Tim Ritter's Production Corner

Production Corner # 6
by Tim Ritter

DIRECTING ACTORS
When it comes to directing your actors, I can definitely say I'm no expert. Part of being a director is getting the best performance from your talent that you can. But if an actor is really, really bad, there?s not a whole lot you can do. As mentioned, when casting your movie, do your homework on your actors in the early stage. If you cast people in roles that are suited to their real-life personalities, you'll save yourself a lot of hassles on the set.
A good director should most definitely have some acting background. Actors that turn to directing are able to really get good performances out of their talent because they know what the actors need. Even if you just want to direct, getting some experience in plays or in small movie roles is advisable, just so you can feel what an actor is going through. A good director lets the actors explore their characters a bit and is open to suggestions. Your job is to bring the emotions out of the actor that fit the character portrayal that you're trying to capture on video. If an actor is doing an extremely emotional scene where they have to cry, always give them time to gear up for the big moment. For many actors, it's very difficult to just "turn on the emotions" just because you say "action." Here's where you might give them some advice, like suggesting that they recall an extremely sad moment in their personal lives to draw upon. No need for them to tell you what it is, but drawing on personal experiences and emotions from real experiences is a good way to get decent performances out of actors.
On the set, get as much footage as you can and take your time on the emotional centerpieces of a performance. You can do a lot in editing, but one thing you can't "fix in the lab" is a bad performance. The only thing you can do there is cut it out! So do your best on getting what you need out of your actors. Always remember, if the right actor is in the right role, your role of director is that much easier. That means you can concentrate more on the blocking of the scenes and fine-tuning the performances as necessary. One thing I have always done with my movies is encourage improvisation and reasonable character changes that actors might have in mind. If an actor is persistent about doing something and you don't agree with what they want to do, you can shoot it both ways (the advantages of video!) and decide which way is better in editing. Once you see the scene in postproduction, you might decide what they did has merit after all.
Be flexible. Generally, the script is a blueprint to keep the story on track and get the project through to the end, but lots of things can change along the way. Don't shoot other people's ideas down just because they aren't your own. Use the best of everyone's talents. If your project is a no-budget movie, the only thing you're offering an actor is exposure and a chance for some creative input. Don't deny them that, if it's a reasonable request. You do have the draw the line somewhere, but think about the suggestions someone makes before just shrugging it completely off.
Some directors like complete control- and if that's the way you want to run things- make it clear from the beginning. They want every line said exactly as written and everything mimicked exactly as they act things out for the actors. While there's nothing creatively wrong with this approach, it's still best to tell your acting talent that this is the way it's going to be way up front. That way you won't get into conflicts on the set.
I?m going to go through a few experiences I've had shooting my movies that might assist you in dealing with talent. When making movies, you never stop learning things, and hopefully these experiences will help you if you run into similar situations while making your no-budget movie.
On one of my first features back in 1984, we cast an actress in the lead role that sort of lost interest in the whole thing as we went along. It became harder and harder to get her to come to the set, and her performance was abysmal. Our solution was to write her out of the script and bring one of the supporting actresses into the leading part. Unfortunately, the movie was already half done. We thought that since this was a horror flick, it wouldn't matter, that we could kill anybody off at any time and the audience would never notice.
We were wrong about that assumption. The characters were quite different, and killing the lead actress off early created many script problems and things that just wouldn't work themselves out. So I ended up rewriting the script, having to use such things as flashbacks, narration, and jumping back and forth in time to make the movie work. This really just mucked the whole storyline up and made everything much too confusing to follow.
In retrospect, the right thing to do would've been to either completely reshoot all the scenes with a new actress replacing the old one (which we viewed to be too costly at the time), or to simply just finish as best as we could with our original actress.
Now I know why most movies where the "script is being written as they shot" come out so bad. No one knows what?s going on and everything is just a big mess in editing. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, like Jaws, for instance, but I'd try to avoid doing this if at all possible.
With my second movie, a lot of the actors were hired at the last minute. It was impossible for them to memorize the lines exactly as they were written with only an hour before we planned to shoot. Of course, you try to avoid doing this at any cost, but sometimes it happens. Actors that are only required for a day or two just don't show up or quit, and you have everything else ready, such as a cool location and the equipment. So you find someone at the last minute to fill in for the part.
This is where letting an actor improvise comes in very handy. I started doing this way back in 1985, before it all became "the rage" with reality TV and in documentary movies like The Blair Witch Project. What's really cool about improvised dialogue is that it can make a mediocre actor a decent one, especially if they have trouble memorizing lines or if they have a flat, cardboard delivery of the lines that they are required to say. Freeing them from this constraint sometimes adds new levels to the character and really wild things happen, especially if the actor is quick on his feet or good with comebacks. If you get two people together that are really good at keeping the improv together, then it's all the better.
A word of caution though: test your actors on this before you try. Not everyone has good improv skills, and if it's not written on the page, they have no idea what to do or say. There's nothing worse than rolling the camera and having frightened talent look into your lens and say, "I don't know what to say!" sheepishly. Then you're in a heap of trouble.
To get quick-study talent to improv well and get the gist of the scene on video, explain the scene to them. Give them their motivations and tell them any key points of dialogue that they might have to get in there for exposition. Make sure you don't miss any key threads that might tie into later scenes, that's for sure. Let 'em practice the scene a few times and tape the action. Be sure to have someone taking notes on what is said and get plenty of reaction shots and cutaways to use in editing. While you can't fix a performance in editing, you can very well shape it.
With another movie I made, there was a scene I had problems with involving kids. The old adage is true: using kids and animals in movies is very, very difficult and will definitely slow you down. Sometimes to a snail?s pace.
The first time I directed children, it was scripted as a very long sequence that took place in a park. I just couldn't seem to control the children, and we ended up just getting enough footage to use as brief flashbacks, which were used sporadically throughout the movie. It was basically some kids playing the game truth or dare in the park, and one of them dares a young boy (A.J. McClane, a future Backstreet Boy!) to cut his wrist with a razor blade. The child actors were so excited and full of energy that they just couldn't stay focused, and every time we?d get a good take the sun would hide behind a cloud, effectively ruining the shot. Finally, I just had the cameraman do a patchwork of close-ups and insert shots and we got what we could. And that's the key: get what you can and figure out how to use it. Better to have some flashback footage than nothing at all! (And a footnote here, A.J. did a great job playing the little deviant boy who grows up to be a mass-murderer. If you'd like to check out the movie, it's called Truth Or Dare---A Critical Madness.)
Another cool thing you can do (especially with video) is get reaction shots of the actors when they don't know you?re taping. Do a close-up of someone during a rehearsal or when they don't know the camera is focused on them. Sometimes, you're able to capture really honest moments and reactions that you can work with during editing that are priceless. A lot of directors are onto this method and it really does work. Reaction shots like snickers, eyes rolling, and intense scrutiny come across really well when you get the opportunity to do this.
I used this "sneaking shots" method quite extensively when I was trying to coax a performance out of a child-actress while shooting Creep. Everything went well at first, but then we foolishly staged a "stabbing" in front of the little girl with our lead actress falling to the ground, covered in blood. The scene required the little girl to witness the murder of her mother, and then run up to her as she gasped her last breath.
After seeing this phony stabbing, the poor little girl was so shocked that she refused to do anything that I asked! Lesson here: film any violent scenes without small children hanging around to witness the event! Even though the little girl knew we were all just playacting, she just didn?t like what was going on. Some kids scare easily.
Anyway, we had no cooperation after that from our young actress. So I had the camera man "steal" shots of her in close-ups while she ate crackers or while her mother tried to coax her into performing for the scene. They didn't know it, but we were getting enough to build the sequence in editing! Later, we had the child actress just do some running around and running up to our actress who was lying on the ground.
That night, I looked at the footage, and even though there wasn't much that was usable, I had an idea. I came up with the concept of relying more on the little girl's point-of-view rather than seeing the whole sequence as it happened from a stationary camera angle. The next day we restaged the whole stabbing and the camera filled in for the little girl. With point-of-view shots, it saw exactly what the little girl was supposed to be witnessing from her perspective. In editing, we cut her various reaction shots together with the subjective perspective. The whole sequence worked quite well and in the finished movie, it comes across as quite impacting. When music, sound effects, and screaming were added to the mix, we achieved the desired effect that we were looking for.
No matter how hard you cast, sometimes things don't work out the way you plan them. During the course of filming another video movie in 1993, we were hindered by a small budget and actor problems began to occur right from the beginning.
