Katie Phipps: Cold Reading (week 1)

Cold Reading techniques!
This week in Katie's acting lesson we worked on ways to quickly prepare for a Cold Read in an audition. We mapped out scenarios for each plausible amount of time a casting director may give her in any given audition and then worked through each of them!

On the spot: If a casting director handed Katie a script and said "GO! NOW!"
With an on-the-spot cold read, we focused on being able to map out a script as we read it through. To do this, we first recognized the acting direction the actual words give us: the beats, or pauses.

In Katie's next acting lesson, we will learn more about beats and how to utilize them most effectively, but for now, we just learned that a beat is a pause.

While reading the script, every time there is a punctuation mark (a comma, a period, a colon, a semi-colon, a dash) Katie needs to pause... in a BIG WAY. In a cold read, we want to be able to ACT as much as possible and sound like we're READING as little as possible. In order to do this, we have to make the script sound as natural as we can. These beats, or pauses, are where we are going to do most of that acting! In each pause - Katie will show that the character is thinking - adding in natural hesitations, voice inflections, and things that make every day real time conversations sound natural.

So. On the spot: PAUSE at every punctuation mark.. and take the script WAY slower than you think it should go.

The first mistake that actors and actresses make - is going way too fast! Having Katie slow down will show that she is in control of the pace of the scene - something most people will not be able to show in a cold read.


2 minutes:
If Katie is given 2 minutes, she should mark her beats out with 2 lines like this: //
The first beats she should mark are those indicated by punctuation.
The second set she should mark are our "character development beats" - or the beats we would add into a scene to show a character choice. These beats help emphasize different parts of the script, allow us to add specific action in the pauses, and give us more time to show character reactions.

Then, she should pick one thing that she thinks the character's main objective in the scene is. This could be "give me attention" or "my character wants to be loved" or "my character wants to hurt the other character's feelings". Whatever it may be - she can find ONE way to show this main objective, in her voice inflections or actions. For example, if her character just wants attention - or is needy, she would choose an action like stomping her feet or jumping up and down in a tantrum - then pick one line where it fits the best and put it in! How she would show this in her voice inflection is by picking one line that she can sound especially whiny and needy.

By doing these things, Katie will be able to ACT more and READ less!

3 minutes:
The last quick thing that Katie can do if she is given a little bit more time, is circle the words she wants to emphasize.

By marking up her script, Katie is mapping out exactly how she wants to play a scene - simultaneously getting rid of nervous habits and helping make her script sound smoother and more natural!