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05 Rehearsals


Before anything, I have to put emphasis on the fact that this plan was formed after the first week of rehearsals after spring break. That said, I wouldn't be able to put them together without working with my cast. Ideas like talking on the phone, using the teddy bear, making hand gestures instead of shaking hands all came out during the rehearsals that week as we struggled through the limbo of not-knowing.


Those are the documents I put together before I rehearsed with actors. I didn’t make them in a particular order- it was more like writing some of this and double-checked another and added something, then checked on the other and added notes... and so on.

  • Change in locations

  • Storyboard

  • Cue list

  • Rehearsal plan


Change in Locations


Change in Locations is a sheet I put together to lay out how each scene transforms into the virtual setting. The following are the info I have in the sheet:

  • Scene name

  • Original location

  • Virtual location

  • Notes on how that works

  • Cast

  • Other notes (mostly references)

  • Scene picture (screenshots of the cues I made- I had done several mock live streams before putting this sheet together)


Storyboard


  • I have to admit that I didn’t draw it in detail- it’s more about who would be shown on what part of the screen and when would that happen instead of having clear illustrations on what exactly the actors would be doing or which part of the body I’d focus on.

  • Notes on the configuration of the scenes

  • Suggested movements or eye-focuses (and we actually found better ones during the following rehearsals)

  • Timing of sound cues

  • Timing of special effects

  • Scene/lines cuts


Cue lists

  • Scene name

  • Cue name

  • Actions I have to make

  • Referencing cue (if applicable)


Rehearsal Plan

  • begin with a stumble through (target which scenes don’t work for us)

  • Take 15-20 minutes for each of those scenes

  • Run-through by the end of every rehearsal


It was extremely had for my director's brain and my operator's brain to function at the same time. My way to lower my pressure on this is to have a set of scenes ready prior to the rehearsals and fixed the scenes after the rehearsals according to the notes I took. I would highly suggest anyone not to design a configuration that requires very specific way of arranging the sources in the scene as OBS is not really a program for detailed work (you can see that by it not having any form of reference line.) If the scenes I prepared for a particular scene in OBS didn't work, I would just put it aside and look at actors' performance from the extension screen instead of through OBS.


Also, I practiced with operating the cues by myself with a screen shot of 6 actors on zoom chat with me. I also PS them into difference sequence to train myself to react faster should any of their software and devices shut down during the show that requires me to adjust all the sources during the show.


A note on configuration: we played with lending objects from a window to another, and we do it purely by an actor lending things to the down center of her camera and the other actor taking a similar one from the down center of her camera. The illusion could be created even without a specific way of arranging the sources in a scene.


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