Singer's PATH Podcast
The Singer's PATH Podcast will premiere in 2025!
This podcast provides quality, transparent information for singers and artists. We discuss everything including ways to establish good vocal technique, advice from leading entertainment industry professionals AND mindset support for artists. Whether you're a novice or professional, the Singer's PATH welcomes all singers and helps to guide the way on the journey of developing artistry.
Singer's PATH Podcast
How to Actually Get Good at Self-Tapes (And Start Booking From Tape)
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Self-taping has become one of the most important skills for working actors β but many performers still dread it. In this episode, Sarah breaks down why self-tapes often feel so uncomfortable and how learning to act on camera can completely change your audition experience. She shares practical ways to improve your tapes, avoid the spiral of endless takes, and start treating self-taping as a creative opportunity instead of a stressful obligation. If youβve ever hated watching yourself on camera or felt stuck doing tape after tape, this episode will change how you approach the process.
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Prep your mind and nervous system for the success you actually want. Making sure you don't sabotage your own success. Making sure you stay in YOUR creative JOY. Operating as the artist and professional you ALREADY KNOW you are meant to be but need to REHEARSE so it actually comes to fruition.
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If you're tired of not making progress and you're ready to be the artist, you know you're meant to be, you are in the right place. You are listening to the Singers Path podcast. The Path or performing artist training hub will cover everything including singing tips that actually work, advice from top industry professionals and life-changing mindset shifts out with the Starving artist and in with the Thriving Artist. I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, professional singer. Actor, educator and entrepreneur. I'm not afraid to speak the truth and stop the gatekeeping of quality information so you can actually become the artist you dream of being. So let's get on the path, shall we? Even though we're all on our own journeys, it always helps to have a guide. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Singers Path podcast. It's me, your host. Okay, yeah, we're, we're reaching that timer, becoming a little bit of a Looney tune as I'm recording late into the evening.
It's almost 10:00 PM but. As I've been changing my, my sleep clock to match my husband's time, this
is basically 1:00 AM for me right now. Plus I did Pilates today, um, which I got one of those like trials nearby in Astoria where I live. Um, for like one of those really intense Pilates places that like you see on, um, like they make a sketch about it on SNL where like you're shaking and it's like the rooms are black and the machine like, seems a little bit sexual, but it's also so hard, like, yes. So I'm doing that for two weeks and can confirm. Very hard, incredibly hard. My legs have been like G, like jackhammer shaking, like trying to do these like rollouts and tigers and lions and bears. Oh my. They have all these names for them that are named after animals. I don't quite understand it. I'm just hanging on by a thread and that. Definitely been taking my energy levels down as it's been quite the physical exertion for me being rather inactive in 2025. So here we are. It is kicking my ass, and that's why I feel so, so, so tired. I promise at some point I will maybe start prioritizing. F recording some of these. When my brain isn't scrambled eggs. I was like reflecting on some of these prior episodes. I'm like, oh man, do I take those down? Like I just feel like I'm slightly incoherent, but possibly it's entertaining for you. So maybe. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. I don't know. Anyway, today we're gonna keep leaning on the theme that we had going from last time. Which is kind of talking about, you know, the difficulties of audition season. But in this episode, um, contrary to last week, where it was all about regaining control over, you know, the narrative of your own creativity, you know, making your own work, prioritizing that, getting out of the spiral we talked about like, oh, what's your attitude around creating your work? Can you make it less overwhelming? Can you just make it about having fun, all of that. So that was all about reclaiming your joy around the shittiness of audition season. And this week I wanna talk about the other heinous part. That can be what audition season is, and that is self taping everything. Self tape. I wanna talk about how you can genuinely fall in love with self taping and how you can lean into the benefits of what it provides. And how, yeah, it can start to actually be fun. I always wanna preface this with a, if you hate self taping, first of all, I see you. We always love to visit Sarah from 20 18, 20 19, possibly 2017. When I tell you I would get an allergic rash if someone was to ask me to tape, at that time, being asked to tape was like the kiss of death of, I'm not, I'm