“We just had to make sure we hired people who were smart and thoughtful; we don’t have any lessons to teach, drums to beat, or any attacks to make. We do, however, try to take a humanist point of view.”
— Tommy Lee Jones, director, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
All people are creative artists. You only have to think about the time when you were a child drawing little pictures with your paper and crayons. Then you got some education, and for some of us that creativity became suppressed. But it is still there, and as we grow older it becomes a little voice inside of us: it is called instinct. But it becomes difficult to hear or listen to as more and more people tell you what to do. This is inevitable, as filmmaking is a collaborative art form. As a director you are impacted by many different voices and hear many people around you, some of them—such as the producer or the distributor—holding the purse strings of your project. But you must listen to your instinct and cultivate that little voice inside of you. By cultivating it you will find that the voice is telling you to take risks, and risk-taking is part of being creative. Risk-taking is nothing more than following your heart.1
Animals use their instincts all the time. We have that same ability, that same instinct, but it is a higher form of instinct, which we call intuition. Intuition is a very important part of the creative process and is connected to that little voice inside of you. But you need to listen to that voice inside of you, and not just to be stubborn about getting your own way to the detriment of others or the project. A director’s intuition is never wrong. I repeat: your intuition is never wrong if it is truly your instinct and not stubbornness or a decision made from the subjective influences of other people. It is a fine balancing act, since directors must not only work with many people but also within the realities of time, budget, and other restrictions that may affect your decision. Your intuition is your greatest tool in making artistic and directorial decisions, and you must never be afraid to use it. By using it, you are taking risks in your directing, and by taking risks you are being creative. That is your investment, no matter how diverse the story may be.
Initially, things begin with casting. All the great cinematography, special effects, and production elements won’t mean anything without the right cast of performers. They must create and tell the story and imbue the entire project with credibility and intimacy. Look for life in your casting session. When actors audition for you, they come in nervous, scared, or anxious, and once in a while you will find someone who comes in and is just alive—full of life. It is those people you want to see more of.
When directors cast actors, they often work with a casting director. Casting directors are people who know acting talent: they comb theaters, workshops, and acting schools, as well as watch movies of all kinds looking for new talent. Directors must talk to their casting director for as long as it takes in order to impart to them the essence of the characters as they imagine them. Avoid speaking about physical characteristics, because they limit the scope of the search. The author may write the role as someone who is short and dark in appearance, and a tall strawberry blonde actor may walk in who could be better for the part because he has the essence you seek for the character. But also recognize that in some instances it is impossible to avoid speaking about physical characteristics if it makes it easier to explain your vision.
Understand that the casting director will have spent time with the script and will have his or her own ideas but will not act upon them until both of you are on the same page. This may lead to your casting director sending you tape on actors or asking that you visit a theater to see someone’s performance.2
Once you start a casting session do not read the actor right away but instead sit and talk to them. Talk about the material, about their family, about their life, about music, about movies, or simply share your life with them. Just get to know them, all the while watching their face and eyes, since your camera will be photographing their eyes. Be very interested in them when talking to them that first time. You will know how quick they are with you if you just ask them a question and you see from their response whether they are very engaging. Look for a truthful quality and an essence that is right for the part. Try to distill the salient qualities of the person you are speaking with. Is it someone you can imagine as the character? Do they have the key tenets of the character they may portray? Can you see them in your mind and trust them as the character? Eventually you may read the actor for the role, watching how their instinct tells them to play a nuance of a moment. But understand that actors are put on the hot seat when you do that and they are usually reading the scene with the casting director while knowing that everyone watching is sitting in judgment. This could make them very nervous. Eventually you will have to listen to your intuition which will tell you whether they are right or not right for the role.
If you are meeting with known actors, try to imagine spending several weeks if not months with them. Will they hate you? Will you hate them? They want to know how attuned you are to the story, to the characters, and specifically to the character you are speaking to them about. They are casting you in the role of their director—someone they will put their trust in for the days, weeks, or months they work on the project. They will be sniffing you out as a person and your passion about the project. They may tell you why they like the project and discuss their excitement with their character. This may get you to discussing the character traits, and you will begin to align your ideas with theirs. These sessions can be stressful for you, especially when you know that casting a recognizable actor will secure the funding for the project. It is common today that well known actors will not take the job without meeting and approving the director, so it is important for you to just be yourself.3
Once you work with them, you will find that they are as nervous about the role they are playing as you might be in directing them. So don’t treat them any differently or be bashful or keep a distance from them because of their name or stature. They want the same communication with you that you have with your other actors. So give it to them!
