THETR 359:

Cue Sheet with Visual Descriptions

This piece of paperwork is a place to describe your ideas about what a cue will DO, and LOOK like, not just where they are. It is an expansion of the quick technical notes in your cue sheet. You need to think about each cue in detail to do this.

Start with your numbered cue placements in the script. I think it's best to follow that with a description of what the action is during the cue (Michele lights a match to light his pipe) as well as the cue number. There will likely be a musical cue, as well.

Then describe what you want the cue to do and how it moves the action along, as well as supports some thematic or plot idea. (The match is a false signal, he tosses the lit match into the water as a forshadowing of the life he will soon take, etc.). I want to know why the cue exists.

Then describe what the cue looks like—in an opera house, it's not enough to just have a match lit; you have to support it somehow. "When the the match is struck the whole area around Michele glows brightly, fades a bit, and then abruptly gos out." It becomes the visual support of a metaphoric idea for their love. (This may or may not be a good idea—I'm just using it as an example . . .) Talk about the controllables—color, texture, intensity, angle, and movement—and the objectives in support of your ideas. Each cue is and IDEA after all.

Number the cues and descriptions just as you number your regular cue sheet—these are two parts of a whole.

Perhaps this assignment could be best presented as an expanded table, probably in landscape format, with each item in its own column. It could also be a Word doc with the numbered cues and descriptions followed by bullets with the controllables.