7 Easy Ways to Memorize Lines for Your Acting Audition | How to Read a Script and Memorize it FAST

in this video I want to share with you seven memorization techniques to help you learn your lines faster recently I had a five-page audition that I had to do the next day and these are the memorization techniques that I used [Music] [Music] what's up my fellow actors welcome to the acting career center here to help you learn the skills you need to break in to the film and television industry my name is Kurt you hey if you haven't already you definitely want to subscribe to this channel to get more videos on acting auditioning and career advice every single week today we are talking about memorization techniques specifically how to memorize your lines fast seven different ways now these are the memorization techniques that I use for my auditions I don't use all seven every single time I might do one and if that's not working I'll try another if that's not working I'll try another if I have a big audition like the five page audition I mentioned earlier then I will use all seven of these techniques to really drill it into my head so let's get started the first technique is to transcribe the lines by writing it down on a piece of paper so let's say these are my audition sites right here and what I will do is I'll grab a notebook or just a blank piece of paper or something and we're just gonna go through this is a page and a half audition but we're just go through the first line my first line here is a few years ago I was in London for work so what I would do here is I would read these this line out loud while writing it down onto my notebook so a few years ago I was in London for work alright I'm not gonna make you watch me write write down and transcribe this whole this whole piece of paper that'd be a pretty boring video right but I just wanted you to see how long that took just for that one sentence when you read through a script we read a lot faster than we write so when we actually write something down it forces us to slow down so when I wrote out that sentence it forced me to spend more time with each and every word and when you go through the entire script that way let's say it was this audition I would have to do this for this whole page and a half right so I would be spending a lot more time then I would be if I were just reading through the lines without doing any reading what I found and I don't know the science behind it or the the psychology behind this but what I found is how this works for me is that when I'm reading it out loud and I'm writing it all down it just helps me internalize it it helps me kind of it just helps my body in my brain absorb all of this the second memorization technique is to reduce every single word in the script down to its first letter only I actually learned this technique on set when I saw two other actors using it to memorize their lines in fact Academy Award winner Allison Janney has talked about using this exact technique for her process so hey if it works for an Oscar winner it's gonna work for me right so let me tell you what this is again let's use the same script the first line is a few years ago I was in London for work what you would do is you would write down in the margins the first letter of each word keeping all capitalization and punctuation so a few years ago I was in London for work becomes a F Y a comma i W I L you period how does this work let's talk about that as you're memorizing the script you're first gonna be reading the actual words that are written right once you get to the point where you have it maybe about halfway memorized where you're not completely off book yet but you also have the gist of it and you think you got a good idea of what's written at that point you can actually cover up the actual words that are written and just go by the first letter of each word now we only did that first sentence but like before you would do this for the entire audition script if you covered up the actual lines and you just start looking at the first letter of each word what you'll find is you would be able to use just those letters to cue your brain to remember exactly what was written it's really cool how this works what it's doing is that you're slowly transitioning from the process of needing all of the script to needing just the first letter of each word to the final step of not needing anything to help you learn the lines the third way to memorize lines and this is actually my favorite it's the way that I feel like personally works best for me and that is to rehearse with another person giving the script to somebody else and having them rehearse the lines back and forth with you I feel like really helps you now rehearse the actual scene and not just the lines now you're able to hear what their responses are to what you're saying and you get an idea of what you are responding to this really helps because you're not just practicing the words anymore you're also practicing the intent and the motivations and the relationships that's happening in this scene you also get an idea of how the conversation flows and the rhythm of the conversation when you're saying the words back and forth with another person that's that's a lot harder to do when you're just reading the lines off the page by yourself all right before we move on I think it's important to mention that auditioning isn't just a memorization contest right we do have to understand what objectives are and motivations are and relationships are and really understand how to tell that whole story now if you're interested in learning my 10 step audition preparation process that's helped me book many movies and television shows then I've created a free audit that you can get by clicking that car that's popping up right now all right let's move on so the fourth technique that I use to help me memorize my lines is to record and rehearse so I will use a little handy-dandy voice recorder like this you can see my screen is cracked because I've used this guy for many many years now but I'll record all of the opposite lines from the script onto here and then I'll use this basically as my scene partner so I'll do something like this when