced.

Record a few of those runs on your phone and watch them without sound. If you can follow what you’re thinking from your face alone, the listening is working. If you see a face that’s waiting, go back to your marked turns and make each one more specific. You can also try a classic scene in our free run lines tool, no account needed, to practice listening and answering on cue.

On the day, tape with a real reader if you have one, and give them the brief above. All that rehearsal means you’ll know the speech well enough to hear it fresh.

Questions actors ask

What do I do with my face while the reader has a long speech?

Nothing on purpose. Know what each part of the speech does to your character, want something the whole time, and think your silent replies in words. The face follows the thought. Avoid nodding, mugging, or mouthing; at self-tape framing they read as acting, not listening.

Should I look at the reader or the camera during their speech?

At the reader, or a point right beside the lens where they are. Casting director Lauren Evans suggests a point of focus to the left or right of the camera, not straight down the lens; Emma Sylvester asks for the reader left or right of the camera. Keep coming back to that point even when you glance away.

Can I cut the other character’s long speech from my self-tape?

Only if the instructions allow it. Casting chose the sides, and a long speech is often there so they can see you listen. If a time limit makes the full scene impossible, ask through your agent or the casting contact. You can always trim dead air at the start and end.

How fast should my reader read the long speech?

At the speed a person would actually talk: steady, clear, and soft. Rushing leaves you no room to react; slowing down for effect drags the tape and pulls focus. Run the speech once with your reader before you roll, just to set the pace.