An actor standing against a plain wall at home, looking straight into the camera lens to record a slate
Home  ›  Academy  ›  How to Self-Tape
Chapter 16 of 17

Say what they asked for, down the lens, and stop.

There is no such thing as the slate. There are at least six, and they contradict each other. So the skill is not learning one script. It is reading the instruction, working out which slate you have been handed, and building that one.

Do I even need one?Which of the six?

Two named casting directors disagree about whether to shoot it vertically. Two disagree about whether to slate at all. We are going to show you the disagreements rather than pretend they do not exist.

Record itAudition Recorder

Shoot the slate as its own clip, so casting can keep it or drop it without editing your scene.

 Check the tapeSelf-Tape Feedback

Notes on your slate tone, eye line, framing and the transition into the scene.

 Read this firstFollowing directions

Almost every slate question is really a directions question.

 Always freeCasting Calls

Browse and submit. Seeing and answering a call never costs credits.
The short answer
Slate only when you are asked. Look into the lens, give the requested fields in the requested order, and add nothing. Then send it as its own file if the platform allows one.
By Will Roberts
Updated August 31, 2026

Before the format, before the script

The first question is whether to slate at all.

A large share of people arriving on this page are about to do something they were never asked to do. So here is that answer first, with the sources attached.

It is a rookie mistake

Casting professional Pearlman, via Backstage: “a rookie mistake is to always slate” for a self-taped audition unless you have been specifically instructed to.

Do not do one

Just Add Milk Casting in the UK, as plainly as it gets: “If you are NOT asked for an ident, then do NOT do one.” Somebody then has to edit it out.

It is conditional

The CDG guide lists the slate as “IF REQUIRED.” Casting director Caroline Liem brackets her entire slate section as if slating.

Now the reason nobody gives you, which dissolves most of the anxiety. The office already has your details. On Actors Access, Casting Networks or Spotlight, your name, height, location, agent and headshot are attached to the submission before anybody presses play. The slate is not information they are missing. It is a look at you speaking as yourself — which is exactly why some offices want one and others do not.

Just Add Milk add the market fact behind their rule: idents are not common in UK television, film and theatre. An actor who learned slating from American videos and then tapes for a British office is working from a different rulebook and does not know it.

And you are allowed to ask

Backstage says it directly: if the request does not mention slating at all, you can email and ask whether they would like one. That is a short, professional question, and it is far better than inventing a format. The worst outcome of asking is that somebody types the word “no.”

The honest counterweight, because it exists. Other casting guidance lists forgetting to slate as the single most common self-tape mistake, and says offices regularly skip tapes that arrive without one. Both things are true, and they are not really in conflict: a missing requested slate is a serious error, and an unrequested slate is a small nuisance. The rule that satisfies both is the same one that governs the whole tape. Read the notice. If it is silent, ask.

The finding that should change how you read this page

There are six slates, and they are not interchangeable.

A US film slate, a UK ident, a commercial slate, a full-body slate, a union slate and a drama-school introduction want different fields, in different orders, in different orientations, at different points in the tape.

United StatesFilm and televisionName, and often height, location, agency and union status. Clifton Guterman’s example runs: name, height, agency, AEA or SAG-AFTRA, home city.What to say → Union workThe contract slateThe SAG-AFTRA 2023 agreement caps what can be required. It is a ceiling, not a template — see the next section.The ceiling → United KingdomThe identSpotlight: “an ident – sometimes called a slate.” Name and agent, or self-represented. Sometimes location, height, availability.US vs UK → UK, CDG standardThe passport identFull name, height, nationality, and whether you hold a valid passport — delivered directly to camera, in English only.Why they ask → CommercialProfiles, hands, conflictsName and agent, then your profiles and your hands. Often height. Often a declaration of competing advertising work.The vocabulary → Drama schoolThe introductionMuch longer and personal. RADA asks for one minute: full name, postcode, the course, which pieces and why you chose them.The exception →

The rule that governs all six

Whatever they asked for, in the order they asked for it, and nothing else.

The slate is the single most common place in a self-tape where actors add information nobody wanted. Which means the whole content question is really a directions question, and it belongs to Chapter 3.