Robert Altman says that casting is 70 percent of the success of a project. Whether that is true is debatable, but what is true is that consistent casting excellence in an acting ensemble of a project signals a talented director. You only have to look at the memorable films to see that. For example: John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1940) had Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Ward Bond; in Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) Bogart, Greenstreet, and Lorre were joined by Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains; Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) had an ensemble of Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Gene Wilder, Michael J. Pollard, Dub Taylor, and Denver Pyle; while Coppola’s The Godfather can be pointed to as another hallmark of a great film, in part due to the strength of the great acting from Marlon Brando, James Caan, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, and John Cazale, as well as the performances in the smaller roles played by actors such as Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Abe Vigoda, Talia Shire, and Richard Conte.4 Can there be any doubt that the cast of Paul Haggis’s Oscar-winning Crash is not made up of wonderful ensemble acting, with the names of Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Ryan Phillippe among its seventy-two cast members? And of course ensemble casting is a priority in television. It is seen time and again with such shows as Cheers, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Law and Order, CSI, The Sopranos, and many others. So initially things begin with casting, and making sure that you are secure with your vision of the characters is the first step towards that beginning.
The relationship between the actor and the director is unique, and no other relationship on a project is like it. The better directors are those who have acted themselves or been trained in acting at some time in their career, or have grown up around actors. The reason for this is that they understand acting, while most directors without that exposure are uncomfortable with actors and, in some instances, don’t like them. They are intimidated by them. Sometimes they are the proponents of the digital technologies that provide for virtual characters through CGI5 or animated features such as Shrek and Toy Story. But even virtual characters and animated features need to be directed at their origin, and even then an actor is needed. So the actor-director relationship is unavoidable.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the guru on helping directors understand what actors want is Delia Salvi. Her book Friendly Enemies: Maximizing the Director-Actor Relationship sums up that the job of an actor is “to open up the most fragile areas of one’s being. But exposing oneself like this requires trust, and most actors find it impossible to trust someone who may not understand how to effectively communicate ideas to them. Directors sensing distrust protect themselves by becoming immersed in the technical issues of the shot. The actor may be ignored completely … directors often don’t understand what actors want and need from them.”
There are many schools of acting techniques that help to train actors, and they run the entire gamut from Group Theatre method (Adler, Strasberg, Meisner) to scene study to improvised theater games, and it is up to the actor to find a way to gain that training and up to the director to know the language that training uses to communicate to actors. But putting that aside, first you have to look to yourself as a director and really ask yourself whether you love actors. Deep down inside, do you really have an affection for actors and who they are? And why? That’s simple. They are unique artists. They, like dancers, create art out of their own self. When you speak to an actor, they will tell you that their body and their psyche or soul is their instrument, some of which we have addressed in Chapter 2. If you have this affection for actors you must, if not for anything else, have it for their courage and dedication. Dedication because with acting comes rejection, and courage because actors have to be dedicated to keep coming back time and again after that rejection. So the first notion in a director’s relationship with the actor is to love them, because by loving them the director will have the advantage in working with them because he or she will understand them. Any problem you would ever have with an actor will come from understanding that until the camera rolls and you say “Cut! Print that!” actors often have a tremendous feeling of fear or insecurity when they are about to approach a role or play a scene. They might come at you with a troubled look, asking, “What’s my motivation for this?” Or they might rip the dialogue apart in front of you while you are trying to defend the honesty of the script. It makes no difference whether they are a major star or an unknown actor, as they will usually be coming from that insecurity and self-centeredness. And if you know that, then you don’t have to argue with them but come at them with understanding and compassion, which will always turn them around.6 Since the single-camera, out-of-sequence process of shooting a movie results in the actor relying entirely on the satisfaction of the director, actors must turn themselves over completely and implicitly trust and respect their directors.
One of the first obligations for any actor is to play relationships, and one of the first obligations for the director is to make sure that those relationships are being played honestly. It makes no difference whether it is the relationship between two main characters or between a waitress and a patron in a coffee shop. Where there is an actor or a person speaking or not speaking, there is always a relationship that is being played.7 Characters relate to other characters even when they are discussing them within the dialogue. The actors having the conversation as the characters have to play not only their relationship with each other but also their characters’ relationship to the characters they are speaking about. And it is the obligation of the director to make certain that those relationships are being played and being played honestly. In order to play relationships you must help actors know who they are and what their history is with other characters. Once they know that history then you must make sure that the actors believe it. Without suspension of disbelief your actor is unable to elicit truth.
Since actors in movies look to the director for judgment on truth with their performances, directors need to watch for certain shortcomings that can be prevalent in a weak or unbelievable performance. First, make sure that actors are not pushing in their performances or indicating. This refers to resorting to external and physical ways to show what their character is experiencing rather than allowing their subconscious to provide the motivation for the character. Sure giveaways of this are affected facial and vocal expressions, gestures, and body language (which are often played away from camera), and lack of eye contact or eye focus.
Second, actors are geared to play action, since discovery of the emotion comes from the action of the moment. It becomes useless to talk to the actor in terms of what you want as the emotional results. Salvi’s book suggests that “instead, talk to them in terms of specifics they can use to deliver results (such as) get that wallet from the man, to make that person love you, to get that cigarette, to break up that relationship without causing too much pain. Don’t (ever) talk to your actors in terms of results such as ‘be angry here’ or ‘you are happy there.’ Realize that emotions are the results of actions, interaction, and conflict.”8 And from a previous chapter we know that dialogue is the result of those emotions or impulses.
Third, you need to encourage actors not to play it safe but to take risks with their performances. Generally, actors who play it safe lack emotion in their performance as they wind up performing on one level and are never in the moment nor playing discovery of the moment. Salvi says that “actors have not fully lived through what their characters are experiencing. They have not made the character’s needs important to themselves and, therefore, they lack energy.”9
Fourth, you must also have an engaging relationship with actors and be aware of certain of their characteristics that can affect their performances. This comes from and is related to casting, as certain actors are known for playing certain types of roles that mesh with their own personalities for the role. Joe Pesci is an example of that, as he is always playing “gangster”-type roles, whether in a drama such as Casino or GoodFellas or a comedy such as My Cousin Vinny or an action movie such as Lethal Weapon.
Finally, the director must always know when an actor is in the moment and is listening, being engaging, and paying attention to the other actors in the scene. This is when the director’s barometer takes over. If you find that you get itchy watching the actor in the scene, then realize that you are not emotionally engaged with the actor because the actor is not emotionally engaged in the scene.
Although you may know what you want from an actor’s performance, it behooves you not to tell the actor explicitly what to do. Skilled directors find a method of planting the seed with the actor so that the director’s idea becomes the actor’s. Once the actor thinks it is his or her idea, they work with it and make it their own. If they think they are doing otherwise, there is a danger of the performance being unbelievable as they try to mimic the direction to please the director. Actors for the screen will always do as the director requests; you just need to find a way to have them believe that what you want them to do is their own idea.
No one on a project must come between the director and the actors. Not the writer, the producer, or anyone else. That is to say, no one should give actors comments on their performances except the director. And a dialogue director must only rehearse dialogue with actors and never comment on performances once the director has taken over or after they have been shot.
There is an emotional link that occurs on a shoot between actors and directors: in the single-camera process the director is the direct recipient of the performance. In single-camera narrative, the actor’s process to get to performance is painstakingly slow; sustaining the character may be needed only for a few seconds or a minute or two while the camera is rolling and then not needed again for an hour or two while the technical crew is setting up for the next scene or shot. Actors working in this style may need some time to themselves away from the set to focus on what they need to do. You should allow them to do this, while keeping your antennae up as to what they are doing.
An actor’s psyche as the character also needs constant reinforcement during the shooting day. So you should talk to actors using personal pronouns such as “you had a terrible day at the office and the argument you had with your boss is still on your mind when you come in to this scene.” Or, “just before you run into the scene you are painfully hurt because you just caught your lover kissing your best friend.” Additionally, when actors are discussing their characters’ relationships and motivations with one another they should speak to one another in the first person as much as possible. This brings the actors’ and the characters’ psyches closer together. You can also talk to your actors this same way when they are in rehearsal because the more you can reinforce their psyche, the more they will maintain the belief of the characters they are portraying. If they maintain that belief then the camera will believe it, so you need to do whatever you can do to help that belief—the suspension of disbelief! On a movie I produced I went further to help the director by giving the actors double-wide trailers for dressing rooms and made sure they were assigned to the actors playing a father and son relationship, and a brother and brother relationship. The camaraderie the actors had with one another off the set helped to reinforce the character relationships on the set.
Is there time for a rehearsal period when doing a low-budget movie or an episode of a television show? The short answer is no! The longer answer is: only if your producer has budgeted funds for rehearsal time with your actors. In teaching directing students, film schools stress the importance of rehearsals outside of the day of production. But unless your project has a big budget or your producer agrees to budget funds for you to rehearse with your actors, you will find that the likelihood of a separate rehearsal time becomes a luxury rather than the norm. The Screen Actors Guild says that actors get paid from the time they go to work and rehearsal time is work time, so most producers of low-and medium-budget movies and episodic television shows do not budget funds for actors to rehearse separately from the days of production. Of course, this does not forgo the possibility if not the probability of you going to lunch or dinner with your actors to “discuss” the project, its characters, and their contributions to the roles. Your budget and producer may not have allowed for rehearsals, but actors will and should crave this little bit of informal ego-massaging in getting a jump on the movie.
Multiple-camera film formats such as situation comedies and soap operas10 rehearse on a set, which lets an actor develop some sort of environmental truth to help them with their imagination. But the single-camera narrative film style of production is disjointed, so rehearsals for these types of projects should be handled a specific way, recognizing that many actors don’t really begin their journey as the characters until they are on a set. Belief sets in for many of them when they are in wardrobe and moving in and around the set or location used for the scene. This is especially true if the set or location is significant to their character and further defines who they are, because the creative reality of the space that actors work in helps to manifest a reality to their performance that elicits truth for the camera. But there are certain aspects of character and relationships that can be worked on during a rehearsal away from a set that can help.
First, there is a read-through of the script around a table, with each actor playing their assigned roles while you guide them, through suggestions, toward elements of story, character, and relationships. But you must remember that the rehearsal is for your actors and not for you to assert your directorial authority over them. Listen carefully to the read-through and feel what each actor’s instinct tells them about a scene. You will find out a lot and begin to craft the sound and rhythm of the dialogue at this rehearsal. This will probably be the only time that you will have all your actors together at the same time with all of them focusing, sharing and discussing the dramatic characteristics of the story. That in and of itself is valuable.
The use of improvisation and getting the actors away from the text during rehearsal may free your actors up and allow you to get their take on what the scene might be about. For example, if the relationship of the characters is about a couple who have been married for many years, you might discuss with the two actors what it might have been like the first time they met. Or perhaps you set up a small table and a couple of chairs and tell them to act out the first time they met in a crowded coffee bar when they were forced to sit with each other. By using this improvisation technique you are depositing into your actors a series of memories that reflect the kind of memories a married couple might have at the foundation of their relationship. It may not be relevant to any of the scenes in the movie, but that is not important—the honesty of their relationship is. Or you set up an improvisation with the same two actors that somewhat resembles but is not exactly the same as what happens to them in the movie. Perhaps it is an argument when they first broke up before they got married, and they improvise that action. In a sense, through rehearsal improvisation, you are giving memories to the actors as though they are deposits in a bank account of shared memories and emotions. Memories that they will take with them to the shoot and make the element of disbelief stronger and your job easier with them on the set. If they are halfway there, your job on set is halfway done!
This improvisation technique in rehearsal can also be beneficial to the dialogue in the script as it is being finalized. If you have a safe relationship with your actors and understand the use of improvisation, you can go pretty far in exploring the dialogue in the script. If the actors know the dialogue in the scene and are comfortable, there is a technique that Francis Coppola has used on projects that he is writing and directing. He makes sure that he has developed a comfortable rapport with his actors so that when he snaps his fingers once, they are free to improvise, and when he snaps them twice they go back to the text of the scene. Using this technique, improvisation can help make dialogue truthful, because sometimes dialogue may not be truthful from a character’s point of view, prompting the actor playing the role to say “I would never say this!” And very often the actor is right. So by using improvisation this way, you have a chance to see what is and isn’t truthful and work out what isn’t truthful in the dialogue. What starts to happen is that from the text (script) and the new text (improvised dialogue) you and or the writer are able choose the dialogue that works for the characters by merging the two together into the script. You have to know the difference between the improvisation and the original dialogue and make sure that they work together and do not develop because of one actor’s ego changing the dynamics of the scene. Exploration through improvisation often changes the color of the scene and makes it richer—which is, after all, what you are after.11
Having rehearsal time in a professional situation is a luxury. So directors have learned a technique of rehearsing on set during production. The process is logical and can be broken down into stages:
Using a floor plan, map out the basic choreography, or blocking, of each scene you will stage before you get to the set. In planning out the choreography of the scene you must take into account your coverage, camera placement, and the motivation of the actors.
On the day of production, recognize that your director of photography, assistant director, continuity person, and production crew must see the choreography before they can provide their individual contributions to the scene. So stage the basics of the scene with your actors as soon as you can. You should not try to rehearse towards performance but simply make sure the choreography is motivated and comfortable for your actors so they can elicit a performance later when you will refine the nuances of the staging and their relationships. It is at this time that you and your director of photography determine the first shot of the sequence. Once this is done, the stand-ins12 replace the actors while the technical crew goes to work to set up for the scene and the shot.
The actors go off to makeup and wardrobe while you discuss the visual concept of the scene with your director of photography to make sure you are on the same conceptual page. If the actors are already in makeup and wardrobe, allow them to go off and be by themselves, since the staging experience they have just had will begin to sift into place for them—they will be working on their lines and dialogue among themselves to ensure that when they are called back to the set they will be ready to work within the constructs of the staging map. This will also help solidify their relationships for the scene.
If you need to, you can rehearse with your actors off to the side while the crew is setting up. These rehearsals should concern the interpretative aspects of the characters so you can make sure that the actors are clear about who they are in the scene and what the scene is about for them. Since they are away from the set, they will not feel the reality of the scene, so you should not expect a performance—in fact, you don’t want one. You want to make sure that the performance they give is done when the camera is rolling and not before.
Your first assistant director will tell you once everything is ready on the set for you and your actors: the location/set is lit, the camera is in place, and the crew is ready to see the staging and the scene in front of the camera.
Now, you and your actors go to work. All eyes are on you as you take the time to refine the staging and the nuances of the scene in front of the crew, while at the same time allowing the camera crew to rehearse the shot, the sound crew to rehearse for sound, and the other crew members to double-check to make sure that what they did during the setup is now in place. It also allows the actors to get used to the technical environment while having all eyes focus on them and to be the only people concentrating on getting the performance for the specific shot.
It is important that you do not over-rehearse the actors at this point. Once you feel comfortable that the actors and the camera have been rehearsed enough, you are ready to do a take.13 The little bit of adrenaline and energy that the actors are feeling at this point is important. It is akin to the feeling they get just before the curtain goes up on a play. It is creative energy waiting to be released! It usually results in strong performances and is exactly what you want as you get into the scene. You might take a moment just before the camera rolls to double-check the choreography of the staging if it affects the camera movement or something else technically. After all, once you say “action,” the actors begin their internalization in bringing the characters to life—you don’t want to say “cut” in the middle of the scene because of something technical that could have been avoided with a last minute check.
This rehearsal process during production always works if you adhere to the procedure: plan, choreograph for crew to see, excuse the actors to work alone or with you, come back to the set and refine rehearsal for the shot, and shoot the shot. It saves a lot of time, gets the crew and actors all on the same creative page quickly, supports the actors’ egos and their performances, and keeps you in creative control the entire time—the conductor of the orchestra! It also allows you great latitude to be inventive with the scene and the actors’ performances since all is ready when the actors are called back to the set to do final rehearsals and shooting of the shot. Your actors will become very comfortable working this way and be able to improvise performances within the parameters of the choreography (staging).
In the movie The Score, director Frank Oz permitted Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro to improvise in several scenes and to play with the relationship that the characters have with each other. One scene in particular is in a bar that was shot with two cameras in which Brando is convincing De Niro of doing one more “score” for him. Brando and De Niro are sitting next to each other and talking while enjoying a drink. De Niro is listening and responding to Brando’s pleading. Oz allows Brando to improvise on each take, knowing that Brando will somehow work the cue line for an actor to enter into the scene when he can say “cut” at the end of the shot. Each time Brando does the scene, he keeps the same intent of the words but changes the pleading slightly, giving little nuances to each take. Both De Niro and Brando are skilled actors who speak the same acting language and are comfortable working this way.14
Above all, you must make sure that you create a safe environment for your actors, one in which they can concentrate and be focused. You are setting this work atmosphere, which is one that affects the actors’ truth.
