Experience workshopping actors

[npcoombs]

It has been fun and very tiring. Partly due to having to travel to london each time.

It has been difficult because my Japanese actor is 100% professional and has worked with all the top Asian directors. My Bolivian woman has never acted before. So there is always a skills gap, but I think it is getting there.

Minus lunchtimes it has taken us 10 hours to prepare for the shoot. The quality of the acting has improved dramatically and I am even quite happy with the performances and pacing achieved in some scenes, others are still a bit weak.

The whole process has been made a lot easier by me knowing pretty much exactly what I want from the performances, and Junichi has helped a lot get Corina in the right frame of mind.

Observations from my first time working with actors is:

1) What looks like overacting in reality looks fine through the lens.
2) It is much easier to brush over flaws in acting and pacing when you use multiple camera angles and quick edits.
3) What looks fine on the page often seems ludicrous when acted!

All in all it has been amazing to see how essential these workshops actually are. The shoot will, of course, be much harder!

check out a rough clip from the workshop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buwUTSU_FYg

[Evan Kubota]

3) What looks fine on the page often seems ludicrous when acted!

And vice versa ;) You're very lucky that you have a chance to work through your script in detail before shooting... I'm definitely going to do something similar for my next film.

[npcoombs]

Yes this workshopping was invaluable. The whole thing would be a complete mess without it. Even afer workshopping I dont feel 100% confident that the performances will emerge how they should...faith I guess....

I managed to rent a small light for just £15 for the weekend, will be interesting to try it out

http://www.paguk.com/C6_Orbitor/C6information.htm

[mattias]

that sounds great. looking forward to seeing the results. a piece of advice, often useful to anyone who's doing good: stay out of the confort zone, and make sure the actors do too, especially the more experienced ones.

/matt

[npcoombs]

Fucking hell my shoot has completely collapsed. :evil:

My 'actress' pulled out 2 days before we were due to start filming, and by the skin of my teeth I didn't end up losing a lot of money...although I have lost face with my professional actor.

I suppose I should have seen things coming. But no with junichi heading off to China in december the whole film is likely to have collapsed.

So back to square 1. Which is liberating in a way.

My new short will:

1) Not be filmed all in the Underground - this was a bad idea from the start.

2) Feature two professional actors only.

3) The script I want to do will be about arranged marriages again, but with less on-the-nose melodrama and not try to pull off character arcs in such a short film-time.

I am thinking of inter-cutting the arrival of the girl for the arranged marriage with their final fraught confrontation at their apartment.

Drawing parallels and clues from the sections showing her arrival to inform the final confrontation 3 years after the marriage, showing the transformation of the characters. And showing how the seeds of discontent and lies were there from the beginning - very much drawing on Francios Ozon's device in 5x2.

The apartment setting for the final confrontation will allow me to concentrate on the acting. The inter-cut arrival scenes will inject a bit of movement, life an exterior into the claustrophobic confrontation scenes.

The confrontation (present day) will be in B&W and the arrival (3 years ago) in colour to mix up the usual expectations of tonal shifts and time, also to reflect the shift from optimism/hope to despair.

[Evan Kubota]

Sorry to hear about your logistics issues... I really like the idea of intercutting the early days of the 'marriage' with the breakdown - but I might reconsider playing games with color/B&W. Although I have been guilty of it myself, I think it's been done way too much - and Raging Bull already depicted the present as B&W with color glimpses of the past ;)

If it were my project I would do everything in either color or B&W and simply intercut the two time periods. It should be very clear from the context which is which, and not using different looks will emphasize the disjuncture in time even more.

I assume you've watched a lot of films by the Dardennes. Seems close to what you're going for here...

[steve hyde]

...sounds like a good plan. Looking forward to seeing how the project evolves.

Steve

[npcoombs]

Sorry to hear about your logistics issues... I really like the idea of intercutting the early days of the 'marriage' with the breakdown - but I might reconsider playing games with color/B&W. Although I have been guilty of it myself, I think it's been done way too much - and Raging Bull already depicted the present as B&W with color glimpses of the past ;)

If it were my project I would do everything in either color or B&W and simply intercut the two time periods. It should be very clear from the context which is which, and not using different looks will emphasize the disjuncture in time even more.

