directing actors

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dilmandila

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I've read Judith Weston's book, but I found it has more tips on working with actors as they talk to other actors. I'm yet to find her talking about anything about single actor performances, or non-dialogue performances. Most of my films have no dialogue. I wonder if anyone knows any other book I can read,

or anyone has any advice but hasn't written a book yet? :))
 
what are your scripts usually about? without being too descriptive, obviously...

what i do sometimes is, sensory recall. talk to your actors about something similar that may have happened to them in their life, or someone close to them's life. take them back to that time and place and have them recall their thoughts and feelings.


just my two cents.
 
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I always think it is a good idea for every director or scriptwriter to do an acting course. There are just some things that you can't get from books.
 
that too. once i get to LA, i plan on doing that. i think i'd get a lot more out of it in LA than in Winter Park Florida. not saying there aren't good actors here, but i'd learn more in LA.
 
It really is worth it. You learn their tool bag/techniques and if you know something is off, as a director you have more power of direction to correct it by being specific.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of sensory recall acting. There is only so many times you can get a person to cry over their dead dog before it starts looking really contrived. Sensory recall is about invoking a specific memory in order to recreate a feeling, and this remembering can often be visible in the different tensions an actor holds, mostly in the neck, chin and bulls-eye (in between the eyes) areas, and this will make them look wooden and fake, particularly on a big screen - you can get away with it a bit more on tv. I prefer to make it so that the actual moment of the scene invokes the feeling it should, and by engulfing the actor in that moment you get something real and truthful. My 2 cents anyway. :P
 
dilmandila said:
I've read Judith Weston's book, but I found it has more tips on working with actors as they talk to other actors. I'm yet to find her talking about anything about single actor performances, or non-dialogue performances. Most of my films have no dialogue. I wonder if anyone knows any other book I can read,

or anyone has any advice but hasn't written a book yet? :))
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I'm pretty sure the same principles apply to actors by themselves.

e.g. If you want a shot of an actor looking sad, don't tell them to look sad, but give them a motivation.
 
Yeddi said:
I always think it is a good idea for every director or scriptwriter to do an acting course. There are just some things that you can't get from books.
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I couldn't agree more. I just finished my first semester of a Meisner-based acting course and it's been an amazing experience. It's given me real insight into an actor's POV, at least Meisner trained actors. As a bonus, even the most basic techniques I've learned have fueled my creativity and given me more energy.

I also had a great time acting in a student film. It was hard not to give advice (and I ended up lending them some audio equipment) but it was fun and gives you some perspective on the challenges of being a director.
 
Jonathan_P said:
I couldn't agree more. I just finished my first semester of a Meisner-based acting course and it's been an amazing experience. It's given me real insight into an actor's POV, at least Meisner trained actors. As a bonus, even the most basic techniques I've learned have fueled my creativity and given me more energy.

I also had a great time acting in a student film. It was hard not to give advice (and I ended up lending them some audio equipment) but it was fun and gives you some perspective on the challenges of being a director.
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I did attend one acting class, but all the guy taught us was yoga-stuff. He seemed respectable and credible too (worked on The Constant Gardener sic) but I really couldn't place his teaching in an actor's life.

Well, maybe because I come from a land where acting training is virtually non-existent, and you only can 'fluke' a three day course like the one I went for. What book then would you recommend, for an Actor, not for a director. Like if I'm to teach myself acting....?

:D Yeah, in my country, everything is DIY or TYI
 
ZFarms Productions said:
what are your scripts usually about? without being too descriptive, obviously...
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They are about people of course :))

anyway, I'm working on one now, a feature length, about a woman who runs away from a bad (sex-less) marriage to seek happiness in a teenage boy, but her husband pursues her to convince her he can still love her. It's about relationships, but doesn't use any dialogue. Not a mime either.

The other one I did (Clermon-Ferrand, market section this year) was about a man trying to hide his crimes after a woman dies while having an extramartial affair with him.
 
