Rehearsing Your Scene

After recording and naming your scene, you can immediately start rehearsing the scene.

To begin, tap the Play button (on the right hand side of the bottom menu bar), and Rehearsal goes into action. The recording you just made will start to play, and, like a TelePrompter, your script will scroll by as well, allowing you to read the lines as well as hear them. Say your lines as you would in the scene. If you don’t know your lines at the beginning of the process, that’s OK – you’re going to hear yourself say them. You don’t have to rush it. Just listen, over and over, watching the script go by, just like in real life, and when you’re ready, start speaking your lines.

Once you’re somewhat familiar with your lines, you can speak them, talking over what you recorded and in rhythm with the other character’s words. The full memorization of the lines will soon follow.

Rehearsal will play all the way through your scene, then automatically start playing the scene over again. The key to learning your lines is repetition – the more you hear them, the sooner you’ll be able to say them, and the more you say them, the sooner you’ll memorize them cold. Remember, once you memorize them, you can start to play with the way you say your lines to get nuances in what the character is all about – once the lines are down, you can start to explore the character, add movement, business and so on. Eventually, you’ll put your device down, and just listen as you put the scene on it’s feet and add your environment to what you’re saying.

Eventually, you’ll be moving about your rehearsal space, saying your lines with surety, finding new meaning in the words and actions, and making the kinds of strong choices of how to deliver your lines that casting directors and writers love.

Once you’ve got one scene recorded to your liking, move on and record the next scene and the next if you have them. You’re building a library of scenes to rehearse with. Then, rehearse with them in order, out of order, in plot order, whatever you want. And, of course, you’ll start to think of things other than the words in the script that you’ll want to remember.

And what do we usually do next? Maybe, we write notes in the margins as we explore the character and make Comments on the scene. And Rehearsal has turbocharged that process.

Next: Blackouts