CHAPTER 17

The Rushes and the
Finished Film

There is a dream you have when you act in films, a dream of an image of yourself on the screen—a you that is larger-than-life and encompasses a message or a feeling that you are compelled to express. Sometimes, it is a very clear image in your mind; sometimes, it is just a shadow or a glimmer of something that you reach to understand. It could be a part of yourself that you long to embrace or a part of yourself that you wish to expel, to exorcise. Whichever it is, this dream image may or may not show up on the screen when you first see yourself acting in film. The pursuit of that image can cause you to keep coming back again and again to work before the camera, always searching for the satisfaction of some desire of seeing yourself in a projected image, and by seeing that image, you hope to learn who you are.

When you are first starting out, I believe you are searching for something about yourself that you believe you will find in your projected image. That image will show you something that heretofore only existed, many times as a mystery, intimately inside yourself. Coming to terms with what that message is, and what it isn’t, is the revelation and the disappointment of watching yourself act in a projected image.

THE RUSHES

The term “rushes” comes from the fact that the lab rushes a print out in one night for the director and crew to view their day’s work on the next day. The print is rough; it isn’t perfect. Sometimes it’s silent or the sound is of bad quality and certainly not mixed correctly. The labs have small screening rooms, where everyone topples in after a long day’s shooting, usually in an exhausted state. Again, the gears shift from the activity of doing to the concentration of watching and accessing.

The director and DP must watch the rushes, or dailies (both terms are used interchangeably), to make sure that what they thought they were capturing during shooting is actually arriving onto the screen. Each department head will be present, each only looking at the work for which his department is responsible. The set decorator looks at the set, the makeup artist at the makeup, the gaffer watches the lights, along with the DP and director, who are watching everything. All of the takes that were requested to be printed of each shot, identified by their slate, will be viewed in succession and scrutinized. Choices will be made and unmade and then made again; the editor will take notes. It is an atmosphere of intense concentration, as everyone goes back over what has been shot and decides what has worked, what to reshoot, and how to proceed.

It could be an atmosphere of relief and elation if things are going well and the movie is starting to emerge. Or it could be an atmosphere of tense depression if it starts to become clear that what everyone thought was crystal clear during shooting has not made it to the screen. At the end of the day, the camera doesn’t lie. At this point in the process, only the director and the DP truly know what they intended to accomplish in each shot and if any of the takes serve that purpose.

A piece of film does not exist in a vacuum; it must fit into what goes before it and what comes after it. A take can be wonderful in and of itself, but if it doesn’t work in the succession of images that it is supposed to be a part of, if it doesn’t fit into its planned purpose in the movie, then it cannot be used. The continuity, the timing, all technical concerns, and the dramatic event must coincide with the vision of the completed film. Many films change radically once their rushes are viewed—a director could realize that something else is emerging before him, something other than he had realized was possible. He might decide to alter his future plans to accommodate this new aspect to the story. It can be a wonderfully creative experience in the best-case scenario, or it can spell disaster and confusion if what emerges as the rushes cannot be woven into the fabric of the finished movie.

THE ACTOR AND THE RUSHES

Viewing rushes for an actor is an acquired taste, and many actors do not want to see the rushes at all. They feel it makes their performance too self-conscious. Many, however, especially stars, demand it and have the right to be present written into their contracts. They want to maintain quality control over their work and voice their opinions about the direction the film is taking. Only stars of great popular value can place themselves in such a position.

Besides, a lot of directors feel that an actor has no place at dailies. They feel that seeing the daily footage only bruises the actor’s ego and takes away from the power of the director to control or manipulate the performance. Depending on the actor, this can turn out to be true, and if it is true, and the actor sees the rushes anyway, it can cause problems on the set in the subsequent days of shooting. The general rule on most movies is, No actors at the rushes. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and every actor/director relationship is different. The director might ask you to attend the dailies or you could ask permission on your own. You just might be granted the privilege.

