|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Workshops & Self Tape Guide |
|
| February 2023 Cape Town
.Unit A5 Waverley Court, 7 Kotzee Road Observatory / Mobray  Waverley Court is situated just off Main Road, Observatory, close to the Groote Schuur Hospital complex and the M2 highway, providing easy access to Cape Town International Airport, Cape Film Studios, or Cape Town City Centre.  We have stripped the foyer to facilitate easy cleaning during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Appointments are booked at intervals which make it unlikely that more than two people will meet between Auditions or Call Back sessions. There is in any case more than enough space to facilitate physical distancing.  The studio is very spacious and quiet. The layout naturally separates Actor, Reader, Director and Studio crew.   Heavy, sound-absorbent curtains are usually
closed, but open easily for access to large windows for airing
the room, aided by fans.We use
a Canon HF G26 Digital HD Camera on a rolling spreader. Excellent room
acoustics enable us to use a good shotgun microphone in preference to
fitting a lapel microphone. This has been our standard
practice
for many years as it allows the actor to move freely.
An Inverter provides sufficient backup electrical power to bridge all but the very worst of "Load-Shedding" |
| Johannesburg Studio 151 Ninth Avenue, Highlands North, Johannesburg South Africa |
 The waiting area is a spacious protected verandah looking onto a garden, where actors are often found muttering their lines to the Weaver birds in the trees. |
 The acting area measures about 5m x 4m (15 x 12 feet) on fitted carpet against a neutral grey cyclorama. Auditions are shot with a Canon HF G26 Digital HD camera fitted with a shotgun microphone. This delivers good sound quality while allowing the artists freedom of movement. An Inverter provides three hours of electrical power to bridge all but the very worst of "Load-Shedding" |
 The Director's viewing area / interview area behind the camera has a separate access door |
|
|
Guided Skype Auditions Several
years ago we serviced two productions whose scheduling made it very
difficult to get the Producer in the same room as the actor for
Call-backs. Budget constraints prevented Johannesburg based actors
being flown down for callbacks. To solve the problem we arranged two-
or three-way Skype sessions between the actor in our Johannesburg
studio, a Reader in our Cape Town studio, and the Producer / Director
during a break in shooting in a Wineland location. The actor would be
video-taped as usual so that clips could be uploaded us usual for
viewing by other Executives in another time zone.Just before "Lockdown" we applied a similar system to do "guided self-tape" auditions in East African countries for an ongoing project. While not ideal, because quality is dependent on the weakest internet connection in the chain, it was an economical way to reach into Africa without breaking the budget. It is also a way forward to conduct "physically distanced" auditions while the worldwide industry figures out how to return to production. |
|
On Line Audition Sharing Platforms
In 2007 we
were among the first outside of the USA to share auditions by uploading
to the sophisticated CastIt online streaming system based in Santa
Monica, which became the Hollywood standard. We have used Christa’s
“Portal” on CastIt for many productions since, such as all four Seasons
of “Black Sails”.Other cloud-based systems have come and gone over the years and we have used them as preferred by Producers. Not all Producers have the budget or need for these systems however. The growth in popularity of Consumer cloud storage facilities such as DropBox and Google Drive has provided an alternative. We can send you a link, from which you can either view online, save the material to your own account, or download for later reference. We recommend downloading to your laptop or HDD if you will be continuing casting during pre-production or filming in South Africa, especially on more remote locations. Reliable high-speed internet is not universally available, and Mobile Data charges are high. In the later stages of casting you may need to offer your selections to Studio or Broadcaster Executives. Provided no further edits or trims are required, this can be quickly accomplished by simply moving the files to a separate folder and sending a specific link to the Executives. Audition Session Dump to portable
USB Hard Drive
If
distributed decision making is not necessary, raw video files can be
dumped onto your own portable USB hard drive, saving Encoding and
Uploading costs. As part of this process, the anonymous digital camera
files are re-named by Actor, Role and Take to make searching easy.
Please allow 15 to 30 mins at the end of the session for this transfer.
USB "Data Sticks" can also be used, but a full day of auditions will
produce between 12 and 30 Gigabytes of data, so please supply
sufficient data storage. |
|
Please send
Technical queries
only to:
 |
|
NOTES:
Studio charges and the Casting Director's fee are negotiable
according to production budget and the complexity of the project.
Please send an e-mail to Christa or call
with your queries for
specific quotes. |
| HOME | Previous Credits | Casting in Africa | The Team | Studio Facilities | Workshops | Maps to Studios |