Blog -> Working with Actors
So in changing over to this new approach, one of the things we clearly wanted to work out is how to get actors’ performances as natural as possible.
Traditionally, when making a film, there are lights all over the place, often right up in the actors faces. Often the actors are not allowed to move from pre-set positions, or their movement has to be very specifically prescribed to get the shot, the right camera angle, the right lighting, etc. It’s always a constant battle to get good, natural and truthful performances under these conditions; conditions that actively work against an actor leaving himself alone.
This term “leaving yourself alone” might be a little obscure to people who have no acting training. But basically it means acting as if no one is watching. I think when you are performing on stage, you have to be very aware that people are watching, because your performance has to reach all of the people watching with no external aids(sometimes there are mics in a theater). On camera acting is just the opposite. You have to behave as if no one is watching at all. Because in the world of the film, most of the time, no one would be watching the scenes. This is absolutely critical to a good film performance, I think. You don’t need to communicate anything to an audience because the camera will see every little thought that passes through your head. And in fact, if you’re ever on set with me, you’ll often see me giving the direction: “Just think the thoughts,” which means exactly that. Just think character’s intentions, thoughts, whatever is happening for them, and that’s enough. I use this direction a lot to get actors to stop being “too big” with a performance.
Well, in this film, I’m taking things a step further. As I said above, often when shooting a film, there are many technical elements that can make it difficult on actors. In addition, actors often have to play scenes out of order, due again to the technical necessities of filming.
With this film, I started to let actors play out scenes in real time, alone in the room. Meaning, we completely dress the set and light the room ahead of time, and then the crew leaves, and the actors perform in the room as if in real life. Some of the new DSLR cameras that shoot video make this more viable, as they are able to shoot in largely natural light. But the new conceit of this film also makes it possible.
The result has been up to 20-30 minute scenes with the actors just alone in the room, with no crew, no gear, nothing but them existing in the imaginary circumstances of the scene. This has so far really made for some interesting results.
None of this is new, really. Many people have tried this before. We had some measure of success ourselves with this in our last Man-Hole episode, and our last short, EVIE. And I think my buddy Zak works in a similar way.
This way of working is by nature improvisatory. I don’t sit down and write a 30 min scene. I give the characters objectives for the scene, we rehearse it, work out the beats within the scene, and the actors pretty much fill in the rest.
Even though there are no lines written, we still try to be very specific about what happens in the scene. Usually we find this through improvisation in rehearsal, but then hone it with further rehearsals, so that the actors know what they are doing in the scene, what they need from the other characters, what they need to accomplish, etc. So in the end, we hope that the scene will be pretty tight.
The problem to watch out for in this way of working, is the actors going madly off track with the scene and the whole thing devolving into a bad improv class. This is where the actors’ training comes in, I think. The actors still have to know how to work a scene, how to pursue objectives, how to make the connections necessary to personalize the material. That’s all training, and in my view, necessary to the process. Untrained actors might be able to get to natural performances, but can they do so within the imaginary circumstances of the scene and actually adhere to the storyline?