The best app for actors has to do the whole job

I'm an actor who is good at building really good apps. Probably because I'm an actor.

Now, I could tell you that I'm also a really good actor, but that's subjective. Some have said so. Very kind of them. None of it is verifiable in any consistent way. For example, when I played Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, one critic said it was one of the most illuminating performances of the part and another said I seemed like a dead fish.

An app though is easier to judge.

Does it solve a real problem? Does it solve it in a way that's different or genuinely useful? And most importantly, can another human being pick it up and immediately understand what you were trying to do?

Which, when you think about it, is basically acting. You have a big idea. You need another human being to get it. Your entire job is figuring out the most evocative and effective way to make that happen.

And I have some evidence that I'm at least decent at the app part. I've taken hare-brained ideas and turned them into real products. I even went on Dragons' Den with a dating app and walked out having shaken Arlene Dickinson's hand on a deal.

So what happens when a maybe-good actor who makes really good apps finally makes an app for actors?

Well, naturally, I think I made the best app ever made for actors.

Welcome to Subtext.

Most apps for actors solve one slice of the actor pie. Learn your lines. Self-tape. Mark up a script. Find a reader.

I think that's fundamentally wrong, because those are not separate jobs. An actor is an actor is an actor through every single step of the journey. From the audition, to rehearsal, to the stage or onto a set.

And that whole journey starts with a script

At first, maybe it's sides. A few pages casting sent you with START and END written across them, an FYI page, some notes in the margins, maybe a giant watermark with your name running diagonally through the whole thing.

That is the thing you have to work from. So obviously, you should be able to mark it up.

In Subtext you drop in the PDF you were actually sent and work on the actual pages. And you don't have to go hunting through them with a highlighter, either. Tap your character once and every line of yours lights up automatically. Underline something. Circle a word. Scribble in the margins.

And notes shouldn't cover the entire page. You tap a place in the script, write the note, and what stays behind is a little dot you can come back to later.

Great. Now you've started actually working on the scene.

Then you have to learn the thing

Because now you need that same marked-up script to be what you learn from. There's no point spending an hour making discoveries on a page and then opening some completely different line-learning app that knows absolutely nothing about any of them.

So how do actors actually learn the lines? A lot of us have opened Voice Memos and recorded the entire scene ourselves. Their line. Pause. My line. Their line. Pause. My line.

And then you sit there pressing play, pause, play, pause, play, pause. And somewhere around take sixteen you start wondering: why can't the thing just run the scene with me?

Just talk to me, please.

So Subtext does. It works out who is in the scene. Every other character gets a voice. They say their line. Then Subtext listens while you say yours.

You can hide your lines entirely when you're ready to get off book. If you blank, reveal a little bit. Go back a line. Run it again. And since it's always listening to you, you can even overlap, pick up your cue, start the next line as the reader's line is going because that is what actors do.

You are not just memorizing a collection of sentences. You are rehearsing a scene.

Okay. Lines learned. Now you have to tape it

Which means you need a reader. A human. Yes. Pro-tip, never ever send a tape with an automated voice. That tape is DOA and your relationship with casting will forever be damaged. I've seen people do this. I've seen other apps market this ability. Not here.

But I get it. Now that almost every audition is a self-tape, finding a reader has become a thing. Every actor knows this part. You open your phone and start mentally going through the Rolodex. Who have I helped recently? Who is not working tonight? Who did I ask last time? Who is least likely to dread seeing my name pop up?

My wife is, by this point, quietly tired of being asked.

And then there is the scheduling. Can you FaceTime tonight? What time? Okay, 9:30. No, 10. Okay, 10. You finally get them on and you say, don't worry, it'll be fifteen minutes max.

But first take, you flub. Second take, something weird happens. Third take, you hate everything you're doing. Forty-five minutes later your friend is saying no, no, honestly, all good. But you know. Somewhere in the back of their head they are currently constructing the excuse they will use the next time you text them.

And honestly, who can blame them?

So I kept thinking: why can't I just send this person a link? They open the scene whenever they have time. They record the other character's lines once. And then I have their actual performance whenever I want it. Tonight. Tomorrow. At two in the morning.

I asked them once. They record it once. And I can run it fifty times. I can take an hour. Two.

