How do professional actors memorize lines?
This may sound like a stupid question but, if you’re cast in a significant role for a full length film do you memorize ALL of your lines prior to shooting? Or do professional actors just “sort of” memorize them and then formally memorize the small chunks as you shoot them each day?
Well, this question was recently asked on Reddit and the working actors shared some amazing insight on how they easily memorize a ton of lines for a major feature film.
Go Scene by Scene
I go scene by scene memorizing. I divide it all up with sticky notes or anything that can divide the scenes and I go over them over and over again. Memorizing day of or night before sounds absolutely insane, especially with a really huge part.
I can understand with tv shows though when they are constantly shooting new episodes every week. There’s definitely no time to memorize all that all the time except I would assume for really long monologues or something. –whacafan
Don’t try to memorize
I honestly don’t even try to memorize. I just act out my lines. And usually I just have memorized it by reading it enough.
I’ve been in the lead of a few things while also directing. I never got why people waited until the night before of the day of to memorize their lines. I will act out my lines once a week, and then when it’s closer to production, I will ramp it up. I find if I say the words enough, then I can just say the words naturally. And after a few weeks, I have usually memorized the entire script. – CinematicRacer14
Memorizing your lines will hurt you
No need to memorize your lines.
By doing so you will actually hurt yourself more than help. Your delivery will be so canned and false you will get “line-locked” and the neuropathways you’ve drilled will be so stuck, the other actors will have a hard time getting you to really listen to them.
Simply, read over them at the beginning of that day and don’t worry about being word perfect. DONT IMPROVISE either. Just don’t stress too much about every single little word. You want your delivery to be natural and you want to be listening and responding honestly to your scene partners. – thechiassonator
Figure out what you’re doing
I learn my lines in the script I initially receive by just crafting the damn thing which most basically comes down to “what am I doing, what am I thinking, and why am I doing and thinking those things?” Paraphrasing helps as well. You just have to be flexible because “locked script” is an oxymoron in film. Chances are you will get re-writes if you have a major role and they will sometimes come at the last minute. But still, it isn’t all that big a deal if you’ve crafted the original well as long as you don’t have some kind of mental block or are just bad at memorizing because you’ll already know the character, the relationships, and the given circumstances which may or may not change slightly from having done that.
While all of this advice is amazing. Nothing is as great as Bryan Cranston’s secret to memorizing lines.
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