How to Self-Tape With a Reader on Zoom or FaceTime

Your friend said yes to reading for your tape. The catch is that they live forty minutes away and the tape is due tomorrow at noon. So tonight it’s you, a phone on a tripod, a laptop, and a friend on the other end of a call.

Plenty of guides stop at “get a friend on Zoom.” Then you play back the first take and the problems arrive at once: your friend sounds louder than you, your eyes are drifting toward the laptop on the desk, and every one of their cues comes in a beat late.

The short version: record on one device and run the call on another. Put the call device right beside the lens with the reader’s face at lens height, turn its volume down until your voice clearly leads, join the call from only one device in your room, keep your own ears free, and ask your reader to come in tight on your last word. Then shoot a short test take and watch it back before you do the real ones.

Two devices, two jobs

The camera records the tape. The call carries the reader. Keep those jobs on separate devices. Laurie Records, writing in Casting Frontier’s advice on self-tape requests, suggests exactly this: get someone to read with you “on one device while taping on another.” She also says to use a reader even virtually, because the audition is better with one.

The usual pairing is a phone as the camera and a laptop for the call, but a tablet or a second phone works for the call too. Don’t try to make the call itself the tape. A recording of a call captures whatever the connection sent, including any freeze or dropout, and you want your picture and sound straight from the lens.

Give the camera phone the quiet treatment: plugged in, plenty of storage, and do not disturb on so a notification doesn’t land in your best take. Plug in the call device too.

Put your reader’s face beside the lens

Your eyes go to the voice and the face. On a call, that’s the screen, so the screen goes where a live reader would stand: right next to the camera. Joey Madia, an acting coach who reads remotely for actors, describes his actors putting their smartphone on a tripod and placing him “right next to the camera they are using to tape the audition,” in his Stage 32 article on self-tape strategies.

Three adjustments make it work:

• Height. Raise the laptop or second phone until the reader’s face on screen sits at about the height of the lens. A pile of books under a laptop does the job.
• Distance. Put the screen as close to the camera as you can without it showing in frame. The closer to the lens, the more natural the eyeline.
• Window size. On a laptop, shrink the call window and drag it to the edge of the screen nearest the lens. Spotlight’s guide to live Zoom auditions gives a similar tip: if you have a reader, minimize the window and place it in the area of your eyeline.

Hide your own video tile on the call if you can. You don’t need to watch yourself, and a small rectangle of your own face is easy to get caught watching. Ask your reader to keep their camera on, though, so you have real reactions to play off.

Make the reader quieter than you

This is the problem actors notice first on playback. The call device’s speaker sits a few inches from your camera’s microphone, and you’re several feet away. The microphone records the closest sound loudest, so your reader wins. Spotlight’s lighting and sound guide, from its audio visual specialist Nicholas Peel, says the person reading in should not say the lines too loudly on the recording.

Madia writes that he is careful to be secondary to the actor, “never pulling focus with volume or an over-sized choice.” Over a call, you also control the volume yourself.

• Turn the call device down. Lower its volume until your voice clearly leads on the test take. In the Zoom desktop app, the Audio tab of the settings has an output volume slider under Speaker, according to Zoom’s support page on app settings. The device’s own volume buttons work too.
• Turn the speaker away from the camera. Keep the screen beside the lens, but turn its speaker away from the camera’s microphone. A phone’s speaker is on its bottom edge, so put that edge on the side away from the camera.
• Ask for a conversational read. Your reader is sitting close to their own microphone. They don’t need to project across a room.

Our guide to self-tape sound goes deeper on balancing a reader in the room, and the same logic applies here: get the balance right before the real takes, not in editing afterward.

Settings worth knowing on your reader’s side

Your reader’s room ends up on your tape: a barking dog at their place comes out of your laptop beside the lens. Zoom filters background noise by default; FaceTime on iPhone or iPad can, if your reader turns on Voice Isolation.

On Zoom, the same settings page lists three microphone modes: Noise removal (the default), Personalized audio isolation, and Original sound for musicians. Original sound for musicians is meant for music: it captures a fuller range of sound and turns noise suppression off. For a spoken scene, your reader can usually leave the default on.

On an iPhone or iPad, Apple’s support page on mic modes describes Voice Isolation, which prioritizes your voice and blocks ambient noise, and Wide Spectrum, which leaves ambient noise unfiltered. If your reader is on FaceTime from a noisy apartment, Voice Isolation is the one to pick. During the call, they open Control Center, tap FaceTime Controls, and choose a Mic Mode. Apple says this needs iOS 15 or later for FaceTime calls.

