Jill: We had some questions last night about self tapes and whether it should be memorized or not. In this studio, we don’t feel it should be memorized because it takes up a lot of time on your part. However, you have to be a good cold reader to pull that off.
Brian: Yep.
Jill: If your eyes are too much on the paper and you can’t get ‘em up into your reader, I would say, yeah, have it memorized. Okay? But that’s why we stress the cold reading so, so much.
Brian: If you cold read extremely well, which you should if you follow the instructions in your workbook or in the packet we hand out to guests; practice that thirty minutes aloud every day. Everybody wants to know what you should read. Read anything that you want to read but make sure it’s something that you like reading or you won’t do it.
Always take your script into an audition. Even if they send it to you to memorize. See, with a SAG actor they can’t ask you to memorize it. Just like they can’t ask you to improv. And the reason for that is what happened many years ago long before many of you were a twinkle in anybody’s eye, actors would go in and improvise a scene and have it memorized and then you wouldn’t get the job but you would see the actor that got the job doing your stuff. Oh, yeah. So SAG said un-huh. You’re not going to let our actors give you ideas to make your film better.
Do your cold reading. Be able to cold read like a son of a gun. Have the first line of the script, whatever it is, a page, half a page, two pages, three; have the first line totally memorized and the last line totally memorized. And if you can read, cold read, the way I can cold read, the way Khigh can cold read, the way John can cold read.
Khigh: Thank you.
Brian: Then they will think that you have it memorized anyway.