Day two of watching the musical. A mini-avalanche of new pages from Brendan and Valerie, as they fine-tune lyrics and add music. Much running back-and-forth to the intermittently cooperative photocopier.
Here are a few nuts-and-bolts things I'm learning, watching. These are, by the way, all things that are going RIGHT in the room.
1) Thumbdrives, thumbdrives, thumbdrives...it's amazing to be able to throw a new set of pages onto your thumbdrive, hand it to an intern, who can then go run off new copies for you.
2) Use a different color of page for new changes for each day...helps you keep track.
3) Gotta learn how to use the "lock pages" function in Final Draft...looks like it's a godsend.
4) You want a director like Tracy, who "directs fast"...and nicely. Gotta make quick decisions, give the actors what they need succinctly, watch the clock, move on.
5) Casting, casting, casting. ESPECIALLY in a staged reading/workshop, it's enormously helpful to have the kind of actors who give a great cold read, who will "get" the first three layers of what you're doing in your dialogue on the first read...so that you can use your workshop time to get to the OTHER five layers.
More to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment