How to Prepare for Your Reading

OK, so you’ve signed up to play one of the roles in our project. Awesome! Here’s what you should do to prepare:

  1. Watch The Princess Bride. It’s available in a number of streaming services. Or heck, buy a DVD from Amazon for $12.

  2. Watch a couple of the Quibi videos (see the section above Cast) to see how these are strung together.

  3. I’m breaking the script up into scenes, and will make these files available to you so you can prepare one scene at a time. Until then, download the script (PDF version) .

  4. Decide how you’re going to play the part. Are you going to read it straight, or humorously? Are you going to act it out? Props? Costumes?

  5. Check your on-camera presence. Record yourself reading into the camera. Do you make eye contact, or are you looking down at the paper the whole time? Do you want to practice a little bit with someone else?

  6. Test your devices. I assume most people will record their parts on a phone, so find a good spot to record audio and video - and then send me your test video. I’ll be able to check for video quality, audio volume, and ambient noise. I will make recommendations for videos once I’ve seen a few test videos!

  7. Schedule time to record. Ideally, you should do this when there aren’t a thousand things happening in your house - unless those thousand things are part of your scene!

  8. Send me your recordings! These should come in .MOV, .MP4, or .AVI formats only. Or you can FWD them to me from your phone (I’ll give you my phone number).

  9. Optional: Check my progress! I’ve created a Trello board to manage the recordings.

What else should I know?

Q: What orientation should I put my phone when I’m doing this recording?
A: Place the camera in Landscape mode (horizontally).

Q: Do I need a special microphone?
A: Not if you record using your phone. If you choose to record on a laptop, you might want to get a microphone and camera specifically intended for video conference calls - that will pick up better sound and images than the built-in ones. Test it.

Q: Do I need a tripod for my phone?
A: It would make your life much easier if you’re going to film at a distance. This is my favorite, and it’s about $27. But if you are going to speak into the camera selfie-style, no camera is needed.

And finally, this.

I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how it will go, or even if it’s going to work. I’ll try shooting a short scene myself first - just so I can experience what it’s like as an actor - and then I can make better recommendations. So I appreciate your patience - we’ll figure this out together!

Starting in summer 2021!