I assume you've watched a lot of films by the Dardennes. Seems close to what you're going for here...

Yeah I was thinking of either colour/B&W or just B&W, maybe using different lighting or time of the day to signal the shift in just B&W work work better.

Definately the camerawork style I was going for was completely inspired by the Dardenne brothers. My whole first scene was going to be one continuous handheld shot. Im not sure how this camerawork style would mix with a formal device like cross-cutting time periods.

Perhaps the final scene can be shot in this way and the meeting scenes in a more relaxed formal way. I have even considered getting a different director to shoot the meeting scenes.

[Evan Kubota]

Im not sure how this camerawork style would mix with a formal device like cross-cutting time periods.

I think it would be really good and would reinvigorate that frankly tired device, if you simply cut between handheld sequences with no visual cues as to which is which.

[steve hyde]

...I could see the Dardenne influences in your workshop video too. That's cool. Perhaps you should constrain yourself to *present moments* instead of retrospective ones. In the mail order bride tragedy that I told you about over email, the bride left her husband after 12 days. Maybe you can compress the time frames you are dreaming up. What is the central line of action in your story?....From a writer's perspective, what is your story really about?

I am still seeing lots of "settings" and "character arcs" that lead to what? You speak of "confrontation," but how does the confrontation connect to the theme? If you clearly state the theme you are working on, I think we will be able to have a more productive discussion on your story. Once you firmly decide on a theme, I bet the story will write itself....

and don't forget,

"if your story is about what it is about, you're fucked."

I can't remember who said that, but I love the quote...

Steve

[Evan Kubota]

There was a GQ article a while ago about a guy (photographer?) who 'imported' a bride from Colombia. It worked out quite badly.

Is the focus here on the bride?

"if your story is about what it is about, you're fucked."

However, many master directors claimed that to be exactly what they were doing - their films were only about what they were about, and cream going into coffee was just cream going into coffee.

As Kieslowski said: "I tell all of my younger colleagues who I teach, and no one seems to listen, that when a you light a cigarette lighter in a film it means the cigarette lighter's lit, and if it isn't lit, it means the lighter doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything else, and it'll never mean anything else. If once in 10,000 times it turns out to mean something else, that means somebody's achieved a miracle. Welles achieved that miracle once. Only one director in the world has managed to achieve that miracle in the last few years and that's Tarkovsky.... what I mean is the literal nature of film. If I have a goal, than it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it... although I keep on trying."

[steve hyde]

There was a GQ article a while ago about a guy (photographer?) who 'imported' a bride from Colombia. It worked out quite badly.

Is the focus here on the bride?

"if your story is about what it is about, you're fucked."

However, many master directors claimed that to be exactly what they were doing - their films were only about what they were about, and cream going into coffee was just cream going into coffee.

As Kieslowski said: "I tell all of my younger colleagues who I teach, and no one seems to listen, that when a you light a cigarette lighter in a film it means the cigarette lighter's lit, and if it isn't lit, it means the lighter doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything else, and it'll never mean anything else. If once in 10,000 times it turns out to mean something else, that means somebody's achieved a miracle. Welles achieved that miracle once. Only one director in the world has managed to achieve that miracle in the last few years and that's Tarkovsky.... what I mean is the literal nature of film. If I have a goal, than it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it... although I keep on trying."

I am under the impression Kieslowski was talking about metaphor and if that is the case I totally agree. I'm not particularly fond of metaphor either. Or he might be talking about film theorists and if that is the case I agree about that too: don't read into the lighter too much etc etc... Although I'm always interested in the theories film theorists dream up since film theorists find so much in works of cinema...

What I am talking about is thematic focus. Is a film about a mail order bride about being disillusioned or is it about the process of becoming disillusioned. Two different stories. One is active and the other is passive. Is she a hero or a victim? For me the themes of drama are tied to the line of action of the main character and her response to antagonism. If her line of action is pointed and focused then that line of action is what the story is about...It is the core of the story because the behavior shapes the character. It is the behavior that makes the story character-driven. This is why there is no compelling story until we know *who* the characters are....time, place, age and gender are all important characteristics, but the truth of characters lies in psychology...