definitely not getting this job now at that point, because there were so many auditions in person pre COVID that I just remember, like I, I was asked to tape like maybe once or twice, like when I was on tour. For gigs to maybe book after I got back from tour. And they were always bad. Like I was just not good at taping. You know, I wasn't good at taping because I actually had no idea how to be on film and I was so, I was only trained. Stage and I was only trained to audition in person, so it felt so foreign to me. It felt so outta control. And plus, I would do takes over and over and over again, just from a general distaste of not liking what I did, but also not being able to put my thumb on why I didn't like it or what to change about it. So it was just this like. Circle of hell of being like, oh my God, oh, I know this isn't my best work. And oh my God. And I know, I know, oh, I'm just gonna have to do it a hundred times because it tape forever. And then, oh, I'm gonna mess up my lines, or I'm gonna read, and then, oh God. So it was like this sh this spiral. Anytime I had, I was asked to tape and again, wasn't asked to tape very much. So I wasn't very good at it. Um, and that, you know, that happened for a few years from like, again, like 2016 to 2020. I was very taping adverse. Like I actually flew myself from, I think it was, was it St. Louis? Yeah. St. Louis to New New York City. I actually played hooky. Ah, I played hooky for the show. I was on cabaret. Because the company management and the SAGE management were, it wasn't company management was really nice. Sage management was kind of weird about like letting you go audition for things and they like would not excuse a personal day because they didn't think it was a good enough reason to take a personal day. I had like not ever missed a day of work. So they like, were not great about giving time off. Like you actually get so few days off guys like. You really don't get days off when you tour. If you do get a day off, it's a Monday and it's called a golden Day, and it meant that that was like one of the only days you didn't travel because how our work schedule went, I'm getting on a little bit of a tangent, but you would travel on Mondays and then you would perform Tuesday to Sunday and then you would travel on Mondays again, A golden day was if you were in a city for like at least two weeks. So that Monday was actually. A day off, right? So anyway, they would not give us days off. So I played hooky and like said I was sick, I'm sick, but instead I got my ass on a plane and I flew to New York so I could do an initial call for Fontine and Les Mis on Broadway. I was like, I am flying my ass there because I refuse to make a self tape. Okay. Oh, we had someone comment. I am on Instagram live here today. This is interesting because I just had a student who's amazing, but once I handed her a mic, she completely choked up. Seems like the same with self taping. Yeah. I mean, a singing into a mic, um, that's, that's gonna make them project. Right. And so if they have any fear around being heard at all. Threatening. Threatening. Oh my God. Yeah. But if, if someone's never sung into a microphone before, they're probably gonna feel like, oh my God. Like I can't possibly. I can't possibly sing into that because, you know, that's actually gonna make me be heard. So if they have any fear around actually being heard, yeah, they, they're probably gonna freeze up or just might be unknown. The self taping freeze was like, oh, I'm not good at this, right? Like, I can't, like, this isn't gonna be good work. I have to like, control how this comes out because I'm only used to doing it in this medium. So, um, that was my aversion to self taping. Um, but yeah, I will say 2020 for everybody. You had to just learn to get better at it. You just because it all became self taping, which, okay. I'm gonna tell you, in my experience, I kind of was obsessed with this eventually. First, the first level that I was obsessed with was in regards to dance auditions. Now let me be clear, I would rather. Again, fricking, I don't know, lick a subway pole, then do a self tape for a dance submission Nowadays, because of you have to get a space and then you have to set your thing up, and then you have to pay for thing, like you have to pay for the studio to actually dance in and bring all your stuff down and like, it is not, it's not a good time. However, what it is good for. When you have the, um, the tape ahead of time with a choreography is like you can take extra time to actually learn the combination like. You can actually, like I could actually calmly without putting my nervous system into fight or fucking flight, sit down and actually learn the combo. Now when I get a self tape for dance, one of the quickest things that'll send me into a spiraling 10 of rage. Is if they don't do it, facing the back, if they do it facing you and expect you to mirror it. Like I'm so like, I don't know if I've gone on this rant before on the podcast. I am. I beg your fucking pardon. Uh, we all learn to dance with your back facing me. I know we can usually also see you in the mirror, but like, I need to see your ass doing the steps. Okay? Do not turn around and face me on a video because