Following up on my recent post on the subject of directing actors, in this post I will be discussing how I intend to apply those techniques by working with real actors. Over the past few weeks I have been shooting some minor sequences with the main actor of the film, who plays the character of Julian. Over that time we have developed a healthy and prosperous working relationship. We run ideas by each other frequently, and we look to reach a mutual conclusion regarding the characters goals, motivations and feelings at a particular point. In the back of my mind during the shooting and planning of these scenes, I was aware that we were coming toward an important scene between Julian and his daughter, Grace. I have already cast Grace through an actress that I had previously worked with. We recently met up and had a brief chat regarding the plans for the film, where I also brought up the prospect of rehearsals. I knew early on that I was going to hold rehearsals for the particular scene where the two characters meet for a few reasons. Reason one being that this is an incredibly integral scene in the film. We learn more of what each character is really about, what they stand for, and their relationship with each other. Another reason being that the location in which we plan this shoot is somewhere we won’t be able to continuously return to or have a lot of time to execute the scene. We maybe have two shoot days at the most, permitting we get access to the location. From these two reasons I decided the best way forward for everyone would be to have rehearsal sessions in advance. I tend to stay away from rehearsals, as my past approach has been to give the actors enough vague information and ideas for them to form the scene on the day. I decided against that this time around, I believe with good reason. I see this as an opportunity to allow the actors greater freedom and to understand more about their own process, through being open with each other and through practice. This is equally important for my own learning as a director, to see the acting process I have been studying put into practice. I have frequently acknowledged in the past that directing actors is not one of my strong points as a director. I do not intend to shy away from this and justify my failure by building on my strengths. From this exercise and my future commitment into the process of directing actors, I aim to build upon my weaknesses.
I am currently working out the structure of the rehearsals. I am doing so based on my research into Judith Westons techniques, but I’m keeping an open mind into any other potential techniques which surface. I am thoroughly intent on using the works of Sanford Meisner, an American theatre practitioner. The techniques used and pioneered by Meisner are still extremely relevant today, and continue to influence actors and acting coaches around the world today. One of the techniques I aim to incorporate into the rehearsal is the repetition technique. There are many goals of this exercise, and at the same time there are a lot of results you can get from it. On a simple level without getting into the many variations of the repetition technique, it is put in place to draw out an instinctive performance from an actor. It ensures that the actor has no time and place to think about line readings or how they are going to react, thus forcing actors to act on their intuition as human beings. Below are two examples of the Meisner repetition exercise which I looked at in particular. Both of these are fantastic examples of actors who are completely engaged and immersed within each other through the technique. This is from a series called '3 minute Meisner Mondays'. These videos gave me a solid platform in which I could base my own techniques and build upon them as I saw fit in my own rehearsal sessions.
The thing I have to keep in mind is that like these videos, I have to offer variation and I have to keep the actors engaged with each other, which is essentially the entire point of the exercise. I also have to find a way of relating the Meisner technique to my own rehearsals, and in the future, performances. The reasoning behind wanting to use these techniques within my rehearsal sessions is to rectify my past wrongs. Those included not having the actors fully engaged with each other, by getting them outside of their internalisations. Ironically if two actors are facing each other, if they are not engaged with each other they can retreat inside of themselves. That is a main issue a director can face when directing actors, and its something that the above videos partially address. Something which really struck me as profound wisdom during these videos was the phrase 'we will believe the behaviour before we believe the words'. From this a lightning bolt struck me. I was able to boil down what I wanted my rehearsal process to be about in a singular sentence - 'we have to get good at reading behaviour'. It is an actors job to create behaviour, but also to read it. From this idea I had the foundations of what I was going to be exploring and building upon. Within the context of the narrative this is especially significant. The rehearsals will occur between the actor and actress who play the roles of father and daughter. For this to work the audience need to feel a familiarity between the characters. This doesn't have to be a happy and welcoming familiarity, or a cold and distant one, it just means that you understand by their behaviour that the characters have a deep understanding of each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment