As Assistant Director in my Studio Shoot team this workshop was incredibly important to me because I will be partly responsible for talking to the Actors on set as well as the Director. I have worked with Actors in the past and have usually had varying degrees of success but usually nothing too bad. I wanted to use this workshop as a chance to see what the best ways were to approach situations when actors are involved.
We began by doing an exercise where by we had two people pretending to be blind or in the dark (had theres eyes open though) and one was trying to steal off the other. Then we did the same exercise again but this time they actually had to have their eyes closed so they couldn't see. We found that when they actually had there eyes closed the things they were doing were actually for specific reason rather than them just playing up to the part. This was to help demonstrate to us that you should never have something happen in your piece just for the sake of it because then it will look fake with the actors playing up to the role. However when you give them proper direction and they know why they are doing this then they begin to get into the role a lot more and actually experience it like when they had their eyes closed in the task. They were doing what felt right to the part.
That brings me onto another interesting lesson I learnt which was that you should never go into piece 100% knowing exactly what you want your actors to do and how you want them to express the emotions etc because then it won't have depth to it. You need to explain the situation to the actors and block it out with them but if they do it in a slightly different way to what you imaged take a moment to decided if this works better because most the time will as the actors will be doing what is natural in the moment were as when you plan things it is only happening in your head. Let the actors develop the role in there way but with your NICE guidance.
You should also use specific ways of speaking to your actors so that they pick up on the part properly. Always be aware how your phrase things because if you turn round and say act angry then they are just pretending and also angry can be displayed in many ways but what is the character actually trying to do? To answer this question you must use Verbs instead. So for example you could tell your actor in this section your are trying to coax her and then you are trying to stroke her. This gives the actors a much more insightful action to try and achieve because now they know what emotion to show but also they know why so it will come more naturally to them.
Also general rules on set are to make sure that when you are rehearsing and blocking things through with your actors that you never have technical people getting involved as this will just seem rude. You need to first just focus on helping your actors achieve what they need to and then you think technically. Don't do both at the same time and NEVER have a camera painting at them while they block through and rehearse as this will just slow things down and make them uncomfortable and confused. Also when you have done a take and shout cut always let your actors know how they are doing POLITELY before talking to your technical team. Gives actors their notes first and also be positive because if you go straight in with negative comments time and time again you will insult and upset the actors and then you will never get as good performance out of them.
Then we looked at more specific ways of taking to actors for example how best to achieve a characters status in a piece. This is actually all about how the other actors in a scene perceive them more than how they come across. So you should always make everyone on set aware of who has what status if it is not clear. It usually is because you can tell by how the script is written but it always helps to make sure they know this. Also a good way to have a better more exciting scene is to have stars constantly changing. So for example in an argument they will be competing for status at the end of the day but they can go through many stages to get there. They can be out down by the others or they can get nervous etc and the actors will usually if given the correct instructions in the best way (spoken about above) then they will have a good way of demonstrating this though there acting anyway.
We then thought about the best ways of casting people for the piece. Because all our pieces have 5 or no words in them it is all very movement based so we thought about ways to show that and we had it explained to us that we need to firstly look at our piece and decided what traits and abilities we need each character to have. Then we need to think of a scenario that we can set everyone that auditions that will test there abilities at each of these required traits. Then whoever handles these in the way you want will hopefully be the right person for the part. It may also help to bring stimulus if needed like maybe some music or props to help with the scenario. If you manage to cast the right actors for the part then the actual shoot and making of the piece will flow and work a lot better which is why casting is such an important process.
Overall this workshop has been very informative and helped me get more of an understanding of the best ways to deal with actors. I am a lot more confident now to go into the shoot and work with the actors.
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