I am not an actor, and I don’t know any actors that I can ask. Let’s say you are the lead actor on a weekly television show. A script is written and distributed, and there is a table read, and then there are rehearsals, and then filming starts.
So how much time does a typical actor spend learning/memorizing lines?
I’m not talking about someone with a photographic memory… just someone with an average memory.
I realize that they are professionals, and are used to memorizing lines, but it seems it would take hours, repeatedly going over the lines, until they really had them memorized. I’m assuming there is no teleprompter or cue cards around.
Is it easier than I think it is? Am I missing something here?
They practice at home in the evenings. I’ve read more than a few autobiographies by actors that had lines like, “it was a wonderful party, but I left early so I could go over my lines.”
Which isn’t very different from what I did in my high school and college plays.
Depends on the role/lines. Some writer’s work is much, much more challenging to commit to memory, and not always what you would expect. Some of the rapid-fire contemporary plays are more difficult than the classics, in my opinion.
For a TV show they can refresh their memory between takes, they really only have to memorize around a minutes worth of material at a time. They get the script that week but it can be constantly rewritten up until filming.
I recall reading about William “Fred Mertz” Frawley. He was a drinker and a horserace gambler as well as a baseball fanatic. Vivan Vance said he was the only actor she ever knew who would complain about getting TOO MANY lines. He wanted less, he wanted to get out and spend his money on booze, the horses and baseball games.
She said, he would tear out only his lines and that was all he ever knew. She said, quite often he had no idea what the story was about.
Contrast this to Gracie Allen who, in radio (where they read off scripts) or TV (where they memorized) she would learn all the lines of all the actors, as she said, her part made no sense and if she didn’t learn every line, she didn’t know when to come in, because you couldn’t rely on the logic of a normal conversation for a cue.
Lucie Arnaz said she learned her lines for “Here’s Lucy” so fast that she watches herself in old shows and has no memory of the story. She says she got the scripts on Monday and had about five days to learn and relearn (due to rewrites), then she’d instantly forget the lines and start again with a new script
There are only 22 minutes in an average sitcom (this is the most like a play, which is all I have experience with) and the lines are shared relatively evenly amongst sometimes as many as 8 or 10 actors. That’s only about 3 or 4 minutes of text, plus pauses so let’s make that 10 minutes of speaking time per week.
Not so bad. There are several rehearsals, and time between entrances to revise. It’s not so hard.
The easiest thing I find with acting is that the other actors give a feed line, so you know there’s only a certain number of possible responses to that line, and it’s automatically brought to mind after having been committed to memory.
Hour-longs are even easier, as the shoot is spread over many days, and they have plenty of time to revise in between setups.
As others have mentioned, in a 1/2 hour TV show there aren’t that many lines. In addition, the script is not completed until the taping, and possibly not until the taping is over. Adjustments are made all during the week. TV show characters have a personality as well, and the lines are adjusted to that personality, so the actor will not have a hard time learning the lines, and may even adlib with more natural lines for the character.
ETA: I’ve kind of said the same thing as GuanoLad using different words.
I’ve Been impressed for years seeing soap opera actors doing this. Those damn shows run 40 minutes 5 days a week practically year round. And all they do is talk, talk, talk on those shows. Some of them must be memorizing a good 10 minutes worth of dialog on a almost daily basis.
I used to be an actor. The biggest part I ever had required me to be on stage for three hours, and I had dialog for pretty much all of it.
I have a shitty memory at the best of times, and it was sheer hell learning it all. We had five weeks of rehearsals and I started learning the night I got the part, about 2-3 hours every night.
Some movie actors (like, the ones who are good), treat a movie as if it were a play. They read the entire script and learn their lines as if they had to do it live. Then they work on back-story. Others just learn their bit, do their bit, and fuck off.
I had the great privilege to see Anthony Hopkins give a talk and a masterclass, about a year after he did Silence of the Lambs. He said his method was to read the script in full a few times so he could understand it, then read every one of his lines, out loud, one hundred times. He said after that he would know them without having consciously tried to memorize them. He also said he doesn’t do too much of the ‘method’, because after one hundred times the characterization arrives by osmosis and is created and informed by what the character says. (Also, he and Jodi Foster didn’t rehearse the scenes they were in - they just did their parts sight-unseen. Of course there were several takes, but it really gives those scenes tension, IMO.)
BTW, not only do you have to memorize all the lines, but you have to give those lines in character over and over and over again.
The first time, it is fresh and wonderful and people laugh or cry when you say your lines.
But then, after about the 15th read-through, people are not laughing or crying and yet you have to keep that same exact energy as if you were saying the line for the first time.
Think about telling a joke to your family and they roll on the floor laughing. Great!
Now tell that same joke 20 more times to your family as they start drifting off to other rooms, but you have to give the exact same facial expressions, tone, timing and body movements. If you don’t, the director is going to be all over your ass, or fire you.
So, memorize all the lines, keep the pacing, listen to the other actors for your cue, move three steps to the left, lift the carton of milk and pour it into the glass and react realistically and be fresh and new every single time, over and over again. Oh, and all the cast and crew is watching you and will know the instant you fuck up. Oh, and time is money, so every time you screw up costs a ton of money in film/TV time.
Going the other way on this - When I was in college I saw a lecture by Larry Linville (formerly ‘Frank Burns’ on MASH* ), and he spoke of first getting the job, and coming in having memorized his lines, and others pointed out to him that he really didn’t need to do this - 'We do have cue cards, you know." So for television, it halps to have familiarized yourself with the scene, but not so much that you memorize it. (In my opinion, it’s probably a better PERFORMANCE if you memorize it).
I remember Robert Beltran stated that on Voyager he only learnt his lines and his cue, he did not care much for the story itself, unless the episide focused on him. Not an example of conceit, he just said it was better that way.
I was on the set quite a bit when my daughter was acting in a TV series, and if anyone spent a lot of time memorizing lines it was not apparent to me. TV (and film) is a lot different from the stage. You don’t have to recite all your dialog in one few hour period, scenes are shot out of order, and there are multiple takes. Not only is there time between takes, and a run through, but there is tons of time while the production crew is setting up the next shot where you are in your dressing room.
I suppose if someone had a big chunk of dialog they’d memorize it, but it is no problem otherwise.
I don’t think I saw any of the kids blow a line, and the only tension there was ever on the set was filming a gag which would be very time consuming and expensive to do over.
It should be noted that there’s more to preparing a script than memorizing one’s lines.
First, read the scene. Look at the scene as a whole. How does this scene fit into the story? What is my character’s objective in this scene? How can he accomplish this? Consider several different tactics. Now go over your character’s lines. Break them into beats. Assign one or more possible actions to each beat (remember, you’re an actor, not a reciter). Depending on what the other actors do (and of course what the director wants), you may have to choose different actions on the fly, so try to be flexible. Then go over the scene a few times, with different tactics (and hence different actions on the various beats) each time. Make note of which ways seem to flow better.
When you’re done doing that, memorizing your lines for that scene shouldn’t be a problem.
This reminds me of the story from Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman’s character was supposed to be exhausted so Hoffman stayed up all night so he would be genuinely exhausted when he filmed the scene. Laurence Olivier asked, “Dear boy, why not try acting? It’s so much easier.”
Ken Levine, TV writer (MASH, Cheers, Frasier), blogger, and baseball announcer, did a series on his blog a few years back in response to repeated reader questions. He surveyed actor friends on their process for learning lines. It varied quite a bit from person to person.