On Set, Between Scenes: Notes from a Working Actress

I’ve been on a lot of sets — large, small, some held together by gaffer tape and takeaway coffee. The glamour isn’t always real, but the rhythm is. It’s a rhythm that stays with you long after you’ve wrapped.

There’s a rhythm to film sets that doesn’t translate well in stories. The work is precise, often technical, but between scenes — in those longer silences where things are lit, marked, reset — there’s a kind of still choreography that happens. You watch. You wait. You adjust something small about how you’re standing.

Night shoot by the river in East London. Just past midnight.

I’ve always been drawn to those in-between moments. Not because they’re exciting, but because that’s where you see how everything fits. The DOP changing the lens. The script supervisor watching for continuity. An actor running the line again under their breath. It’s the part of the job that doesn’t get written down, but tells you almost everything.

When you’re not in the frame, you learn to listen differently. You notice where the energy drops, where someone’s performance holds tension even when they think they’ve let go. You learn how good actors track space. How still some of them become right before they speak. How aware they are of the crew without breaking character.

Sometimes you’re standing by the monitor.

Sometimes you’re back in the green room with the kettle and an unread book in your hand. But your senses are still on set.

You begin to understand things without them being said — the shorthand between a director and their team, the way a scene gets quietly reblocked without fuss because something wasn’t working, the difference between a good note and a careless one. It’s not always dramatic. It’s just human, and quietly exacting.

There’s often a kind of tired calm in the air. The kind where you realise everyone’s been awake since 5 am, and still manages to create something meaningful. Not perfect, maybe not even good yet. But something that’s getting closer.

Behind the noise and clutter, there’s a rhythm. Everyone is moving to the same invisible beat.

I don’t keep a journal when I’m working. I don’t need to. The memory stays in my body. The tone of the scene. The light. The way someone carried a line that didn’t belong to them, and made it mean something anyway.

I think that’s what I love so much about acting. Not just the performance, but the moment before it. The breath. The silence. The decision you make right before you begin.

If you’re interested in the quieter corners of the work, you might also like these: a few notes from the voiceover booth, and a piece on what I learned from acting in Canada as a Danish actress.