Headphones: your reader, not you

It’s tempting to wear earbuds so your reader sounds clear. Don’t, at least not while you’re taping. Whatever goes into your ears doesn’t go onto the tape. Your camera records your lines and then silence where every cue should be, which plays like a scene with the other person cut out.

Your reader is a different story. They’re at home, off camera, and nobody hears their room but you. If they listen on their laptop’s built-in speakers, your voice can come out of their speakers, back into their microphone, and back to you. A Bucknell University IT guide to Zoom echo names built-in microphone and speakers as one cause of that ringing, and the fix is headphones or earbuds. Ask your reader to wear them.

The same guide names another cause that catches self-tapers: two devices with audio in the same room. If your camera phone, a tablet, or a roommate’s laptop has also joined the call, you can get a feedback loop. Only one device in your room should be on the call, and it’s the one beside the lens.

Lag lands before the reader’s lines

Every call has some delay, and the study below found even a small one changes conversational timing. University of Michigan psychologist Julie Boland’s study, summarized by Futurity, notes that turns in conversation usually change hands in about 200 milliseconds. The lag in the study was only about 30 to 70 milliseconds, yet people were slower to start speaking over Zoom. Boland called the disrupted rhythm “one factor that makes Zoom conversations more effortful.”

On a self-tape, most of the extra gap usually lands before the reader’s lines, because your reader hears you late and their answer travels back late. You hear their line in your room and can answer right away. But the study found people slow down on calls, so watch your own pickups too.

That gives your reader a clear job. Ask them to come in tight, on the last word of your line rather than after a polite pause. It may feel rushed to them; check the test take and back off if they start stepping on your last word.

• Help the connection. Spotlight’s Zoom guide suggests an Ethernet cable from your laptop to your router if your connection is unreliable.
• Plan the fast exchanges. Quick back-and-forth and lines that overlap suffer most. Run those in the test take and decide together whether to tighten them or let them breathe a little.
• Rehearse on the call first. If the scene is new to both of you, a run before the camera comes out pays off. Our guide on how to rehearse a scene over a video call has a run order for that.

Run a test take before the real ones

A short test take tells you more than any amount of fiddling with settings. Here is a run sheet for the session:

1. Set the camera on the tripod, framed and lit, with do not disturb on and the charger plugged in.
2. Join the call from the laptop or second phone only, plugged in, and leave every other device in your room off the call.
3. Place the call screen beside the lens with the reader’s face at lens height and the call window shrunk to the edge nearest the camera.
4. Hide your own video tile and ask your reader to keep their camera on and wear headphones.
5. Ask your reader to pick a quiet room and leave Zoom’s default Noise removal on, or switch FaceTime to Voice Isolation.
6. Turn the call volume down, angle the speaker away from the camera mic, and ask the reader for a conversational read that comes in on your last word.
7. Record about half a page, including your loudest moment and one fast exchange.
8. Watch it back (headphones are fine now, since you’re only checking playback) and on the phone’s speaker too. Check that your voice leads, your eyes stay near the lens, and the reader’s cues don’t drag.
9. Adjust the call volume, the screen position, or the reader’s timing, and test once more if anything changed.

Before the call, and when no one can call in

Do your own prep before the call. Upload the sides to Offbook, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character out loud, then wait for your line before playing the next cue. Hide your lines for a final test, and you’ll spend the call on takes instead of finding words.

A remote reader can only be as good as the sides they have, so send them the pages ahead of time.

Some nights, nobody is free, not even on a call. Then the same laptop beside the lens can do the reading: Offbook listens through the microphone and plays the next cue when you finish your line. Your camera still films the tape. Our page on how to self-tape without a reader walks through that setup, and if you’d rather keep looking for a person, see how to find a self-tape reader.

Questions actors ask

Is it OK to have my self-tape reader on a video call?

Yes. Casting Frontier’s self-tape advice, for one, suggests calling in a friend on Zoom or FaceTime, and a live voice on a call still gives you something real to react to. What matters is that casting can hear your lines clearly and your eyeline stays close to the lens.

Should I use Zoom or FaceTime for a remote reader?

Use whichever both of you can join without trouble and already know how to use. The setup is the same either way: call device beside the lens, volume down, headphones on your reader, and a test take first.

What do I do if the call drops in the middle of a take?

Stop, reconnect, check the call volume and window position, then start the take from the top. A clean take is worth the extra minute; a tape with a dead cue in the middle rarely is.