All of the scenes were rehearsed while writing.

This way, the scenes would be made into flesh immediately. If something felt wrong, we could discuss it openly. We did this with each of the scenes for three months, changing some little bits and discovering new ideas.

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 Best acting performances came out when the actors had clear objectives, but the exact lines were not prefixed. What you need is a basic structure of the scene: where it starts, what happens and where it ends. The point is not to memorize the lines or actions but to perform the action in a way which is meaningful and coherent. If each of the actors makes this in a focused way for his own part, the chain of reactions will ultimately make the action flow in a seamless way.

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Most of the choreography and action could be tested early in the writing process. This way we had a clear structure in our heads in a very blank form of how the situation should go in the actual shooting location. The actors should feel safe, so that there's some structure to which they can hold on to, but not in an obsessive way, which would ruin intuition. The intuition is what you save for the shootings.

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After rehearsing all of the scenes individually, we did the whole film as if it was a threatre play with no audience.

The reherseals were filmed, just in order to get the actors accustomed to the presence of the camera, since most of them were not very used to working this way. Majority of their experiences came from the world of theatre, so I had to teach them a lot about film acting. And of course, the material gave some insights for the crew about how the scenes were going to be.

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For me, a film can be only as good as it's acting is. 

This is why I think that the screenplay is only as good as it comes out when it is acted out. There never was a phase when we said that "this is the final screenplay". It was always a draft, even just before the shootings. Of course you have to be certain of some elements, such as the location and the basic structure of the scene, but when you do it like this, it gives the actor much more flexibility to improv it on the set. 

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