So the writers rule of thumb quote : "if it is about what it is about then your fucked"... for me.... means if your film has no psychological truth and complexity then the story will be a bore... or worse...


Steve

[npcoombs]

The story I am imagining (although I haven't written it yet) is of a naive man, a working class or lower middle class worker living in an undesirable area of London and unable to cope with life on his own, with a slightly patriarchal and hopeless attitude to women, but also a kind of golden naivety and goodness. The woman is more mysterious, she is calculating, callous and aspiring, from a ruthlessness to succeed and not to be trapped in her humble beginnings. She uses him and does not love him. In her time in England she has transformed herself and is looking to break free from him now she is approaching attaining her citizenship.

The theme is lying.

I will call him Masahito and her Sylvia just for the sake of this scene outline. This does not necessarily imply a Japanese/Polish dynamic...

SCENE 1
Masahito comes home and searches for his wife Sylvia. The flat is not tidy. As he changes out of his work-clothes all he finds is piles of dirty and un-ironed shirts strewn about everywhere. Returning to the kitchen, plates and dishes are piled up high and precariously. Everything is filthy, every surface is covered by letters, bills and rubbish of various sorts. He makes an attempt to unstack some plates and do some washing up, but they collapse all around him. He sits at the kitchen table and tries to make some calls. The first few calls go unanswered, but the third call is answered. A friend who he hasn't spoken to in a long time, shocked that he would call. He tells her that Sylvia has been gone for days, without a word. She tells him that he should never had trusted her from the start.

SCENE 2
He is running to the the bus-station, dressed very well and groomed. He has a big bouquet of flowers in his hands. There are people everywhere and he has a printed out person profile in his hands. Then he spots her. Sylvia has her hair pulled back and is dressed in a thick jacket. She is taller than he is, but is nervous and her English is poor and hesitant. He takes her down the street and she looks about in wonder, telling him that she has always wanted to come to London. They engage in small talk and laugh at their problems communicating. She holds his hand and he is very happy.

SCENE 3
He starts pulling draws out and rooting through them. He is desperately looking for something, but is far from obvious what he is searching for. He goes to the room and pulls everything out of the wardrobe. He opens boxes and allows them to spill all over the floor. He pulls out her jackets and pulls the pockets inside out. Cigarettes and receipts fall over the floor. He looks under the bed, the pillows, everywhere. He finds something.

SCENE 4
They walk through the park and she tells him how happy she is to be here. That life in her country is terrible, poor and boring, that no matter what she does or aspires to she would be no more than a manual worker. She tells him that she was so impressed with him because of his job in the electronics company, that they are similar because they are both ambitious people. She takes his hand and puts her case aside. She just wants to run and feel free. They kiss under the trees.

SCENE 5
The door of the flat swings open and Sylvia storms in, a whirlwind of energy. She pretty much ignors Masahito and does not seem at all concerned by the general mess and disorder. She is a different woman now. She is wearing high boots, fashionable clothes and her hair is styled. Her English is also now very good, almost as good or better than Masahito's. She puts on the kettle and lights a cigarette. He asks her where she has been and she just laughs at him. She taunts him, well aware of her own power. She tells him she has been at another man's house and that she has just some back to collect some things and that she is going to leave him. Her self-assuredness is so complete that she even takes pity on him, consoling him that he will find someone else.

SCENE 6
They go to a hotel. It is a nice, upmarket place in the centre. Masahito cracks open some wine and getting increasingly drunk, they feed each other some cakes from a Patisserie box, laughing and rolling about. Masahito offers the ring to her and playfully she accepts it. They make love.

SCENE 7
He turns on her, letting flow his hate for her and the lies and deceit he has put up with for years. She turns on him, and how lied to her from the start about the life she could expect with him, about how he was never what was sold to her. About how her life in England turned out to be nothing of what she expected. He pulls out divorce papers that he found in her drawers, shocking her by telling her he will divorce her now and that she will not be able stay and will not be able to stay in the country.

SCENE 8?

SCENE 9?

TBC

[Evan Kubota]

...this sounds more like a feature. How long were you estimating?

[npcoombs]

...this sounds more like a feature. How long were you estimating?

Im not sure as I am still in the process of brainstorming and beginning to write, but definately no longer than 20 minutes - maximum 2 minutes per scene.