How to read a script

Gene Gauntier, pioneering writer-actor-director-producer

Reading a script is a simple yet profound act that deserves to be honoured, just as the writer’s work deserves your best attention. A big part of this - just like when you watch a film - is setting yourself up for the experience. Here are a few tips based on my experience in the trenches of development at the NZ Film Commission and my own projects.

For the first read especially, try to emulate the absorbing experience of watching something in real life, which means reducing if not eliminating distractions. Reading is essentially active: you have to create your own images and performances in your head, and you can’t sit back and let it wash over you. This aspect makes reading closer to watching a film in a dark cinema, doing nothing else, than watching at home, phone in hand as you look up the director’s last film, main themes of the writer’s work, scandals of the key cast, pause to make cups of tea, explaining the plot to your daughter who’s just walked in...

Try to do your first ‘experiential’ read in one sitting in a favourable environment. Script consultant Stephen Cleary once described his ideal reading conditions: he sits in a room that’s not brightly lit, but has a reading lamp; the room isn’t over-heated, perhaps even just a little chilly; he might have a glass of whiskey next to him. Whiskey-lover or not, you get the picture: create the setting that works for you. Of course you’ll often find yourself reading scripts in uncontrolled or unfamiliar environments, e.g. when travelling. Even then you can visualise your ideal setting as a mental anchor.

Try to find a conducive setting to read a script.
(Beau Travail, Claire Denis 1999)

On the first read, like watching the work for real, try not to pause, interrupt yourself, look something up online, turn back pages to check a character’s previous actions, or take notes. As soon as you’ve finished, sit a little and reflect. How do you feel? (Always the emotions first.) What are your ‘big’ impressions? This is the fundamental thing because this experience is the closest you’ll have to a punter watching it. On later reads, you’re tainted, it gets analytical, and you need a real gap between drafts and readings to approximate the freshness of that first read. Here you can take a walk, let it sink it, process the emotions. Only then do you pick up a pen and re-read with your analytical mind. I don’t think it’s possible to have both an experiential-emotional read while analysing what you are reading, any more than you can write a script while self-critiquing.

At the second read you can get analysing.
(Marta Tafesse Kassa in Beau Travail, Claire Denis 1999)

If you lack time or energy to read the whole script, start by reading just the first ten pages; or the first ten (to see what’s set up) and the last ten (whether, and how, it’s resolved). Sid Field describes assessing projects for production:

What information did I, as a reader, need to know for me to keep turning pages? The answers were obvious: who the main character was and what the story was about. … I would closely read the first ten pages, carefully read the next twenty pages, and at that point make a decision about whether I liked the story or not. If the writer took more than thirty pages to grab my interest and attention, then I figured the rest of the screenplay didn’t work.

A special case is when you need to read a script really quickly. I don’t recommend it, but sometimes needs must. One approach is to read the opening pages as above, then just read the dialogue. This makes the script approximately into a stage play, and wouldn’t work with films like Beau Travail (1999) by Claire Denis where dialogue takes a back seat.