I don't have another person to rehearse with and I'll record for instance line by line and then I'll push play for the first line that's in the script of the other character I'll pause it to say my line and then just go like that back and forth all the way down through the entire audition script I find that this is really helpful because I don't have to have another person like I said with me to rehearse and I can do this when I'm doing anything I could be out walking my dog and doing this I'll go be driving around town and all and I'll use this now you may be wondering why I use a little recorder like this and not just the voice recorder app on my phone and the reason is the phone is a touchscreen and it doesn't have a physical button that I can play and pause with and the reason why I don't like that is because I have to look at the screen to see where when I'm pushing play and when I'm pushing pause and that doesn't allow me to have this down by my side or something like that whereas with this because I can feel where the buttons are I can be like I said walking my dog and just having this swinging down by my side and not have to look at where I'm pressing to push play and pause every single time so having a little recorder like this has been really really beneficial techniques number five and six kind of go together five is to run through my lines the last thing I do right before I go to sleep and six is to run through my lines the first thing I do right when I wake up so let me explain when I say the last thing I do before I go to sleep it's not the last thing I do before I get ready for bed no it's the very last thing that I do before I close my eyes and actually try to go to sleep so here's what I'll do I will put my audition sides on my nightstand before I get ready for bed and then I'll go do whatever I need to do brush my teeth get changed in everything and then turn off the lights and now the only light that's on is the light on my nightstand and I'll get into bed head on the pillow and I will read through this about five or ten times my name is inigo montoya you've given my father and then I'll put it down on my nightstand again turn off the light and go to sleep it's the very last thing I do no more looking at my phone after that nothing so what I'm trying to do is to make sure that my subconscious is thinking about this and nothing else when I finally slip into sleep and then in the morning when I wake up it's gonna be the first thing that I do when I wake up again not the first thing that I do after I get up but the first thing I do when my eyes open and I'm still in bed and I'm not trying to sleep anymore then I'll just grab this from my nightstand where I'd set it before and I will run through this another five or ten times [Music] it makes it so that it's the only thing I've done for the last eight hours or so if I get to sleep for eight hours which I hardly get hardly ever get that much but it's the only thing that I've done for that period of time I've run through these lines five or ten times right before I went to bed and then as soon as I wake up it's the first thing I do again so I found doing this to be really really effective when I do them together the seventh and final memorization technique that I'm going to share with you today is to do an activity while running the line so you're gonna do this at the very end of your preparation process after you've memorized it all after you've gotten to the point where you don't need to look at the script anymore to say all the lines now you want to get it to the point where nothing's gonna throw you off you want to get it to the point where you will never be in a situation where you're in the audition room and you're drawing a blank you want to really solidify those lines in your head so how do you do that well the way that I like to do it is now I like to add an activity now while I'm rehearsing the scene so you're gonna need a scene partner again and that person is gonna be running the lines with you and at this point you need to also be doing something while running those lines so instead of just sitting across from them and saying the and making sure you got it you gotta be doing something else while doing that and if you can do that if you can get the lines right while focusing on another task as well then you know you've really internalized those lines and you really know it and your activity can be really it can be anything you could be doing dishes you could be sweeping the floor you can be dribbling a basketball and shooting hoops you could be just you could be just tossing a tennis ball back and forth on the wall and catching it but no matter what it is it has to be something that requires your concentration so if you have to do this but you're also able to carry on this conversation that is gonna be the thing that really gets those lines rock-solid inside you because that's how we talk in real life anyway right we're hardly ever just talking to someone back and forth like this we are almost always doing something else we're walking and talking at the same time so doing that will make sure you got those lines down rock-solid and you are ready to go into your audition all right if you like this video give it a thumbs up and let me know down in the comments which memorization technique you like the most and if it wasn't one of the ones I mentioned even better I would love to hear what you are using remember to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already and until next time keep practicing keep learning and I hope to see you on set one day

Channel: Acting Career Center

Views: 172,978

Keywords: how to memorize lines, memorize lines, how to memorize fast and easily, how to learn lines, how to memorize lines quickly, how to memorize lines fast, how to memorize lines for a play, how to memorize, how to memorize lines for acting, how to memorize lines for actors, acting tips, how to memorize your lines, how to memorize quickly, how to memorize fast, acting, actor, acting advice, audition tips, how to act, how to become an actor, how to audition, how to read a script

Id: NrYXbl5toDU

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020