then I have to sit there and then I'm not sure like, oh, is it already being mirrored? Do I have to mirror it? Okay, now I have to. Everything. I have to make sure that I am, you know, the I'm doing it. Yeah. I have to literally, you have to literally flip it. Yes, absolutely. Fuck that. Yeah. To the people in life. Yeah. Fuck that. That's what I'm saying. And nothing sends me to a 10 like that. Or you know what? Hey, listen, all you need to do. I don't even care if it's uptempo. Do the combo once facing me and once turned around, you don't even have to slow it down. Damn, you don't even have to teach me. I'll slow it down. I I don't wanna reverse things. That's what drives me bananas. Anyway. Tangent. Let's get over that. Okay. Thank you for listening. So. Um, self taping for me with dancing actually started to be really great because I had a, a great deal of anxiety around learning the combinations so quickly. Those dance combinations in the audition room that really, really, really, really sense my nervous system into a spiral that has to do with my history around dance. And that's actually a big reason why I get like a lot of the singers that come to my studio that have like a complex relationship with their voice. It's 'cause I have a complex relationship with dance. Like I get it. Like it's, you know, sometimes when we, you know, had some bad experiences growing up that can really inform how we view ourselves in our art form today. Um, so I get it. So anyway, that was affecting deeply how I was showing up for dance editions. I feel like I would black out in those rooms. And, um, again, being an artist is regulating under extraordinary circumstances, uh, and trying to be like a high functioning athlete in a very stressful situation. Um, and yeah, those, those Broadway calls, I, I will say those dance calls got a little bit easier when I had the actual combination ahead of me, ahead of time right now. I will say at first I was still pretty bad at doing like singing and acting self tapes. Okay. This when you kind of have to just accept that this is the way it is, then you finally do start to see the silver lining as what self taping is, right. One, you can tape from anywhere you really can. Now, do you probably need a light and a tripod? Yeah. Do you need the fanciest setup? No. No, I've booked straight from tape. I mean, I almost booked straight from tape on this recent gig that I got. Um, but I did, actually, I did, I booked one of the shows straight from tape on this, this gig that I just got for the summer that I can't tell you about yet. And then I booked another one straight from tape. I booked several jobs straight from tape. Okay. So, and none of which had a super fancy setup. Again, it was like one of those popup blue screens in a tripod and like a ring light that I was like bouncing off of a wall, like, and my phone, like I know sometimes I'll see online, like people are selling these like really fancy self tape setups and like sure, maybe if you wanna like add something to your reel, like you wanna sing in a little bit of an elevated space. Like I did that with Resser, like I went into. A rented room and I made it like a music video and I elevated it, so it just didn't look like I was making a self tape. But, but, but don't, you don't have to spend a ton of money getting fancy, fancy equipment. They just need to be able to see your face and not be distracted, and you need to look good. Okay, cool. Well, or just look appropriate for the character. Sometimes you're not supposed to look good, right? Depending on what you're doing. So. All that to say. Yeah, you don't have to, I, I always look at those and I'm like, that's such a waste of time and money like that is so unnecessary to do like a really fancy self tape setup unless it's for something else that you're creating. Um, okay. So self taping for me personally, got easier when I finally had to just accept that this is the way things are now. And I started leaning into the silver lining, like, yeah, you really can do this from anywhere. However, the real problem was underlying in that I really didn't feel like I. Was properly trained in actor or singing. And so at that time, around 2020, that's when I also, thanks to unfortunately for the unemployment and all of that, I was in a situation where I at least could, um, I had somewhere to go where I could save that money, and that's when I invested in voice teacher training. And I also invested in actor training. And then I was in the practice of getting better and better and better at the actual skill, which is, if you listen to the previous episode that I did when I was in this, the, the treadmill of like feeling like shit. Like I couldn't actually create anything and just felt like everything was so expensive and you're just in the audition desperate grind. That's what finally got me out of it, was the ability to kind of be at home and live at home and, you know, leverage that money, use the money that I was getting from unemployment to actually invest in skills that ended up making me a lot of money later. Um. I mean, honestly, from my, from my life trajectory, like COVID was awful, right? But, um, that's, that really did help me get, get a leg up in my own life and get