The first lead actress we hired decided she wanted to change a lot of her dialogue. I helped her along with this and changed things according to her needs. Then she wanted to replace her male co-star. First, the character's occupation. Then his lines. Finally, she wanted to changes various setpieces, such as bedroom scenes transforming into "dirty dancing" sequences! The producer of the movie was behind her in the beginning, so this was problematic. But it got to a point where I was really frustrated.
On the first day of shooting scenes involving this actress, she demanded that I "stop shooting low angles that might enable audiences to see up her nostrils." Needless to say, that was her first and last day. I ended up putting our other lead actress in the role, simply throwing a wig on her to make her appearance different! And it worked---she looked, dressed, and acted so differently in the roles that many viewers never caught onto this trick until the end of the movie. The entire movie was based on hallucinations and the torment that the lead character sees from women, so in a warped way, this really worked. (In that all the women in his mind looked very similar.) With some projects, it might not work as well. So you'll have to judge whether doing something like this is too extreme for each particular project you're working on.
Years later, I noticed David Lynch did the same type of thing with Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway. Arquette played a blonde girl and had another role where she wore a black wig. I'm sure David Lynch did this intentionally, though, unlike my circumstances.
So sometimes you can have one actor or actress play two roles in your movie if it fits into the storyline. Or if they can transform themselves into a completely different-looking character. One actor, who was also the producer of one of my films, admitted that he couldn't memorize lines after he cast himself as one of the main characters! Finally, we devised a cue-card system that worked pretty well.
If you have to have dialogue said and someone can't remember their lines, it's worth having their dialogue printed out in big black letters on pieces of posterboard. Sometimes this works. The trick is to get the actor to look and sound like he's not just reading the words. After a few takes, the actor only uses the cards as a crutch, having memorized the lines again right on the spot! Other times, it doesn't seem to work at all, and you'll just have to do the best you can.
Don't feel bad about having to use cue cards. Remember, Marlon Brando used them in Apocalypse Now and he was getting paid millions of dollars to act. Whatever works, works.
I've had a couple of projects where we didn't have the advantage of the coveted cast readthrough, especially with the smaller roles. These are actors that are only required to be on the set for a few days at most.
One actor in particular did excellent at his audition and even when we had a one-on-one rehearsal. We had great meetings and his line delivery was superb. But on the set, when it came time to actually shoot the scene, he froze! He couldn't remember one line and we were paying for a large crew, a star with limited time and a fixed schedule, and also dodging terrible bands of rain. We were outside, practically in the middle of nowhere, and there was no way to make cue cards because I hadn't anticipated this problem. The producers were rolling their eyes up in disgust and staring at their watches as I tried to figure out how to coax a performance out of this actor. The pressure was on, and it's all part of directing a movie.
I finally came up with a solution: I shot a close-up of the actor and read each line out loud to him, having him pause and repeat the line after me exactly the way I said them. It was kind of a weird way to do things, and I didn't really think it would work, but in this case, it did! With editing, the scene came out powerful and funny and you would've never known what had happened unless you were there. But at the time, I thought the whole day was going to be a total bust.
If you have to resort to this method, be sure to have a nice pause between you reading the line and the actor repeating it after you. This makes things a lot easier when piecing everything together in editing.
I tried this same "mimic method" in another movie, and it didn't work. The actor I was working with couldn?t even repeat the lines believably, so I switched to the improv method to save the day, and it worked. It wasn't as effective as I would've liked and I lost a little subplot in the story that I liked, but we got some usable footage and didn't waste everybody's time and efforts. So none of these strategies are going to work every time, but they are worth a shot when you're in the heat of the moment.
One final thing to remember is that if an actor gets too frustrated with remembering lines, sometimes it's good to stop and take a break. Let them have some coffee and collect their thoughts, and regroup. Never push so hard that people begin to resent you. And pushing doesn't usually make the performance any better. It can actually make things worse. And after all, if it's a no-budget movie, although it is work, you should also strive to make it fun too!
I hope some of these situations and resolutions have given you ideas and information on how to get a performance (or at least the dialogue!) out of your actors and actresses. If things aren't working with some of your cast members early on, sometimes it?s better just to stop shooting and recast those parts before it's too late.
Once your movie is cast, the key is to just keep planning ahead and trying a variety of things until you?re satisfied that you have enough material to work with in editing. Always remember: where there's a will, there's a way!