Ever since the days of the old Warner Brothers Stock Company, movies have been shot out of sequence. Everybody knows why, so there's no need to go into it - except to say that, in some ways, the good old days really were better.
These days, the actor has to cope with the reality of a shooting schedule based on pragmatism - which, loosely translated - means bucks. Big bucks and how to spend less of them. Thus, in aid of the bottom line, scenes are grouped together and shot according to logistics not aesthetics.
After reading the screenplay and locating his/her character arc from the beginning to the end of the script, the actor prepares the work according to the shooting schedule, always keeping in mind how the scene being shot fits into the characters journey through the text.
For example. Day 2. First up is the scene in which you're chased down nightmare alley by the 3 clawed monster Gerbil. Reality is, you've just come onto the set from your trailer having indulged in your morning (or is it mourning?) latte and blueberry scone. My . . .aren't you the star!? Seriously. After costume and makeup're done with you and a PA's got you all nice and schvitzed up with joyful squirts from a spray bottle, the AD calls, "Actor's, first positions!"
Now you're really in the soup - unless you know exactly where this scene fits into your overall journey, what the physical/emotional state of being is - and, equally as important, exactly what's happened to the character in the instant prior to our first glimpse of you, running frantically in front of a green screen, which allows us to put all the rest of the garbage - sorry, "stuff" into the frame during post. In other words you develop the Moment Before - but probably without the benefit of having actually done the preceding scene, which would not have been the case in a theatre production.
So it's incumbent on you to keep every bit of it straight. A missed Moment Before, resulting in a confused actor, is one of the few things they can't fix in post.
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