The script, and the ceiling on it

What actually goes in it.

Most slates are four fields and eight seconds. The trouble starts when actors add a fifth.

A normal slate, when the notice asks for name, height, location and representation

“Hi, I’m Jordan Lee. Five foot seven, based in Atlanta, represented by Northside Talent.”

Warm, clear, straight down the lens, finished. No apology, no biography, no explanation of the scene you are about to do.

If you do not have an agent, the phrase is “self-represented.” Spotlight publishes it and almost nothing else does, which is why it is the most-asked and least-answered question on this topic. You are not required to explain the situation, apologise for it, or leave the field out.

The union ceilingThe SAG-AFTRA 2023 TV/Theatrical Agreement says a slate need only include name, height, city of residence, current location, age and birthday for minors, and information about special skills. Nothing beyond that can be required on covered work.
Read that as a ceilingIt is not a template to recite. It tells you what a union production may ask for — and implies that anything past it is a request rather than a requirement.
Other fields you may be asked forStageMilk notes casting may want your availability for the shoot, and occasionally specifics like skills or dietary requirements relevant to the project. Give them if asked. Do not volunteer them.
And then stop repeating itWeeble Mountain Casting, on the top of every take after the first: “Do not read the scene description or repeat your slate information.” Slate once. Go into the scene.
On stating your age, we are going to be careful. SAG-AFTRA’s list includes age and birthday for minors. Several actor guides tell adults to state their age generally. Age discrimination rules vary by state and there is a reason litigation over age display in the industry exists. We have not researched that law and we are not going to advise on it. If the notice asks, answer it. If it does not, do not volunteer it.

Beginning, end, or its own file

Where the slate goes — and why separate usually wins.

The sources genuinely split here, but four of them land in the same place for one good reason.

At the startThe CDG guide puts it after the opening long shot and the zoom-in, immediately before the scene. Standard young-performer guidance also places the ident at the start. This is what most actors default to.
At the endCaroline Liem: add it to the end of your read unless you are directed otherwise.
As its own fileThe SAG-AFTRA casting panel — Husar, Byrd, Liem, Jue, Schuster and Kennedy — recommend recording the slate separately and submitting both. Clifton Guterman, Spotlight and Actors Access all say the same. Actors Access adds a practical reason: smaller files, faster uploads.

The reason separate wins is the interesting part. The panel’s stated logic is that some casting directors edit the slate out — because they do not use them, or because a slate does not fit the mood of the scene. Sending it as its own clip means the office can use it or discard it without touching your scene.

The caveat that makes this real, and nobody publishes it

Backstage’s own help centre states that only one tape may be submitted per self-tape audition request. So an office asking a Backstage-submitting actor for a separate slate file is asking for something the platform structurally cannot deliver. On Backstage you combine. On Eco Cast and Casting Networks you separate. Check which one you are actually uploading to before you follow the instruction, and if they genuinely conflict, say so briefly in the submission notes.

The cleanest published contradiction in self-taping

Vertical or horizontal?

Casting director Caroline Liem says slate vertical, read horizontal. Backstage’s own dedicated slating guide says the opposite in as many words: “don’t switch to a vertical orientation when you pull back.” Spotlight says film the ident in landscape because portrait breaks casting’s workflow. The CDG guide, Actors Access and RADA all say landscape. And the SAG-AFTRA contract permits vertical portrait framing on union work.

Both camps are right about different things. Liem’s logic is shape: a vertical frame fits a standing body, so it is the efficient crop for a full-body slate on a phone. Everyone else’s logic is plumbing: casting offices process, catalogue and play tapes in landscape, and a portrait file misbehaves in their systems.

The workflow argument wins, because your tape has to survive their pipeline before anyone judges its shape. So shoot the whole submission landscape, and get the full body by moving back rather than by rotating the phone.

An actor standing beside a phone on a tripod in a living room, speaking to the lens

The one that needs a room you may not have

The full-body slate, and the two orders it comes in.

The US sources and the UK guide describe the same three elements in opposite sequences. Which is the clearest argument yet for reading the instruction rather than memorizing a shape.

