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Hey lit.org readers:
I thought I would share my film-making side. So here are a few essays this week on screen-writing, directing and also an anthology of a shoot in LA last year: twelve mini-blogs to my actors as we shot three films for eventual release on the internet.
Cheers,
Michael
I thought as a change I would write about the difficult job of movie directing and working with live actors. Unlike writing, directing is truly a collaborative effort.
A good director can't do much with a lousy actor and a good actor can't do much with a lousy director. And both a good actor and director can't do much with a lousy script.....
A few thoughts on acting and directing. Hope this helps....
You start to ask questions about the beats within the scene. What is the main image in the scene? What is the main EMOTIONAL EVENT? What do the characters actually do in the scene and what does this say about their needs and desires?
Once enough questions are asked then the actor can start making playable choices for the scene based on the images he sees, his own memory, and his own life-experience. Layers of association and understanding are put to good use in this process by both director and actor.
You look for clues about what the characters are NOT SAYING. This NOT SAYING is just as important than what is being actually said and will lead to an actual happening or emotional event in the scene. The character's actual behavior will expose what he is really feeling. The emotional structure of the scene is being laid bare and acting choices can finally be made intelligently.
The words on the script can finally be given voice. Hard-won insights lead to powerful truths being discovered by the director and actor and they then both TURN THEMSELVES ON for the looming moment by moment performance. The facts and images of the scene are the key to what's possibly hiding behind the lines.
If the writer is now the director like myself. I need to switch hats and look at the script as if I never wrote it. That's how I re-discover what my unconscious was trying to say when I was writing. Good scripts are complex with a rich-subworld hinted at, but not over-explained. Good scripts have many layers of richness. A gold-mine for any good actor.
I am a screenwriter, but it's just the tip of the ice-berg. 95% of the scripts subworld is underwater. This is why I have to do script analysis on my screenplays. The submerged ice-berg is a vast world of behavior and feeling.
The director and actors must operate in this vast sub-world of scenes and characters. There are multiple choices here....an ocean of choices and many are equally as good as any other. But some are bad choices. What's important is to believe this vast subworld existence, to create in it, and to trust in it....the actors and director create the vast subworld of the script moment by moment, shot by shot
The skilled writer has just left a rich map for the big digging process.
Never sacrifice the art of listening for an actor's bag of tricks.
Acting and directing is a shamanic process.
It's a meditation...
All the director or actor can do is to just prepare and be ready, to meet and trust the moment, in each scene, each second of traveling in this deeper subworld hinted at by the script.
Good actors are natural. They don't watch themselves. They don't try to control even a fraction of their performance and they are not afraid to make mistakes...
The line of the script is the " said " world of the movie. This is the writer's domain. The " unsaid " subworld of the script is the domain of the actor PERIOD. The director's job is to bridge these two worlds. No mean feat.
The camera is also an actor, but a mute one that translates visually the actor translating the line....double translation....there are many choices for the director here.
Ultimately sound and light become characters too....a good director and editor know this too. Triple translation is the last layer before the movie leaves the nest.....
Michael
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I am a writer/director/producer who has pioneered not only a new genre INNER SCIFI, but a new way to transmit it via a video interactive website.
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Screen-writing