ZFarms Productions said:
what i do sometimes is, sensory recall. talk to your actors about something similar that may have happened to them in their life, or someone close to them's life...
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How do you work with 'Sensory Recall' without actually talking about a result? I mean Judith is totally against result direction, so if you want this actor to behave the way he did when his dog died, how will you tell him without mentioning the word sad?

What I'm really asking is how do you employ this sensory thing? So here is a scene where the actor has just lost his mother. He is sad, yes? And if you are working with actors like those you find in my place (you might call them non-actors, amateaurs, etc) how do you give him images without actually making it sad? You might tell him "this is like the time you lost your dog" and yet when he lost his dog, he smiled alot, and he starts to smile over his mother's corpse....

am i just confused?
 
i did say sometimes, remember...

i honestly haven't done sensory recall since around June/July on one of our projects in school (that was mostly because that was what we were taught.)

with my own projects i tend to pull the actors aside and motivate them to get the result i want. without using words like "sad", "angry", etc...

i've tried a lot of different styles to get to where i'm at today in my directing. i'm not perfect, and i never will be, but i've gotten to something that works for me and the actors i work with.
 
dilmandila said:
I've read Judith Weston's book, but I found it has more tips on working with actors as they talk to other actors. I'm yet to find her talking about anything about single actor performances, or non-dialogue performances. Most of my films have no dialogue. I wonder if anyone knows any other book I can read,

or anyone has any advice but hasn't written a book yet? :))
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dilmandila

you mention that many of your films have no dialogue. but just because there are no lines does not mean there is no story line.

just my opinion but...try talking to the actor about the 'moments' you are trying to capture. even up to the moment you roll if needed. set them up mentally to see the moment in their head. talk it out...try to do it before being on set to save time but be prepared to do some on set as you go.

the script should describe, or you should describe to them what their character is thinking so their face will reflect that. if they are supposed to react, talk them through what happened just before they are to react.

i could go in a bit more detail but without knowing the way you go about writing your scripts it makes it harder to give advice. i really love those non speaking moments...when all you see is a tight shot of the face and you can practically read the mind of the character. deniro rocks at that.

and if there are no lines you don't need to roll sound, so you can talk them all the way through the scene from start to finish!

michele
 
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Michele Seidman said:
just my opinion but...try talking to the actor about the 'moments' you are trying to capture. even up to the moment you roll if needed. set them up mentally to see the moment in their head. talk it out...try to do it before being on set to save time but be prepared to do some on set as you go.

i could go in a bit more detail but without knowing the way you go about writing your scripts it makes it harder to give advice.

and if there are no lines you don't need to roll sound, so you can talk them all the way through the scene from start to finish!

michele
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First, no dialonge doesn't mean no sound! The sound is there. It's not a silent movie.

Okay, here is a scene from a recent one I did.

Boy delivers a gift at the girls doorsteps then hides behind a tree to watch the girl open it. The girl picks the gift, smiles at the surprise, walks into the house (where the boy can't see her horror on discovering who it's from) and then she gets out and dumps the gift in a garbage bin.

Tell me, how would you talk to the actors without using result direction in such a case? I know Judith mentions somewhere that result direction sometimes works, but I tried to not use it and couldn't help telling the actors, especially te boy - that you should be disappointed about the gift ending up in a garbage bin.
 
Michele:
and if there are no lines you don't need to roll sound, so you can talk them all the way through the scene from start to finish!
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ala Federico Fellini -- I like that :-)

But you should record sound I think anyways, because there may be something usable in between.

This thread has been very interesting because I like to shoot MOS a lot. In fact, I shot my 35mm feature film BUTTERFLIES IN THE WIND with the Arri 2c -- one-man crew -- and recorded the dialogue all wild.

Check out my trailer at http://www.releasing.net/ (2nd one from top)

Also, take a look at the movie clip at the top of the page:

http://www.releasing.net/

I took the actor to Palmdale and said to him, "relive the whole story of the movie." I told him, I'm going to use this take as a vehicle to encapsulate the whole movie for the ending, which is exactly what I did. It was one of those strokes of luck, a hunch that paid off, because the actor, Shawn Smith, was a student of Meisner and he did it the way I imagined it. Actors are wonderful!
 
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