United States

Backstage and Clifton Guterman

  1. Start in a medium close-up — head and shoulders.
  2. State the requested information, straight to the lens.
  3. Pause or cut, then pull out to a wide shot showing your whole body.
  4. Cut back in to the close-up and go into the scene.

United Kingdom

The CDG guide

  1. Start in a long shot, full body head to toe.
  2. Hold it for about a second.
  3. Zoom in slowly to a close-up — head to roughly six inches below the shoulders.
  4. Slate, then play the scene.

Why casting wants the full body at all: body type, height and overall presence. It matters most in commercial casting, where offices are frequently casting groups — families, couples, friends — and need to know whether a set of people reads as belonging together, or whether a lead’s height works against the rest of the cast. Marci Liroff’s caveat still applies: not every office asks for one, because every office has different specifications for a different job.

And a named working actor has objected to this on the record. In Deadline’s coverage of the 2023 self-tape dispute, actor Sprague Grayden listed “slates that zoom in from a face closeup to a full body shot” alongside requests for shadowless lighting, best-possible sound and a reader — describing them as escalating production demands that are difficult for many actors to meet at home. We teach the technique below because you will be asked for it. We are not going to pretend the ask is uncontested.
If your room is too small

Give them the widest honest frame you have and say so in one line in the submission notes. RADA is the only institution we found that writes the accommodation into its own guidance, and it is the sane position: nobody expects you to rent a studio or balance a phone on a stack of books at head height. An honest note beats a dangerous setup and beats silence.

The part actors dread

Alive, but not performed.

Two respected sources give what look like opposite instructions. They are both correcting the same failure from different sides.

Caroline LiemSlate with an energy she calls “half you and half the character.” What she loves is a slate that gives her “a flavor, a vibe, of what I’m about to see.” She also says, elsewhere, that you should not slate in character — the tension inside one casting director’s advice is itself worth noticing.
Cathryn HarttFounder of Hartt and Soul Studio, and the opposite emphasis: the first thing she gets actors to do when they slate is “stop acting. Just be natural.” But get your energy up first, so there is a light in your eyes.
SpotlightThe deflationary view, and a calming one: the ident is a purely technical part of the process, used to organise footage and get a sense of what you look and sound like. Performers very commonly overthink it and need not.
Caroline Liem, againA commercial slate and a wartime-drama slate should not look the same. Every role asks you to present yourself a little differently — which is a wardrobe and energy note, not a licence to act.

Liem and Hartt are not as far apart as they read. Both are describing the same bad slate — flat, apologetic, dead — and prescribing opposite corrections. Liem is warning against a neutrality so total it reads as absence. Hartt is warning against a performance so heavy it plays as a bad audition before the audition. The synthesis is that a slate should be you at your most alive and least performed. Ten seconds, delivered once, and treated as a handshake rather than a formality.

The slateLook into the lensYou are speaking to the casting team, as yourself. This is the one moment in the whole tape where addressing the camera directly is correct. The CDG guide, Liem, StarNow and Central all say so.Direct to camera The sceneLook just beside itYour eye line sits next to the lens, where your reader is. You are speaking to a person inside the story, not to the room watching it.How to frame it →

And if the slate is the part of taping you hate: treat it as admin. It is the only moment in the process where nobody is asking you to be anyone. That is the whole reason it feels exposing, and also the reason it is easier than it feels.

The variant nobody explains

Commercial slates: profiles, hands, and conflicts.

Three pieces of vocabulary that turn up in instructions with no definition attached, and one of them has contractual consequences.

1

Profiles

After your basic information, turn to show one side, then the other, then back to camera. Just Add Milk describe exactly that sequence, and Casting Networks instructs its own casting directors to ask for “name and profile, front and sides.”The reason: a commercial is often cut to one specific angle, so the office is checking a spec rather than admiring you. Follow whatever pace the instruction sets.

2

Hands

StarNow gives the instruction plainly: “Hold your hands up on either side of your face” and show the fronts and backs of both to camera.And the reason that makes it stick: hands appear in an enormous share of commercials — holding the product, opening the packet, gripping the wheel — and are often cast as their own consideration. It is a spec check, not vanity.

