# Chapter 3 · Once More

## The Last Attempt Remains in the Body

“Once more” is one of the most ordinary things said in rehearsal, and perhaps one of the hardest requests to understand. What are we repeating? A sequence of movements, a line, a feeling that has already gone, or an approach that failed to begin just now? The person saying it may think the meaning is clear, but the person doing it has to decide what to carry into the next attempt.

This suggestion also appears in Shoot Self with You.[3-1] I want to pause first over the word “again.” It points to the past but calls for a future action. The next attempt will not begin from nothing: the participants have already heard feedback, know that a particular action has failed, and may have become more familiar with their partners, or may already be tired. Repetition always carries something left by the previous attempt. Even when the lines and positions are exactly the same, what people have to deal with may have changed.

Starting again can therefore both correct and accumulate. A sequence that initially required thought can later be completed smoothly; an answer that could be tried at first may no longer appear because it has already been rejected. Repetition brings proficiency, and it also brings expectations. People gradually learn what will be accepted. That knowledge can help them work together, but it can also make them deliver the right answer before the other person has finished speaking.

I do not place contingency in opposition to proficiency. If a partner unexpectedly changes speed, someone practised may have more room to respond; someone entirely unprepared may only be able to fall back on the actions they first memorized. What matters is what capacities practice has freed up, and what attention it has taken over. Once an action can be performed reliably, can the person still hear the difference between this attempt and the last?

Sameness then has two uses. It can let people retreat into a result they already know, or provide a stable place from which small changes can finally be noticed. If everything changes on every attempt, change becomes harder to distinguish. Keeping some things in place makes it possible to see how others move. Freedom in creative work sometimes needs such fixed points.

## What Counts as Finished?

A request that can be carried out can usually also specify when it has been fulfilled. Wait for the other person to finish before beginning your own line; walk to a particular place and pause; make a word audible to the back row. The actor can try, the director can explain, and the next attempt can be compared with the last. They may not agree quickly, but their disagreement has an object they can work on together.

“Make it more real” may move that object out of reach. The actor has completed the action but must also prove that they are present in it; if they explain that they feel something, they may then be judged too deliberate. The more authenticity is demanded, the more the actor needs to watch how they appear. They try to enter the scene while checking from the outside whether they have entered it. A command to be natural can make people work ever harder to manage their naturalness.

Gentleness and severity cannot distinguish good rehearsal here. A precise request can be demanding and frustrating, while broad encouragement may never give anyone something they can actually do. The artist should take on the difficulty of turning judgment into work. If an attempt lacks force, where exactly does it fall short? Are the actions unrelated, the words addressed to no one, or does the rhythm leave no time for a response? A feeling may not be immediately nameable, but the work should still begin with something that can be tried.

I am especially wary of treating commitment as an unlimited resource. What an actor has already expressed may be judged not good enough, but that judgment cannot simply become a judgment of the whole person. It is this attempt that has failed; the person’s entire authenticity should not therefore be put on trial. Rehearsal needs to make room for an attempt that has not gone well, so that the next can be work rather than another act of self-defence.

The strongest objection to this position is that art takes people precisely where no method yet exists. If every request is completely clear, would all that remains be execution? I agree that the unknown cannot be eliminated. A director may not be able to say in advance what they are looking for, but they can work with the actors to identify the differences that emerge in each attempt, and acknowledge that they have not yet found it this time. The question is who bears the unknown. An artist cannot preserve the ambiguity of their own judgment while demanding definite proof of the participants’ inner lives.

Finishing does not always mean reaching an ideal result. Sometimes it means having seen clearly that continuing with this method will bring us no closer to what we are looking for. Only when we can end one method can we begin another.

## Letting the Lines Step Back a Little

In a 2018 interview, Ryusuke Hamaguchi discussed repeated script readings: first, without imposing a fixed tone, the actors read until they have thoroughly absorbed the words; then, during filming, they let their expression respond to the moment and their partners.[3-2] What interests me is the arrangement between these two stages. Repetition takes on part of the work of remembering, so that when filming begins, the actors do not have to devote all their attention to “What is my next line?”

This suggests a limited claim: preparation can change how attention is distributed. When the lines are relatively secure, an actor may notice a partner’s hesitation and adjust the timing of their own entry. The text has not disappeared, but it has receded a little. The person has a chance to respond to what is happening. Listening here includes sound, but also waiting: allowing the other person’s expression on this attempt to arrive a little later, more quietly, or with a pause absent from the last.