So, why would you want to go to the rushes, if you have no decision-making power in the progress of the movie? There are several reasons. First of all, you can benefit a great deal from watching multiple takes of your work and becoming accustomed to what you look like on the screen. If you don’t have a highly developed relationship with the image of yourself on the screen, it can eventually become detrimental, even crippling to your future in film acting. Sometimes you envision yourself as being completely different from what your image turns out to be. I am not talking about your technique now; I’m simply talking about your film presence and what it conveys.

The first time I saw myself acting on the screen, I had a strange feeling that is difficult to describe. It was like suddenly seeing someone up close that I had only previously observed from afar—like meeting a familiar stranger. It was like falling in love with someone with whom loving is forbidden, and yet knowing in that same moment that I would allow myself to fall. It’s hard to admit it so blatantly, but I fell in love with myself, or rather the self that I could see moving within the image on the screen, a self that I had only had a glimpse of before, never knowing for sure if it was really there. And now seeing it, before me on the screen, was like opening up a door that would change my life forever. It was the beginning of a fleeting love affair that I was about to pursue, and just like any other relationship of such an intense nature, it would be beset with care, nurturing, and land mines.

This relationship with the self comes with the territory of acting. Like any lasting relationship, it requires attention and skill to keep alive and healthy. Viewing the rushes of your work in a film can be (if you choose to see them in the first place) an excellent tool to bettering your work, as long as you can see yourself in the right frame of mind. The same technique of assessing your work that should follow any exercise work should now be employed to assess what you see in your work in the rushes. It’s a wonderful opportunity, because you see yourself repeating the same actions and scenes over and over again, but with the added advantage that you can learn to be an observer of your work, detached from yourself. You can learn to be objective, at least to some degree.

To develop the skill of objective, constructive observation of your screen image, you must first accept what it is and hopefully, as occurred with me, love—in the most positive sense of the word—this image. This doesn’t mean that you egotistically become involved with your looks or that you become enraptured and enthralled. It means that through an acceptance of what you are projecting, you can clear the slate. This enables you to constructively criticize you own work. Without this loving acceptance, it is very difficult to be a film actor at all and nearly impossible to assess your acting work.

ASSESSING YOUR WORK IN THE RUSHES

In chapter 14, I mentioned that one of the advantages of doing a student film is being allowed to view the rushes or the rough cut of the film. One of the disadvantages with student films is that their technical quality is often not up to a professional level, and you might not have been photographed, so to speak, in your best light. It could be hard to assess yourself from a technical point of view if you haven’t been lit properly or there isn’t enough coverage of the scene for you to see your acting work fully. You won’t encounter this problem in professional films as a rule. Assessing your work in the context of the whole film becomes a possibility when how a scene is lit and covered is intentional and not the result of lack of experience.

Whatever the level or style of the film dailies that you are viewing, there is a way to break down your observations so that they can be specific and creatively constructive. Believe it or not, the best place to start is with the relaxation and the face.

The Face

The first thing to look for is the harboring of tension in the face. Watch your face and ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there a blinking or fluttering of the eyes, particularly in close-up?

• Tension in the eye area causes this problem, and you will quickly see why it should be eliminated; it’s very distracting on the screen. It’s easy to underestimate how much pressure you’re feeling when you act on a set, especially as the camera comes in closer to your face. The problem of blinking could simply be that you didn’t pay as much conscious attention to your relaxation as you should have while you were working. Another reason could be that you avoided something about the moment, that you didn’t meet it head-on, that you weren’t direct. Being direct when you act in front of the camera isn’t a character trait; it’s a commitment to the dramatic moment.

• Is there any part of the face that twitches or seems frozen?

• This is the same tension problem as in the previous example. Tension is being harbored in some area of the face. You can notice it in the corners of the mouth, the eyebrows, or the position of the chin. It is caused by not paying attention to the relaxation process while acting and not meeting the moment head-on.

• Are you camera-shy? Do you turn your head in the wrong direction for the camera to see what is happening on your face?

• It’s a strange phenomenon, but many outgoing and charismatic people can be camera-shy; it turns up in the most unlikely places. Sometimes, it’s just a lack of experience that causes you to move in a way that is not, photographically speaking, your best choice. The general rule is, if you can see the lens, the lens can see you, and when you act in two shots, mediums, or wider, you have many options of movement. When you watch the rushes, see if you are always moving your head in a way that looks natural in the scene yet shows the expression of your face.

