For our Week 9 lecture, we were fortunate enough to have the head of Media come in and take our lecture for the day. Dr. Carlin is a renowned filmmaker and writer and therefore his attendance at our lecture was greatly appreciated.
The lecture was a basic set-up of the do's and don'ts of directing. Most of them I already knew but regardless, it was interesting to see the way Dr. Carlin orchestrated the scenes to show just what can go wrong if you direct badly.
Basically, as a director, you have to accept that their is an element of your actor's performance that is completely out of your control. This is the area of their body which only they have insight into - their brain. This we can not control because as much as we would like to think, we as directors, have to accept that our actors are not puppets or robots we can just pull strings for or switch on. They are moving, thinking, breathing human beings who require food, water, comfort and understanding in order to produce a good result.
So how do we encourage the best performance of our actors then? Dr. Carlin asked Gina to come up to the front and to merely sit in the chair in front of us with no obvious direction being given. Uncomfortably, Gina sat in silence for a minute before Dr. Carlin stepped in and whispered something in her ear which we as the audience were unable to hear. Gina's body language and actions changed immediately. She began to look up, her blinking slowed right down, and her mouth moved through a range of limited motions. I could tell right away that she had been asked to count but when her brow began to furrow slightly and her eyes began to crease, I also realised she was experiencing some concentration issues so I thought maybe Dr. Carlin had asked her to remember a specific number of times she had done something and she was attempting to count the ones she remembered.
As it was, all Dr. Carlin had asked Gina to do was to count upwards from 1 but Gina did admit she had found it difficult to concentrate on the numbers. He then whispered again into her ear and again her body language changed. She became very agitated, bouncing slightly in her chair and looking about fervently. At first, I thought she was desperate for the toilet but when I realised she wasn't going to get up from her chair that there must have been something else that was keeping her rooted to the chair. Obviously, if you need to go to the bathroom, you go or ask to be excused, neither of which Gina carried out. It turned out that she had been told to pretend that she had forgotten an assignment was due that morning and she had only just remembered as she was sitting in class. I know that exact feeling Gina was exhibiting and the minute Dr. Carlin explained to us the scene, I could see how the direction carried through her performance.
Dr. Carlin then explained that it is extremely important not to "tell" your actors how to act but instead to "direct" them on how to act. To give them clues and little hints as to the type of performance you want them to give you and to encourage them nonetheless even if they do not get it right first try.
Dr. Carlin then asked for two more volunteers and I stood up to take on the role of a woman in a small part of a script he had. At first, he asked us to merely read through the lines so that we could get a gist of the film and what happens. As I was reading the script, I was a little confused about the context of the events depicted and assumed the girl I was playing was angry at the man she encounters in the middle of nowhere and therefore, exhibited this in my performance. Dr. Carlin then developed our performances by asking us to try slight variations on the way we blocked out the scene until finally, we were told to remove the scripts and perform it by memory. That I have to admit was hard. I knew from my acting classes last year that the most important thing about acting is looking like you are "reacting" to what your other half in the scene is saying rather than just reciting your lines. I found though that trying to remember the lines as well as the blocking and look like I had heard all my partners lines for the first time was really difficult. Needless to say, the scene was no Oscar winning performance but it definitely allowed me to get a feel for how the actors will be feeling when I put them through the same paces.
So, the lecture in a nutshell:
1. Do not tell your actors what to do: Give them directions and see what they come up with instead. You may be surprised.
2. Treat your actors like real human beings because, well, that's what they are.
3. Understand the difficulties your actors are facing as well as your own.
and finally,
4. Have fun with it. After all, acting is a form of playing so play with the actors and keep it entertaining.
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