things together. But I will say the thing, even during those times, even when I was working on my acting skill and my singing skill, I still resented the fuck out of self tape. And I was like, bring me back to in person. Mostly because I just felt like that that was what I was best at. And then I started taking acting for television classes, acting for screen, acting for video, and this is what really, really, really changed. The game for me to start enjoying it. Now, I didn't all I, at one point I was, I'm kind of a, a little shit, right? Like I'm kind of a pistol. I have a big emotions and I'm not afraid to have them read the fuck all over my face, right? I carry those with me everywhere I go. So I had an attitude, I mean, in all honesty about. Resenting acting for screen, because I had this story of like, oh, I'm a theater actress. Like everybody's just told me like, oh, I'm not pretty enough to be on camera. Or like, oh, like I'm just too big to be on camera and like, that's just not my thing and that's not what I do. Um, but now we have to self tape all the time. And even if you're auditioning for a musical, okay. You are gonna have to learn if you want a good self tape. All of a sudden now you are being forced to work in a medium that isn't a giant stage. Right? If you, if you film and audition. And it's really close to you and you are doing it as if you're on a giant stage. It's just not gonna read very well. It's just not that medium. So there was another truth that needed to be accepted. Okay. I'm realizing that I don't really like self tapes, not because of the freedom or the flexibility or that I can do it on my own time or that I can film from anywhere. All those are great. It's actually because I feel like my tapes aren't really that good and they're not getting me anywhere because I actually don't know how to harness. The, the, the skillset that it is actually to act on camera because there is, even if it's for a theater job, there is some kind of cross to that skill. It is a visual medium. And so once I cross that threshold of acceptance of like, Hey, okay, I'm being honest with myself and owning the fact that maybe I don't know everything I need to know. And maybe that's why my tapes aren't looking so good and I'm not booking the way that I want to off of these tapes. So that's when I started to take, um, acting for the camera classes. And maybe I'll have him on the podcast. I'm not sure if he would be interested on, but I met my Acting four screen teacher, Eric Reese. I think that's how he spell that. I've never actually asked him that. If it's Eric Rice or Eric Reese. Um, he was an associate for the Bob Kra hour studio for a long time. And if you're in New York, you'll know that name because everybody and their sister gets sent there, especially in theater, to learn how to act for camera. That's like the go-to learn how to act for camera place. So I started taking with Hi, hi. His associate Eric, um, who eventually, now he has his own studio. So if you're looking, looking into learning this skill, it's, his name's Eric Reese. He has his own thing right now. Um, he doesn't work with Bob anymore, but um, he is the person that taught me. A lot of, like, honestly, a lot of the stuff that I share on here, actually, he's one that really encouraged me and my other friends to make our own work really just to reclaim our own joy over anything else like I talked about last week, he's an excellent teacher. I mean, truly. Um, he also like, had me have so much faith in group lessons and inspired me to create my own group lessons with singing, which I wasn't even sure was possible because of how, so traditionally everything's structured one-on-one, but I had, I had. Grown so deeply from having individual time in his class, but like also learning so much from the other students, from watching them and watching how he worked for them. I was improving as a teacher. I was improving as an actor greatly. Um, that that's also what inspired me to start doing my own group lessons was singing and which have proven to be so fruitful and so beneficial for people, which has been awesome. I mean, honestly. Like, I wasn't sure how it was gonna go and I'm just so grateful for that container and how that exists now. But, um, so Eric was really the one who was like, yeah dude, you need to get better at this. And so he taught me how to get better with it. And so I'm gonna tell you a couple things that maybe you can harness to make self taping a little bit more tolerable. The first thing is it's, it is a visual medium. Even if we're crossing between theater, right? Even if we know that it's gonna be bigger for the sense of the self tape. You do have to consider a little bit of the visual storytelling element to it. That doesn't mean you don't act and you don't get specific on, you know, what's causing this scene to start. What's your point of view? Getting everything specific, you know, what's the objective here going on? Like, all of that, like regular acting stuff needs to be in place. And then there's this final layer of this technique of sorts where you're learning to be, how do I wanna say it? It's like you, it's almost like a peripheral. A peripheral skill, you're, you're somewhat aware, you start to become trained and aware of. How what you're doing in the frame is going to come off, right? You start to become, you start to build awareness and these like visual eye lines and tricks and cues and you know, things you can do to keep yourself busy that make you know that, that look like they read well. After practicing and you kind of accumulate this information as to what will read well on camera and what will not read well on camera. Um, they also talk about like these access points and cross the axis and where your i's looking and, um, what's gonna be the most effective for the storytelling. Um, where are you accidentally cutting people off? Where are you dropping focus? Where are you cutting the audience out? And even though, and again, I wanna kind of speak to the same overwhelm that you might have felt in the previous episode. If you're feeling like, oh fuck, I have to learn another skill, like, fuck you. Like I don't wanna learn that. I don't have to do that too. I'm just telling you like the minute that you can accept that this is just how things have moved and that learning to act on camera will not only help you get camera jobs, like film work in on actual TV sets and commercials and stuff. But it will also help your tapes look like fire. And I'm telling you, there is a whole, like everybody in New York is talented, but the ones who learn to tape exceptionally well and are harnessing and leveraging this visual medium in a way that they know is just going to enhance their storytelling. Those tapes stand out and those are the kinds of people that book directly off of tape. Because they are, they are enhancing and perfecting this medium, uh, beyond like the audition itself. That doesn't even make sense, but you know what I mean. They're, they're, they're focusing in on this extra element of the medium. Okay, so. That honestly, when you start to learn at the actual scale of acting on tape, you don't just treat it like a self tape where you're holding your sides and you're just delivering the line and like, that's good enough or it's not good enough, and you're, you're watching through your auditions and you're like, I hate this and I don't even know why I hate this. Right. If you can for a second pivot your focus into, Hey, maybe I just need to learn to act on. Film and act on camera. And then you start to enjoy and learn about that process and you start to feel empowered by it and you start to like get better and better at it. And then over time you're like, oh my God, like this looks so much better. Oh my god, this is kind of fun. Oh wait, I love to see my classmates working on things. Oh wait, I can really see how much people are improving. I can really see how baller my auditions are. After that, you're gonna start to really enjoy taping and actually honestly prefer taping. That's the wild part. I will say all of my friends that I've made in this class, they're so talented. Again, making it to like final rounds in chemistry reads for like HBO shows and stuff like. I mean, these people were incredibly talented. Um, been in fucking feature length films that, you know, like, just like these people insane. And I respect them so deeply. They're, they're wonderful. Um, but we all, oh my God, this week we all collectively had like a terrible class actually, because. Like I had gone into an in-person person callback the week before and was like peeing my pants. There were like two other people in the room that had in-person callbacks, and then this week there were other people that were having in-person callbacks and everybody actually was feeling more nervous. To like go in person and do the screen test or do the next round of callbacks than they were their initial tape. Like everybody feels so comfortable now because now they know like the medium itself is fun and they know how to make the storytelling lit and like we can lean on our group of friends and every self tape we do is just like an opportunity to have a good time. See what we can do that like, then when we don't have that, we actually have to go in and like do the scene. Then we like freak out a little bit. So it's like reversed itself a little bit. The third, did I say the second thing, I don't remember if I actually said a second thing. The next, the next thing that will make self taping feel like you wanna die a little bit less I is, is really being specific. About changes you would like to make. So instead of looking at yourself tape and being like, oh, I hate it, I just hate it. And then you don't have any like specific reasons or adjustments as to what you want to do with the tape itself. That is vague criticism that is cruel to yourself. Okay? Once you start to understand and you're practicing this skill, you'll get better at being at pinpointing specifics as to what actually needs to be adjusted to make the tape better. But if you're just taping it over and over and over again for two hours and it's not getting anywhere because you're just like throwing darts blindly at no bullseye, like you're not even, you're not even really aiming for something. You're unclear of what actually needs to be adjusted, then you're really just torturing yourself. And of course it doesn't feel good. Okay. And I will say, again, when you get better at the skill, that'll be easier to detect. Now, I've heard some people say, oh, don't do more than three takes, and you're done. Yeah. So it depends on how much you prepped, right? If you feel like you've prepped to the fullest amount and it's just not gonna take that much time, and you get a good take, then you get a good take, right? And then send it, right? If you watch it back and you're like, yeah, that was actually pretty good, and the prep was already and all done, and that's good. Now, one thing I will say, if you're spending. I want you to check on how much time you're spending on prep.'cause that can make people actually hate self-tapes too, because they put so much work into learning it and, and like it feels so draining. Another benefit of getting your ass in class and like repping out scenes and learning songs and material quickly and learning, learning scenes quickly, is that you get better at memorizing and you actually get better at doing large amounts of auditions more quickly, so it feels less overwhelming. Right. All of this eventually, hopefully while you're keeping yourself training, while you're keeping yourself practicing, while you're learning to make this inevitable part of being an auditioning actor, actually an enjoyable process.'cause it's not going anywhere. You are going to get better and faster at doing that skill. It's when you actually don't practice that skill, that it becomes more cumbersome and more overwhelming to learn things. All of this is actually prepping you for when the, the opportunities are coming, knocking down your door. I will tell you last year, for the first time, I think I had six auditions in one weekend. I had six self tapes in one weekend, and it was for a commercial, a feature length movie, a Broadway show, and two regional shows, one of which was an actor musician show that I had to play. Okay. If I had not been practicing these skills of self taping and learning stuff quickly, like practicing learning things, practicing, actually memorizing things so they weren't in my hands, practicing the shaping of the scene and kind of structuring it so that the tape looked good, I'm telling you I would not have made it through that weekend. Okay. That Broadway show, there was a heavy dialect, there was multiple characters, there were songs, there were, it was insane. And I was able to get it all done in one, like literally one day.'cause I got all the material Friday and it was due Monday. So I had like one day to learn it and I had one day to tape it right. If I had not been doing that practice, that would've been hell, but it was like kind of fun because I was like, holy shit, like things are going well. Like I'm getting asked to tape a lot. Like this is a good challenge to see how I hold myself through things going well, like holy cow. Right? Let's just keep going. Let's see how well I do. Let's see where the bars. To, and I will say, I think all my work was pretty darn good that weekend. All things considered. Okay? So that will make that process, when success starts happening for you, all of that's gonna feel a little bit better, like you're actually prepared to handle it. The other thing, final thing that I'll say that will make you fall in love with self taping and not feel like you wanna staple your face to the carpet is actually finding a group of friends. That you can rotate between to help each other with tapes. I love my husband and he has come in clutch on certain occasions when I haven't been able to get a reader right. I do feel it can be cumbersome for the significant others to always be readers. If you can find some friends, like maybe from these classes that you might be taking or like the friends you're like reading plays with you, you trust, or you know, you went to BFA together or whatever. If you have a, a network of people that you can call and ask around if people are available to be your reader and you have a good working dynamic and you trust their eye and how they, you know, their feedback and how they're seeing things, you trust their viewpoint of working on the material and their understanding of the material. Um, it then becomes more fun. So like my, again, dj, you guys heard DJ DJ's on this episode like quarterly, right? He's the most reoccurring guest, right? DJ and I read for each other quite a lot. Now I do get a lot of auditions just based off of, I don't know, I don't know if it's like my type is more flexible. I don't know. But DJ's a more specific type, so DJ. Gets more specific auditions. Um, but he has a really fucking high booking rate. He'll like book every other job he actually auditions for. Um, but anytime he has something come up, I'll read for him and I'll help him work on it. And anytime I have something come up, he's there to help me. And if he's not available, I also have my, my other friends, I have about four or five other friends that I can call upon who would be glad to do that. And then it's reciprocal, right? You help them too. So I hope this, you know, just gave you some ways of. Maybe rethinking about self taping to, to kind of narrow it all down. It comes down to creating a network of people that you enjoy learning with that can read with you. It comes