So that's what Subtext does. You send someone a link. They don't need the app. They open it in a browser, see the lines they need to read, record them, and they're done. Then their real voice is opposite you every time you rehearse or tape.

So now you have the same script, the same markings, the same scene you've been rehearsing and a human reader.

Then you turn the camera on

This is where the whole actor-software situation starts getting particularly stupid. Because at the exact moment all that work comes together, we throw it away and open the Camera app.

Then you shoot a bunch of enormous clips. Then you need to edit them. So now you open Final Cut Pro. Or Premiere. Some giant piece of software designed to make a feature film, and you're sitting there trying to trim twelve seconds off the beginning of a self-tape.

Why? A self-tape does not require me to become an editor. I need to trim the takes. Maybe add a slate. Maybe put a clean cut or a fade between scenes. Make the sound decent. Done.

So Subtext has an editor made for exactly that. You shoot the scene you were already rehearsing, with the reader you were already using, from the script you were already working from. There's a voice-following teleprompter if you want one. But honestly, you'll be so off book that you won't even need it. You trim your takes. You put the audition together. Done.

Except you're not done

Because now the finished tape is somehow two gigabytes.

How?

So at midnight you are Googling video compression. You download an app called HandBrake. You begin learning the difference between H.264 and H.265, 8-bit, 10-bit, which is knowledge no actor has ever wanted and no casting director has ever asked us to possess.

Why couldn't the thing I shot this on just give me a file that is the right size? Why is this my problem?

So Subtext handles that too. The thing you made is compressed perfectly for casting, ready to send.

And even now, somehow, we're still not finished. Because the file is still too large to just email.

So you go to WeTransfer. Or Dropbox. Or Google Drive. You upload the thing you already had sitting on your phone somewhere else, so that you can create a link to send it.

Again: why? Why couldn't the thing I shot and edited the tape in also host the tape?

So Subtext does. Finish your self-tape and it gives you a link. Your agent or casting opens it in a browser. It plays. They can download it. No giant attachment. No transfer service. No extra account.

Done. Actually done.

Everything I have described so far is only the audition.

And then, hopefully, you book it

Those six pages turn into a ninety-page screenplay. Or a hundred-and-twenty-page play. You're not preparing something to send anymore. You're going to rehearsal. You're going to set. You're going on stage.

And suddenly the idea that this should have been an "audition app" becomes ridiculous.

Because you are still doing the same work. You need to read the script. You need to understand the whole thing, not only your three scenes.

So why can't you hear the whole thing? Subtext can perform the entire script out loud. Every character gets their own voice. The action is narrated. You can listen to the whole script like a table read while you walk the dog, drive somewhere, go for a run, clean the house, whatever. There is something different about hearing a script. You start hearing its rhythm. You hear relationships. You notice when a character disappears for twenty pages. You feel the shape of the story instead of only seeing a pile of pages.

Then you start asking questions. Subtext can summarize the whole script, and you can ask it about anything on the page. What does my character know in this scene? When did these two last see each other?

You booked the job. Now you need to know all of it.

Then you mark up that full script. Director gives you a note? Keep it with the page it belongs to. You're in rehearsal? Lock the PDF, tap once on a corner to go forward, tap twice to go back, so your iPad stops behaving like an iPad and starts behaving like a script.

Same script. Same notes. Same app.

Because you did not stop being an actor when you booked the role. If anything, you became more of one.

At some point I started adding up how much technological crud we have accepted. Not acting. Not preparation. Not character work. Technological crud. All because we are using products that were never designed around the way an actor actually works.

I built one app for the whole thing

I didn't build a line-learning app. Or a self-tape app. Or a script-markup app. Or a rehearsal app.

Actors don't work that way.

You get a script. You read it. You hear it. You understand it. You mark it up. You learn it. You rehearse it. You perform it.

Maybe that performance is an audition in your basement. Maybe it's eight shows a week. Maybe someone yells action. But you're still the same actor, working from the same words, trying to make them live.

An actor is an actor is an actor.

My wife asked me the other day, if you could do anything else with your life, what would it be? I paused to honour the depth of this question, but I told her the truth. "Honestly, when I'm working, there's truly nothing else I'd rather be doing with my life." This is the truth and this is the entire purpose of Subtext: to get you, a human, more work.