It is the director’s responsibility to elicit true performances from actors when working on the set in spite of the technical equipment and crew members present. Therefore it is imperative that you work toward maintaining an environmental truth for the actor when it comes time for the camera to roll. Actors need elements that help their imagination achieve that truth. It can be their wardrobe, the setting, the lighting, or their imagination, which in many instances the director must continue to stimulate.15 Actors will work on their dialogue with one another, but only when they can feel the environment in some fashion will they truly deliver the performances. The movie Dogville is a stylistic film that was shot entirely on a soundstage, with the walls of the sets drawn out on the floor of the soundstage. Actors moved from one area to another when telling this highly dramatic story. But to help the actors maintain the environmental truth of who and where they were, director/writer Lars Von Trier made sure that the wardrobe, props, and sparse furniture were accurate to the time and place of the story. This helped Nicole Kidman, Ben Gazzara, James Caan, Lauren Bacall, and others give performances that were focused and true to the story.
Maintaining an environmental truth for actors sometimes gets difficult, especially when actors are required to perform in front of a green screen or digital effects stage, as in movies such as King Kong and Sin City. In those instances, directors must appeal to the actor’s imagination (which is of course one of their greatest tools) and use a storyboard technique (still or animated) to appeal to their imagination before they perform on a green screen or effects arena.
When directors work from the perspective of establishing an environmental truth for their actors to work within, the result will help the camera find its place in the scene. The camera never lies, so the truth must begin with the actors and carry forward to the camera. It all begins and ends with the performance: the performance of the actors and the camera working together to tell the story, with one giving reason for the other!
The staging of a scene, also known as blocking or choreography, is a key factor of the rehearsal process and one that is essential for actors, as the staging must motivate the actors toward a realistic performance. Staging should be pre-thought by the director during the planning stage and refined during the rehearsal stage. It should be natural and not forced for any reason. It is based on a set of realities of location, relationships, and the human condition—and of course the camera shots you wish to achieve. But it is never staged just for the camera. The camera can go anywhere, so the credibility must come from the actors first. One of the best exercises you can do to understand staging is to go to a public place, such as an airport or an amusement park, and observe people. What do they look like? How do they react to one another? Why do they move? How do they stand, sit, and eat? How do they relate physically to one another? In this way you will see naturalistic movement and physical relationships the way they are. You are in a profession of directing the human condition—what better way to know it than to watch it!
All staging must be motivated. Motivated staging will always help actors understand their inner truth, and it must be motivated by the concept and themes of the scenes and the relationship that one character plays toward another character. For example, the action of a simple kiss. Think of the different meanings if the guy kisses the girl or the girl kisses the guy. They are kissing each other, but what will the guy feel like when the girl introduces the kiss as being different than if it is vice versa?
Beginning directors often have a notion to allow actors to stage themselves and move whenever and wherever their instinct tells them. But working this way results in:
Actors never maintaining their continuity from shot to shot;
Camera shots for coverage16 being inconsistent and difficult to achieve; and
Intuitive behavior to be one of the actor and not of the character.
Most important, when directors work entirely this way they will have a very difficult time in maintaining coverage. And it is coverage that gives the editor and director the ability to shift focus, develop dynamics, and accomplish the vision of the story in postproduction. However, if you give actors the freedom to move within a certain and specific space while keeping in mind where your camera is or can be, their instinct as the characters should help define their motivations. Coming at it with a definite idea, suggesting it to your actors, and then having them work within the defined space is best of all—especially when the staging may be limited by the type of camera equipment you are using.
When blocking, the closer you are able to keep the actors together, the easier it will be for them to maintain relationships through the single-camera narrative process. The farther apart they are, the more difficult it is for their creative energies to interconnect. That is to say that if you choreograph your actors with unlikely or atypical distances between them (as we often see on stage), the more difficult it will be for them to continue the nuances of their performances, as they will have to reach out to connect to their partner. Further, and more important, if they are staged this way, it will be difficult for them to maintain the nuances of their performances once camera placement invades and interrupts their acting space. So it is important that the staging and character relationships are moving in the right direction, with believable acting performances, before the camera is introduced into their space. This begins with natural staging with realistic spatial motivations, whether you are doing the master shot, the two-shot, or the close-up.
The equipment you use and the visual concept may also limit the staging. For example, certain types of dollies17 have specific limitations that affect how they can be used. Hand-held shots that rely upon a certain visual style and steadicam18 shots provide another way of staging. We will discuss these in a later chapter.
