Onscreen Actors Prompts.

As I am using some professional actors in a recording studio for my next film, and after talking to them, I thought I should pass onto you what they told me, and what I intend to do for the recordings. These were agreed to make the recording go as smoothly as possible with hopefully the minimum number of retakes.

1. We all agreed that they must act to the finished film, they did not want to act to nothing as the reaction shots would get no sound.

2. We agreed to add the SMPTE timecode as they use that to see when their lines are coming up, they make notes on the script.

3. They also required subtitles so they did not need to look at the script. They memorise lines, so the subtitles are just a prompt.

The biggest problem in a recording studio is the Actor flipping over the cue sheet, this makes a lot of noise so is to be avoided at all costs. The best solution is to use subtitles, the cue sheets are then just there as a backup.

The engineer told me to print out different versions of the script for the actors with the page breaks at different places, so you never get all the actors turning the page together, good tip I thought.

4. Actors lines should be in different colours, easy to pick out who should be speaking.

5. Finally they needed some prompt as to how long the line delivery should be, this you cannot get from subtitles as they just disappear. The actor needed to know exactly when his line is supposed to be finished.

We agreed to put a green bar next to the SMPTE timecode that got smaller and smaller, when it disappears, that's when the line delivery should be finished. This means the actor can see at a glance how fast his line delivery should be, and he can adjust accordingly. He can even ignore the action onscreen and simply watch the green bar, delivering his line to perfection.

Here is an example. These overlays are simply 2 extra tracks that get deleted before rendering the final film and they are very easy to adjust in Vegas.

http://blackaceproduction.com/Downloads/Tests/DIH_Prompt.avi

These small things allow any actor to do the part with very few retakes (hopefully). All I can do is trust what the pros tell me. But I hope it may be of use to some of you as well.

I dunno if it'll be useful, but it's fascinating. Thanks!

I agree with Will - fascinating insights!

Especially as I do the whole thing the other way around - I gather the vo's first, then shoot, so I always have enough footage (I'm eternally bad about timing how much time sentences need to be said - of course I could do stand-ins myself; but I'm a: too lazy for that, and b: I like to leave some room for actors interpretation, and time the expression and body movements of the characters to their acting).

thank you so much

I'll remember that if i ever get to use a voice actor.

I experienced the same problem with page-turning noise for my long film. I used a music stand that could hold several script pages in view at once. If the scene requires the puppets to be standing, then I had my actors standing. If the puppets were sitting I had my actors sit. That more realistically compressed their diaghrams.

I had 11 actors in Nova Centuria culled from the local notices (over 50 applied), and I found early on that the dialogue timing was better if they did not act to animation. It was more spontaneously reactive if they acted against each other. The monologue shots however could be well-served by having the animation and the smpte code as reminders.

I look forward to your film.

Good point.

As we are using a recording studio I will get different versions recorded, two with them acting to animation and two without.

Hopefully then I can cobble together the best lines.