3

Conflicts

StageMilk: for commercial casting you are commonly asked to “specify in what ads you have appeared in the last 3 years.” And the part that matters — once you submit and sign the audition and wardrobe form, you are legally obligated to be totally transparent about your previous work.Getting this wrong has contractual consequences rather than casting ones. Commercial exclusivity runs in 13-week cycles, SAG-AFTRA spots carry a maximum period of use, and you are not released from a conflict until you have written notice. The glossary chapter covers the mechanics.

And what not to add

A full-length shot is more common in commercial casting than theatrical, so expect it. But do not add props, branded clothing or a product demonstration unless the notice asks for them. Chapter 13 covers where the theatrical no-props rule inverts for commercials — and the inversion only applies when they have asked.

The sharpest illustration in the whole Academy

A US slate asks your height. A UK ident asks for your passport.

Same purpose, different questions — and the difference tells you exactly what each market is worried about.

Two rulebooks, one word

Slate and ident are not synonyms.

Spotlight calls the ident “sometimes called a slate,” which is true and slightly misleading. The forms have diverged.

 
United States
United Kingdom
What it is called
Slate.
Ident.
Core content
Name, height, city of residence, current location, agency, union status.
Name and agent — or “self-represented.”
Distinctive fields
Height and union affiliation.
Nationality, and whether you hold a valid passport — the CDG standard — delivered in English only.
Default expectation
Frequently expected unless the notice excludes it.
Not common in TV, film and theatre. Do not do one unless asked.
Governing document
The SAG-AFTRA 2023 agreement, which caps what can be required.
The CDG guide and the CDG Code of Best Practice.
Why the passport question exists: a small island does a great deal of international co-production, so nationality and right to travel are scheduling facts. A US slate asks how tall you are and where you live because the questions are about domestic casting and getting you to set.

The one place a slate is definitely required

Drama school introductions are a different form entirely.

Where a professional slate is eight seconds of admin, a conservatoire introduction is part of the assessment — and it is specified in detail.

RADAA one-minute introduction: full name, postcode, the course you are applying for, which pieces you will perform, and why you chose them.
Royal CentralYou may look directly at camera for an introduction of no more than two minutes, covering your name, where you are based, which course and why.

If that is what you are taping, none of the “keep it to eight seconds” advice on this page applies to you. Read their document, answer their questions, use their time.

Young performers

What changes if the actor is under eighteen.

Age is on the listThe SAG-AFTRA content list includes age and birthday for minors — fields adults are not asked for.
There is no standardSpotlight’s young-performer guidance says plainly that there is no golden rule for idents and each casting director does it differently. A typical UK ident: name, the character, agent, a couple of profile shots, sometimes hands.
Some want a photograph insteadAnd the fact almost nobody knows: some offices may want a photograph in place of a video slate for a young performer. If that is what the notice says, that is what it means.
An adult should be thereThe CDG, PMA and Spotlight children’s guidelines: an adult should be present in the room when a performer under eighteen films a self-tape, though not directly involved in it.

The one thing worth saying to parents: do not coach a child into a professional slating voice. Clear, comfortable and their own is enough, and every casting office would rather have it.

The question underneath all of the others

Does anyone actually watch it?

The honest answer, and it dissolves most of the dread

Sometimes it is deleted before anyone else sees it. Sometimes it is the piece shown to the director.

Both of those are on the record, from the same casting panel, and you will never know which one applies to your tape.

It gets stripped out

The SAG-AFTRA casting panel says actors should know that some casting directors edit the slate out — some because they do not use slates in their process, others because a slate does not fit the mood of the scene that follows.

It gets promoted

Casting director Tracy “Twinkie” Byrd describes the opposite use. She may use an actor’s slate as additional audition material — if a director needs to see a little more of somebody’s personality and there is no time to bring them back in, she uses the slate.

And it is a first impression

A talent manager writing for Backstage puts the stakes at their highest: before a casting director watches the audition, they are already forming a judgement from everything they perceive in the slate, and if they are not drawn to what they see, it is delete and on to the next submission.