This arrangement can also lead to the opposite result. Once actors have memorized the text, they may be even more eager to complete the sequence they already know; what is called natural is merely the precise reproduction of a practised manner. A method’s name does not determine its effect. What needs to be observed is whether, after repetition, actors have more ways to respond to change, or are left only with smoother execution.

There is an actual timeline connecting P4 and Hamaguchi. In a 2023 article, Yun Jianhui recalled that we had already discussed Hamaguchi’s work in 2022; after Shoot Self with You began, the early crew studied Intimacies, and lines from that film entered the script in July of the same year.[3-3] This record shows that the film had become part of our shared work. For me, the question more worth pursuing is how those studies changed the way we worked. There is still a long way between liking a film and making its method work among another group of people.

What I take from repeated script reading does not require every creative work to follow the same procedure. It draws my attention to a question that enthusiasm often obscures: how many things can a person handle at once while expressing themselves? Remembering lines, searching for emotion, attending to the camera, and guessing how pleased the director is can easily fill all one’s attention with one’s own tasks. Entrusting some of this to practice is meant to free up the capacity to attend to other people.

Listening in art therefore needs to be arranged. It can begin by reducing certain tasks, fixing a standing position, or making a sentence clear. Asking someone to open up their whole self is often too much; enabling them to hear the sentence in front of them through to its end is sometimes already difficult.

## Allowing an Attempt to Have No Shape Yet

Another value of repetition is that it allows awkwardness to remain in the work for a while. When an action is new, the body often moves more slowly than the intention. Knowing that one wants to come closer does not mean already knowing how to stand, where to put one’s hands, or how to leave the other person enough support. If a complete action is demanded too soon, participants can easily choose a familiar performance posture that makes the difficulty disappear from the image.

The difficulty may be covered over without the action having been resolved. A familiar way of performing intimacy may conceal how two people actually approach each other; an uneven attempt may instead reveal what needs adjusting. I am willing to give such attempts time. But awkwardness does not thereby acquire an inherent aesthetic value. A pause may contain a search, or it may simply reflect a lack of preparation. Creative work needs to discern whether, after the pause, the relation between the person and the action has changed.

We can imagine a simple comparison: two people repeatedly practise taking the hand the other extends. One way of practising requires the action to match the demonstration every time; another first fixes where the extended hand starts, and lets the person receiving it adjust to its actual speed. The first can train precision, the second responsiveness. Both may be useful, and they may alternate within the same rehearsal. The distinction is concrete enough that proficiency and freedom need not be set against each other.

This also changes how I think about “failed footage.” Whether an attempt is worth including in a film depends on what it changes. If viewers can see how two people adjust and begin to wait for one another, slowness has content of its own. If only embarrassment is shown repeatedly, while the participants gain no new action, extending the viewing may merely increase their exposure. Keeping failure requires a formal reason, just as keeping success does.

Once more cannot cancel the previous attempt. What it can do is bring that attempt into a new action: I did not hear you out just now, so now I wait; I was eager to finish, and now I see that my partner is not ready; I thought it was a question of emotion, and now I hear the other person say it is a little hot. A small condition emerges, and what the next attempt needs to do changes with it.

## Sources

[3-1] Historical, manually confirmed dialogue ledger for Shoot Self with You, 6 May 2026: Ricky, “Can we do it one more time?”, approximately 02:04:41. This earlier timecode is used for navigation. The specific relations in the public scene are left until Chapter 5. The argument about repetition is rewritten from relevant parts of Chapters 5 and 6 of the earlier manuscript.

[3-2] Ryusuke Hamaguchi, interviewed by Jordan Cronk, [“Cannes Interview: Ryusuke Hamaguchi”](https://www.filmcomment.com/interview-ryusuke-hamaguchi/), *Film Comment*, May–June 2018, questions and answers on script reading and filming methods. The subsequent discussion of how attention is distributed is this book’s interpretation, not a verified training effect.

[3-3] Yun Jianhui, [‘Shoot Self with You D | One More Time’](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2023/2023-08-24-人类投降派-D-再来一次-316626b0ea/), 24 August 2023. The timeline is his retrospective account from that period; it does not establish that P4 adopted Hamaguchi’s rehearsal procedure in full.