back to falling in love with actually the visuals of acting on camera. If you treat it like that and you treat it as an opportunity to tell a different kind of story through image and a challenge of, Ooh, what can I learn from doing this, and how much fun can I have doing this? The work always ends up being better. You learned about if you're gonna do multiple takes of something that's gonna depend on how much prep you do. But if you practice actually prepping, you'll get faster at that, so that won't feel so cumbersome and crazy. And then if you do have to do a bunch of takes, just make sure when you're criticizing yourself, you're giving yourself like specific. Criticism like, I didn't like this one thing about the take not, oh, the whole thing's terrible and I don't know how to adjust it. Well, you gotta use your critical eye and pick out like a couple actual actionable, adjustable things that you can change about the take so that you can do it and then not drive yourself crazy. Okay. We also talked about the tape not having to look perfect, right? It sometimes people book work even. Not presenting the best audition they've ever done. Right. If you're right for something, you're right for something. We were just talking in class about the audition for the main guy in house. I'll have to watch that. I actually haven't seen it, but they said it was wild. Like he's backlit. Like he's hungover. He doesn't know his lines. He's like holding a sheet and yet that is house and he booked house. Right. So yeah, it's, it's about practicing. Someone just said, um, how do you just like get comfortable with yourself on camera? You gotta practice you. You're gonna be bad at it at first. Like again, like I said, for years I was bad at it. I was bad at self taping. I was bad at making content. You go back to like 2022. Yikes. Woo. What's she, what's she doing? What's happening with her? Right. It's 'cause I wasn't comfortable. It just took exposure, trial and error, like learning and again, regulating through feeling so discombobulated with this thing. Right. Just like your student Victoria, when you're saying like, what would you tell your student if she was learning to sing with the mic while she's got a practice So she becomes more comfortable with it. But yeah, highly recommend taking an acting for camera class. There's a, a few other people that offer those. Um, again, my teacher is wonderful if you wanna check him out, and I'll leave you guys with this. If you feel like you get in your head a lot and you know, you just don't know how to like. Unplugged from the crazy mind spin out right before you do a self tape or even before you go into an in-person audition, please check out the attached Below Abundant Artist Audio series. That is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, free. Resource so that you can focus on making yourself radiant and feeling really confident before you go into the room and really put your focus on doing the scene and doing the work and not feeling like you're distracted and spun out from all the other things around you. Right? Whether it's the camera right in front of you or it's the pianist clanging in the big open room, or it's. The person eating their sandwich at the table, that's not paying attention to you, right? These abundant artists, audio meditation tracks really help train your brain to radiate and do your best in the room. There's also some other ones that are really powerful. The Performer Glow one is super powerful. The everyone loves that one. They use those ones right before auditions. I use it before auditions. I feel great. You use, uses some Kundalini energy activates that magnetism. It's, it's a little bit of threshold work. There's a lot of great elements to it that people really love, so. Check that free thing out. That should be linked down below in the podcast. If you're listening live and you wanna go check that out, that's in the link in my bio, on my Instagram page, completely free. And with that, I, I do wish you a better audition season. It has been slow in 2026. I wanna validate you. It's been a little slow, and that's okay. That happens. That doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. Actually, your only job is to refocus on how you can make the actual job itself, which is really auditioning. That's your actual job. How to make that more sustainable and enjoyable for you and not in a way that burns you out and just. Fries. Yeah. Okay. Um, with all of that, I hope you learned something or got some helpful info or even had to giggle at some of my slurred words that apparently happen when I'm tired. But I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. If you love the podcast, don't forget to leave us a five star written review. Send it to singers path@gmail.com. We'll enter you to win a free lesson. And, uh, with that I will see you next time. Okay, bye-bye. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star written review on Apple Podcasts. This helps me get this information out to more artists all over the world. Let's work together to spread the joys of music. Until next time, I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, signing off. From the Singers Path podcast. Thanks for listening.