Sometimes deleted on arrival. Sometimes shown to the director. Always a first impression to somebody. You will never know which one you got, so make it good and then stop thinking about it.

The only honest answer to “does the slate matter”

What we are not going to tell you. That the slate is the most important part of your tape. One source says it, it makes good copy, and the casting panel above flatly contradicts it. Overstating this is exactly what produces the tense, apologetic slate everybody is trying to avoid.

There is one story worth carrying, with a caution attached. Casting director Jayson Therrien — Jann, Black Summer — says “slating is more important than you think it is.” His reason is an anecdote: an actor he had worked with years earlier, now on a big show, used the slate to say hello and acknowledge the connection. He found it a big deal, and thinks a lot of actors just throw the moment away.

Read that carefully before you use it

Therrien is describing somebody who already had a real relationship with him. The transferable lesson is not that you should be chatty with strangers. It is that the slate is the one moment in a self-tape addressed to a person rather than to a scene — and treating it as a form to fill in throws that away. Do not write “Hi Jayson!” to somebody you have never met.

Where the published guidance contradicts itself

The disagreements, laid out.

Every competing page on this topic teaches one slate and quietly assumes it is universal. Here is why that cannot be right.

Slate at all?

AlwaysA talent manager: the slate is the most important part of your self-tape. Jayson Therrien: more important than you think.

Only if askedPearlman: always slating is a rookie mistake. Just Add Milk: if you are not asked, do not do one.

Vertical or horizontal?

VerticalCaroline Liem: slate vertical, read horizontal. The SAG-AFTRA contract permits portrait framing.

LandscapeBackstage: do not switch to vertical when you pull back. Spotlight: portrait breaks casting’s workflow. CDG, Actors Access and RADA agree.

Where does it go?

StartThe CDG guide and most young-performer guidance: before the scene.

End, or separateLiem: at the end. The SAG-AFTRA panel, Guterman and Actors Access: its own file.

Shot sequence

Close-up firstBackstage and Guterman: close-up, state, pull out to full body.

Wide firstThe CDG guide: full-body long shot, zoom in, then slate.

In character or not?

A littleCaroline Liem: half you, half the character. Give me a flavour of what is coming.

Not at allCathryn Hartt: stop acting, just be natural. And Liem elsewhere: do not slate in character.

How much does it matter?

EnormouslyIt is your first impression, and a weak one means delete and next.

BarelySpotlight: purely technical and administrative. And some casting directors delete it on arrival.

The full-body slate

NecessaryCasting: it shows body type, height and presence, and it is essential when casting groups.

UnreasonableSprague Grayden, in Deadline: an escalating production demand that is hard to meet at home.

Separate file?

YesThe SAG-AFTRA panel, Actors Access and Guterman: send it separately.

CannotBackstage’s platform documentation: only one tape may be submitted per request.

One gap we could not close. Nobody publishes a slate length. Every source says “keep it brief” and not one of them gives a number of seconds. We are not going to invent one. What we can tell you is the shape: the fields they asked for, said once, at a normal speaking pace. If you are running past fifteen seconds without being asked for an introduction, you have added something.

Before you press record

The slate check.

  • A slate was actually requested — or I asked, and they said yes.
  • I know which of the six I am being asked for.
  • Only the requested fields, in the requested order. Nothing added.
  • No agent? I said “self-represented” and moved on.
  • I am looking into the lens — the one moment in the tape where that is right.
  • The whole submission is landscape, and I got the full body by moving back.
  • It is a separate file, unless the platform only takes one.
  • I did not repeat the slate at the top of take two.
An actor standing full-length against a plain wall, holding a calm full-body slate position

Make it good. Then stop thinking about it.

Somebody may delete your slate before another human sees it. Somebody else may be the reason a director sees you at all. You will never find out which, and the work is the same either way: read the instruction, say those fields, look down the lens, and go into the scene.

It is eight seconds of admin that occasionally does something remarkable. That is the whole truth of it.

Get feedback on your slate

Keep going

Chapter 13

What to wear

The slate is where casting sees your clothes most clearly. Three brightnesses, one solid top.

Chapter 15

Editing and sending

Separate files, file names, and the size caps that decide what you can send.