So how have directors helped prepare you for a role?

[Skribbleman]

I was just curious if there were any techniques or actions that directors have done to help you prepare for a role that you thought was really effective? Initially I was going to ask the directors what they do to help their actors but I thought I would like to get the actor's perspective on this. :dankk2:

[armisiano]

Preparing? Nothing really in most of my experience. I usually do all of that on my own. Memorization of the script, finding the character's personality, creating somewhat of a history, and with the other actors during rehearsals with some direction we find out some specificities to the relationships.

Most of what I've gotten from directors, and it's what I like, is to see what I've done, and then help me tweak it a bit until both they and I are satisfied.

[Skribbleman]

Thanks for replying armisiano. I'm planning to shoot my first short and wondered about how I could help the actors prepare. I think you've given me a good start on what to think about. Thanks.

[Michele Seidman]

skribbleman

it depends on the director.

some leave it up to us and others don't. i find it helps a lot if i get to sit with the director and discuss my view and then hear their view. sometimes it matches and other times i have read too far between the lines and the directors info helps me tweak how i will present the character!

on major productions it is not uncommon for the director and actor to meet a few times to talk out the role!

michele

[Ingo]

As an actor in theatre (hobby-pro-am-theatre) I made two kinds of experience so far:

1. many intensive dialogues with the director about the role: character, motivation, psychoanalysis, and so on..
theres much creative freedom to fill the character.

2. some directors just speak the lines as they think they work and you just have to copy them. thats very unsatisfying for an artist. (Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? ;)) you feel some kind of empty, you just don't know, what you're doing and why.. somehow it takes effect on the stage, but I don't like it.
in my opinion it evolves no kind of 'play' between the characters.

greetz
ingo

[dnachtrab]

As a voice actor, I am mainly called upon to give my own interpretation of a script. Not as a character, but as myself. Often the script is handed to me minutes before I am called to perform, so I have to rely on my training, experience and experiences from life to grasp the emotional direction I must take.

So, about three years ago, I received a direction that changed my career and how approached my job from that moment on. The light bulbs went off in my brain. The internal ball of emotion swelled in my chest and I spoke the words on the page, as if they were my own. The direction came from a man named David. That's all I know of him. He was a voice on the other side of the country, in another studio connected to me only by an ISDN phone line. He simply said four words: "Tell me the story."

[yommytacoe]

I both act and direct, and i really like it when directors ask me my objective,tactic,obstacles, ect, let me perform once, and then give me a totally different set of given circumstances for a second try. It helps me approach the character from different angles, and try different tactics.