• Are you utilizing the light to the best of your advantage?

• It takes a bit of practice, but certainly, acting in film is finding the best way to optimize the light without anyone noticing that you are doing it. Moving your face a quarter of an inch can make all the difference in the world. This works together with not being camera-shy. The camera must be able to see your face. To develop this skill, I would suggest going to museums and looking at the painting of the old masters, like Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Caravaggio. A painting is like one film frame, and studying how these painters constructed meaning with light will help you to understand the possibilities when you act within the moving images of film frames.

• When we see your eyes, are they in focus and looking at something, or do you stare blankly?

• If your eyes are blank, it means that you have spaced out in that moment, there’s nothing happening internally, and unless that is the goal of that specific moment, like you’re dead or a zombie or something like that, something should always be happening in your eyes. Just as you should have the ability to stare, with expressive eyes, without blinking, you should also have the ability to move the eyes in any direction without blinking. Bette Davis was a master at this, and although that highly melodramatic style of acting is no longer in fashion, it’s fun to watch her for her eye technique.

• When you see your face on the screen, do you become obsessed with the way you look?

• This is an important issue, because vanity gone awry can destroy an actor. We all have physical characteristics that we are unhappy with, but when you watch the rushes, don’t get involved with the aspects of yourself that you hate. Many times nature has given you these traits to enhance the uniqueness of your face. The very thing that you despise might be your best asset, because when it comes purely to looks, we are often the worst judges of ourselves. Remember that what you dislike about your looks may be the very traits that got you the job in the first place. Accept how you feel about your looks and move on, back to focusing on the things that you can change about your performance.

The Breath and the Voice

When you watch your work in the rushes, it is very easy to see how one breath can change the intensity of a shot and make it stand out from all the other takes. The way an actor breathes or doesn’t breathe is very obvious on film, if you are looking for it. If the breath is not fulfilling the emotional needs of the moment, the actor looks wooden. Whether an outside or internal impulse causes you to breathe appropriately for the moment or just simply remembering to breathe causes you to connect to the impulse is determined by each individual acting instrument. For many actors, it works both ways, depending on the circumstances. Checking the breath should be an automatic part of any film acting technique.

Along with the breath, of course, comes the voice. Does your voice sound stagy? If it does, then all but absolutely necessary dialogue will end up on the cutting room floor. Nothing kills a movie performance quicker than a wooden or stage-like voice. Of course, we all know the cadre of great British character actors who play in movies all the time and fill them with their booming voices. The ones who do this consistently are usually playing fairy-tale figures, inhumans, or superhumans. It’s a certain niche that uses this stagelike voice to create a fantasy world. In other words, it’s not realistic. Most movie acting is realistic in style and, therefore, requires a more relaxed approach. The British character actors, when they are not playing superheroes and witches, adjust their vocal production to a more natural vein, at least those of them who can.

On the other hand, you might be devoicing at inappropriate moments, which is again a problem of not meeting the dramatic moment head-on. There is usually some aspect of the character, or the scene, that you haven’t properly investigated, and it causes you to falter in your voice. It could be that you haven’t found the courage to meet this moment head-on and commit to revealing what it is that you have found in your investigative process. One of the great benefits to watching the rushes is that you quickly see how backing down from the moment weakens your performance. Rather than experience regret or anger at yourself for not having done what you know you are capable of doing, learn from the experience and garner the courage for the next time around. It becomes easier with each try.

The Body

Moving and placing your body is often unnatural in film acting. In order to make body positions appear natural in the camera frame, they often become strange, tension-producing configurations. It’s an unfortunate hazard of the craft that must be mastered. No matter how abnormal your body position is, it has to look right for the moment it is portraying in the shot. When you watch repeated takes of yourself doing the same thing over and over again, take notice of the following:

• Are you harboring tension somewhere in your body that can be seen in the camera frame?

• Is your fatigue or discomfort more visible with each take? In other words, do you get more strained rather than more relaxed each time you repeat?

