Script Preparation Quotes

People think "The Office" was improvised, but it's all on the page. We do that because what we found is that in the early days of "The Office," we went in with it sort of 80 percent scripted and we did some things and then we improv'd and we did - you know, and it gets a laugh on the floor because it's the first time they've heard it.

I don't have a stack of scripts.

It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go.

I'm from Mexico, and I've heard some horror stories about cast members who can't stand each other. What we have on 'Jane' is a blessing. We do table reads for every single episode one day before it starts to shoot.

My mum reads every script before I go for it.

For Closer, we've had five weeks. You go into every single word because it's very, very concentrated dialogue.

On stage, you rehearse for five weeks, and it goes out to 300 people. In 'EastEnders,' you get ten minutes to rehearse, and seven million people watch it!

I liked to carry the script into an audition because, for me, it reminded people that this was not the final performance. I'm still a work in progress.

I don't think it's unfair to have writers. I think if you're going to do a roast on television, as if you were doing a play or you were reading a script of a movie, you would have the best possible material. And those are the people who score, the people who are willing to listen to the roasting experts and then come out there and own that material.

Language is never a problem when you have the screenplay ready.

It's very intimidating looking at the script and realizing that you have to say medical jargon as if you've said them a million times before, and they're just a part of your vocabulary. But that's what preparing is for, and you can't just really wing it. You've got to really know what you're doing.

My mother was a cracker jack typist. And she would come in and sit at my house and type the final type script before I would then send it to the publisher. And it was nice for us.

Movies are made in the scriptwriting process and prepping and preparations for the shooting process.

Unfortunately, the public might not know that we get a script usually two days before shooting. So sometimes I'm shooting an episode and don't even know how it's going to end because I haven't read that yet.

I always get quite close to my script because I work quite hard on them.

Not every script that rolls in is ready to shoot. Few are, actually. So you go back and work on the thing.

I usually mug up my Telugu dialogues much before going to the sets every day.

We've done things that are faster at times, but it's definitely different when we direct all the episodes because it's like we have to write them all, then shoot them all, then edit them all. So we have to just get ahead on those scripts basically.

Acting in TV as opposed to films is really difficult. What a film gets two months to do, we get eight days to do.

I heard, one of my producers told me this story where like the Hollywood studios brought all these high-end consultants in to try to figure out how to improve their process and make films more efficiently, and these consultants like studied the process for years and finally came up with this report they put together about how studios can improve the efficiency of their process, and the conclusion was "have the script ready by the time you're shooting.

The script is always the main preparation for me. Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it, but if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

When you're working on a huge, elaborate set that took months to create, and you're surrounded by hundreds of extras, you better remember your lines and know what you're doing in a scene!

I don't prepare for anything very well. I am not a good actor. I don't read scripts.

I don't know how I absorb things, but I do. I just absorb them. I don't over read the script, and I don't really ever spend much time learning it.

In television you don't have a lot of time to spend with the role or the script. Typically you get a script a week prior to shooting. Sometimes it's even less time, not enough time to dream about the role.