One of the problems inherent in directing for the screen involves the dynamics of the image as it relates to the staging. You are basically dealing with a flat image—the screen—so you must find ways to create depth and dynamics to bring the audience into the story. Cinematographers do this with light and shadow; directors do it with camera movement. But you can also do it with the staging. Once again, all staging must be motivated. Whenever possible, find motivated staging on the diagonal (diagonal as opposed to a lateral physical relationship of one character to the other). With the use of a foreground, middle ground, and background objects in the frame, you will be able to create dynamic shots for the camera.
Diagonal staging
Most important, though, is that the director must help the actor move in the right direction for the concept of the narrative through logical, motivated, natural choreography.
Motivating actors also means looking for those moments in the staging when physicality or physical action can be used to help actors get to where they need to be from moment to moment. It will draw out an inner truth in their performance, as physical action always elicits an internal response and permits the actor’s psyche to get to a specific motivated moment during the camera coverage process. The movement can be as simple as an actor moving to another actor, a kiss, or a slap, or as detailed and specific as taking a drink or eating at a specific time in the scene. All physical action helps the instinct of the actor to remember the impulse each time that movement is performed, whether it is in conjunction with dialogue or other movement. It is one of the reasons why directors, during the process of camera coverage, look to physical movement as a starting and stopping point for a shot.
If the scene is choreographed well, it will create a realistic environment for actors, and the camera will find its own place to tell the story. The staging and the actor must always motivate the camera, never the other way around! And the camera should always be thought of as an additional actor and be included somehow in the staging. It too will need motivation, which we discuss in the next chapter.
Intuition is your greatest tool in making artistic and directorial decisions.
Initially, things begin with casting.
Look for life in your casting session.
The relationship between the actor and the director is unique.
One of the first obligations for any actor is to play relationships.
Directors watch for the actor’s shortcomings, which lead to an implausible performance.
An actor’s psyche as the character needs constant reinforcement.
The technique for rehearsal during production is plan, stage, set up, rehearse, and shoot.
Directors must work toward maintaining an environmental truth for the actor.
Staging must motivate the actor toward a realistic performance.
Directors should create visual depth and dynamics in their staging.
The staging and the actor must always motivate the camera, not vice versa.
1Francis Ford Coppola Master Class, UCLA, October 20, 2004.
2Norman Jewison was trying to find the right Tevye for Fiddler on the Roof and it wasn’t until he saw a production of the show in London in which Chaim Topol appeared as Tevye that he knew he had found his Tevye.
3I was hired to direct a production of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet that was to star Richard Chamberlain, who had just completed a season with the Old Vic in London. Richard had director approval, and knowing this when I met him, I was very nervous. But we talked about everything except the project and soon found that we had something in common: the love of the theater. When I left the meeting, he made me quite happy by telling the producer that he was excited to work with me.
4Sofia Coppola played Michael Francis Rizzi, the baby being baptized with Michael Corleone as his godfather.
5Computer generated images
6Sometimes you just have to be rude. I directed a well known actor in a musical and during one ensemble rehearsal when he messed up a note in a quartet, he being the best known of all the actors, asked to immediately do it again. I gently said “no” to him and let him know that we needed to move on. He pouted a minute and literally stamped his feet but he stayed in the scene and worked harder to be convincing in the role.
7Even atmosphere or extras in a scene should be playing relationships to one another. By playing those relationships they become convincing characters to the story. For example, is there any doubt that the wedding guests in the opening scene of The Godfather are not relatives or friends of either the bride or groom?
8Salvi.
9Ibid.
10Situation comedies and soap operas are detailed in Chapter 10.
11Several years ago I employed this technique with a screenplay that I wrote and found that the improvisational dialogue was more intense and stronger than the written dialogue. It was immediately incorporated into the script.
12Stand-ins are extras who watch where the actors are staged and replicate those positions so that the director of photography and his/her crew can light the scene and get the set ready without using the actors for this purpose. They are referred to as “the second team.”
13Roll the camera for picture.
14Although Brando and De Niro appeared in the The Godfather Part II together, The Score is the only movie in which they have actually played scenes with one another. Both are members of The Actors Studio.
15Salvi’s book is excellent in explaining these techniques.
16The series of shots that are planned and required to tell the story in the scene.
17A platform on which the camera is mounted to permit it to move.
18A steadicam is a device that is worn by the camera operator on which the camera is mounted and through the use of a video assist the image from the camera appears to float in space and give a fluid camera movement. A steadicam is a staple in such shows as West Wing and ER.