Take as an example the athletes and dancers who continue to perform with excellence and aplomb, even though their muscles are screaming or feet are aching. You would never know from their performance that they are in pain or discomfort; you never see it. As an actor, you have to develop the same ability. Ideally, your acting should get better with each take, not worse.

• Is there any way that you can transform the tension creatively? Can you release it into an impulse, put it into your performance, and fill out the life of your character?

Sometimes, the tension that occurs in the body is a suppressed impulse. If you were to identify the tension in the body and release it, it could illuminate something in the scene, bring something fresh to the moment, or create the unexpected. This is what you are looking for in film acting—using the release of tension to uncover new ground—not being relaxed to the point of being limp. Of course, you must do it in a way that stays within the camera frame, adheres to your blocking, and is appropriate to the scene. This takes experience and practice. The exercises in Mental Relaxation and concentration are the training ground for transforming the impulse constructively in a professional situation.

• Is the body presence alive? When you see all or some of your body, along with your head, is it acting, too?

• The body is a huge, intelligent playing field for an actor, but the constricting nature of some camera setups can make you forget that you even have a body, especially if you have been doing a lot of work focusing on the midchest and up. If this appears to be a problem, you might consider using an Overall for the character in the wider shots. This would expand the sensory response and spring the body into action. Remember, the key to using any sense memory in a professional situation is to have worked on it thoroughly beforehand. It could spell disaster if, midmovie, you decide to switch horses and throw in a technique that you have never worked on or have little experience with. Besides, it gives sense memory a bad name.

YOUR ACTING PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE

Preparing for a role can be very exciting and enjoyable if you love to act—in fact, I know many actors who would rather prepare than perform a role. Needless to say, their careers suffer from this tendency. The only real test of a preparation is how it plays out in the performance. Except for the intimate pages of your own journal and perhaps a loving teacher, no one cares about what you had intended your performance to be; they only care about what they can see. When you watch the rushes, you must be aware of how much of your intention is up there on the screen. It takes an objective, intelligent eye to judge this correctly, but because none of us can be completely objective about ourselves, you have to rely on the comments of your director. If he likes what you are doing, then you should keep doing it; if he doesn’t like it, then you will have to change something. Since you are the only one who truly knows what your preparation is, you are the only one who can fix it. There is another scenario where the director likes what you have been doing, but you are not satisfied with your work; you expected something more from yourself. If this is the case, you should assess your work from a technical rather than interpretive point of view.

• Are you completely concentrated in the scene and listening to the other actors?

• Is your sensory work or any other kind of preparation you have chosen obvious? It shouldn’t be; it should be completely invisible.

• Are you being self-indulgent instead of being in the moment? By the time you get to the set to work, everything that you do must be anchored into the script and the driving actions of the scene. If something makes you feel engaged and concentrated, but it doesn’t work for the script, it must be discarded.

• Are you reaching for a better performance with each take, or do you lose the ability to concentrate as the takes progress? Do you start to push your performance as you get tired? You might have repeated something many, many times, but with each repetition you should become more confident and more relaxed.

• Are you able to create as if for the first time with each repetition? This is very important, since your best acting take could have camera difficulties and therefore be unusable. One hears about the first take being the best for many actors because they are fresh with discovery, but very few shots are gotten on the first take—you must be able to successively repeat.

• Does your work match and make sense for the character from the master through to the close-ups?

• Are you revealing more intimate details of the character as the camera comes in closer?

If you are truly unhappy with your work, you won’t have the power to reshoot something unless the director and DP want to do it, as well; but you do have the power to adjust your future performance. You have to be very careful when making any major decisions about this, though. Take your cue from the name of the thing that you are viewing, the rushes, and don’t rush into any big decisions about how you look or how to change your performance. You can’t change horses in midstream, especially if everyone thinks that you’ve got a great horse to begin with. You can’t suddenly go mutinous and start directing yourself in your own little movie. That’s why directors don’t want actors at the rushes to begin with; they think they’ll go native and be lost in the jungle of their own ideas.

