Film Workshop – ‘Moving Day’ Actors Rehearsal

19-11-2023

On Friday 10th November, I held an actors rehearsal at Merchiston with Michael and Abigail. The primary focus of this rehearsal was to do complete script read-throughs and give notes on dialogue. My notes were primarily concerned with the delivery, tone, and subtext behind each line. I wanted the actors to know what their character was feeling and thinking at each beat in the script to inform their performance and add a level of depth and nuance it wouldn’t have otherwise.

I started by having Michael and Abigail run through the script without any prior notes to see their improvisation and own interpretation of the characters. This was a useful exercise as it gave me a starting point to direct from, as opposed to trying to build from the ground up in terms of their performance.

Following the first read-through, we worked through the script backwards and I gave notes on each line of dialogue. I’m not sure why I wanted to work backwards, but it ended up helping me make links between dialogue earlier in the script that was referenced or referred back to in later dialogue. I went into detail about how the character would be feeling and thinking, what their motives and desired outcome would be, and how it related back to the overall father-daughter dynamic.

During the second read-through in which Michael and Abigail seamlessly incorporated my dialogue notes, the script read much better and the characters became more distinct and personalised. One thing I learnt from this rehearsal was the importance of establishing a backstory and subtext for each character, as even though it is not something that is explicitly revealed to the audience, it is implicitly revealed through the subtleties of the performance.

Once we had fine-tuned performance elements in the dialogue, we worked on basic blocking in the space to begin to get the actors speaking the lines in an active, physical way. The blocking is one of the main elements in this short film, so it is something I will be paying particular attention to in later rehearsals and on the shoot itself.