If there is something about your work that bothers you, then speak to the director about it to find out how and if it needs to be fixed. If the director assures you that you’re doing great and to just keep up the good work, then, whether you agree with him or not, you’ll have to do as he says, or at least try to. Hopefully, you will learn a great deal from watching yourself, and the experience will enrich the rest of your performance, as well as your future roles. You might even find yourself enjoying the process.

THE FINISHED FILM

In most cases, as I mentioned before, the actors are not permitted to see the rushes. This means that the first time that you see your work will be after all of the postproduction work is completed, in the finished film. The best way for this to happen is at a special cast-and-crew screening. Everyone in the audience has worked on or been associated with the movie in some way. The atmosphere is always positive.

It is also possible that you see the film for the first time when it is released to the public in a theater, on DVD, or broadcast on television. This is a much more difficult situation, because you are without the support of the rest of the cast and crew; you are unprotected from public opinion. If this is the way that you first see your work in a film, I would suggest not seeing it alone; I would see it accompanied by a few good, close friends. If the work is good, you’ll want to share it with others, and if it’s not, you’ll need the support and humor of the people who know and care about you. That’s what I always do.

It’s easy to underestimate the impact of seeing your work for the first time along with the public, especially if you’ve never seen any of the rushes. It can be very shocking. It’s easy to feel as though you’ve been manipulated or even deceived. It takes a lot of experience to let go of your desire to influence your character after you have long left the set. You have to keep in mind that although the image looks like you and sounds like you, that image no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the film and the filmmakers. That’s part of the deal. However, you can still assess your work, just as you would have done at the rushes, except now, you only have the material that they have chosen to use. You lose the benefit of being able to judge your work in the multiple takes of each shot. You’ll never know whether there was a better take that wasn’t used for some technical reason or because it didn’t match the rhythm of the rest of the scene, or for that matter if you were really awful in all other takes except the one they used. I would suggest just enjoying the movie as a whole at your first viewing, and then going back to assess your work at a later date.

You should be prepared that the context and size of your role might have changed drastically from what you thought it was intended to be. A major role on the set could be reduced to a few minor appearances, or even worse, completely edited out of the movie. You won’t be notified of these changes; you’ll experience it for the first time when you’re sitting in the movie theater with everyone else. An experience like this can be devastating and disappointing. After all the work and anticipation, your work isn’t even seen in the film. You have to take this in stride, feel bad for a few minutes, and then focus on your next role.

Everyone who works in film wants the films that they work on to be very good, some even aspire to greatness; nobody wants to make a bad movie. But most people who work in film are anonymous beyond the insular world of the entertainment industry. The actors face a different situation altogether; it is their faces and bodies that are up there on the screen, and everyone knows who they are and what they look like. Actors can take it very hard if their performance is not well received in a film. It can be very embarrassing. On the other side of the spectrum, if their performance is a success, they can become ecstatic and elated and lose all perspective of their worth. Both situations can cause ego problems in their future work.

All actors have to develop a kind of second skin that protects them, and their work, from outside critical voices, whether they are negative or positive; but for the film actor, it is especially important. Theater actors and their audience share the same space and time together during the performance. When the performance is over, everyone goes home, and the cast returns the next day to perform again. Actors in film share the space and time of their work with the other cast and crew members with no audience present. On almost every film, this group binds together like an extended family, supporting and helping one another through the work. When the shoot is over, this family disbands as the film is prepared for public release. There is no going out with the rest of the cast for a beer and a laugh after a bad performance if the film is ill-received. As a film actor, you are usually left to your own devices when dealing with the disappointments and joys of the public’s opinion of your work.

Once again, it’s a good time to go back to the relaxation and concentration, to write in your journal and assess the situation, to continue the development of the intimate relationship to the self and how you feel in any given moment in time. Once you admit how you feel in one moment, the moment will change to something else, and on and on it goes eternally. Movies are a part of our collective dreams, and just like the movies of your own memory are a part of you, your work becomes a part of someone else’s imagination. Somehow, I feel like we are all together, in an imaginary space, dreaming of a greater understanding of ourselves, reaching for new ideas and solutions that we believe we can find if we work collectively. And we actors of the twenty-first century, we play our parts in this modern drama by exhibiting our faces, our bodies, and our very souls by acting in film.