Actors 2 - blocking and rehearsal

Here's the next bit - only set discipline, line-ups and tips for fixing acting problems to go

Blocking and Rehearsals

For me this is the most exciting part of the process. This where the film really comes to life and for the actor this is where the real work happens. If you talk to any actor they will admit to you that the rehearsal process is their favourite part of any acting role. This is because this is when they get to uncover and create the character that they are playing. For an actor that is exciting; it should be the best part for any writer director as well, because it’s when the honing of the story takes place.

However, before you can get to working with the actors you’ve got some homework to do. You need to go to the locations you are going to use and create measured floor-plans of the places you are going to work in. It’s also a good idea to take lots of digital photographs and arrange them onto sheets of card to show the actors what the room, street, log cabin looks like.

Hire a big hall, larger than your biggest location (if possible) and then the day before starting rehearsal go in with your plans and transfer the information onto the floor using tape. (If can’t imagine this, rent “Dogsville” – Lars Von Trier turned this way of marking up into his sets for that film and it’s a perfect way of understanding the process).

The other thing you’ll need to do is write up a rehearsal schedule, which means that your actors don’t spend a lot of time sitting around waiting to work. This means that you’ll end up working out of sequence, but the read through process should have solved many of those issues.

There is no such thing as too much rehearsal. For a feature I’d try to budget in a week, or at least three weekends. I know that most productions are lucky to get a day, but you can’t spend too much time on this and the less experienced the cast the more time they need.

The way to go at the process is to start by reading the scene through again, to refresh the actor’s memory. Then you want to “stand it up.” Standing it up is the first part of the blocking process. Blocking is when you work out the movement within the scene. As much as possible you want to put any physical objects that will be in the set into your rehearsal space. So if there’s table in the corner, put in a table.

When you first stand the piece up the actors will still probably be “on book” (books in hand). The first run through you should let them interrupt the scene as they see if from the page; let them work it out and answer any questions they have. The other option is walk them through the scene describing the action and then let them try it. You have to judge your actors; some appreciate having you walk it through, some really resent it.

What you are doing during the first walk through is watching intently. You need to be able to give coherent feedback at the end of it. You look for two things:

1) Moments that you really liked
2) Moments where the actors looked uncomfortable

The fist bit is fairly easy. The second bit is more difficult. There is however a golden rule When an actor is unsure of what they’re doing they fall back on habitual acting tricks to get them through.
This is why the most often acting instruction given on set is “Stop acting.” A piece of feedback that is worst than useless because it fails to understand the issue.
If an actor is unsure, they will tend to overact and become self-conscious.

The most common mistake made during blocking out is not realising that people are always doing something and doing it for a reason. So right now I’m typing and at the same time watching an episode of Millenium. Now, if my wife walked in and wanted to talk to me she’d have to work to get my head out of the laptop, during the conversation my focus would be drawn to the TV. Now that’s an easy scene to block because although we’re delivering the dialogue it exists within other needs that are motivating us. Now as an actor playing me typing, I would make the actor playing my wife work to get my attention. I wouldn’t have time to be self-conscious because I’m immersed in what I’m doing. This needs to be true of every moment and uncovering the motivation of a character in every moment is what the rehearsal process is all about.

The other thing to remember is that in the early scenes the job is to help the actors find the character. Early in the process you have to give the actors room to try different things.

Things that help are spending some time with each actor working on how their character walks, talking to them what kind of voice the character has, what can be uncovered from the text about how they use language. Then feed this back into a scene that you’ve already run a few times.

The way that you talk to your actors during this process is massively important. You have to give them clear, useful feedback. If you get it wrong you can make things worse rather than better. The first tip is that regardless of how bad a run through is, you’ve got to find something positive to say; even if it’s only “ I really like the way you made eye contact during that run through … however,” and then you talk to them the stuff that didn’t work, but again don’t be critical, use phrases like “I wasn’t completely convinced by the way you entered the room, how did it feel to you?” Usually the actor will respond by admitting they don’t really understand what the character is doing at that point and you can give them some back story, which will help the actor try something different.

The other thing that is really important is that you get into the habit of taking the actor to one side and giving them their feedback one-to-one. If you give someone notes in front of their peers they won’t here you because they’ll be obsessing that everyone is thinking that they can’t act, which will then become a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s good to establish this protocol in the rehearsal process, as it makes the actor confident and comfortable; both of which are good things.

I think that for me I always establish early on that everything that goes into the film should come from the text. It’s good to give the actors some leeway, but you also need to establish that their job isn’t to rewrite the script. It’s a delicate balance, but my experience is that the actors work best if the boss dog runs the show.

In terms of danger signals, the one to watch for is “My character wouldn’t say that!” this has to be dealt with and the way to do it to get the actor to justify their position by referring to the script. If establish early on that the script is God then this easy. Sometimes they’re right, and there is an inconsistency that needs to be solved, but sometimes it’s just another misinterpretation that needs clarifying.

The other thing that needs to be established and enforced is working discipline. Your actors need to know that you don’t tolerate lateness (unless they’ve phoned ahead and let you know what their very good reason is). Every actor in my region knows that I fire people who are late to rehearsal, so now I don’t have to push that one so hard. Like everything else this has to be done one to one. The great thing is that because you’ve established this as working practice for non-discipline things, the actors don’t get shamed in front of their colleagues.

Once the early work of helping the actor find the character is done the task of blocking the scenes can really get underway.

(As a director this when I make my shot choices, I tend to shoot around my actors blocking rather than blocking the actors to suit my story-board) This is a style choice, but an important one because by imposing particular movements on the actors instead of discovering how the scene can best be played tends to make the actor’s job harder.

The key to good blocking is to keep the actor’s focussed on their objectives in the scene. Nine times out of ten if the actor focuses on their objective the blocking and the performances become natural.

Finally, don’t let any false moment pass. Keep on working until it comes right. By doing this you’ll discover that almost any actor can give you a great performance, all they need is good direction. And by good direction it’s simply helping them uncover the truth in the scene by noticing when they are scared/unsure and helping them find a way of making it work. Ninety percent of this is about building their self confidence and more importantly their confidence in your knowledge of the script and your abilities to guide them to a quality of work they didn’t know they were capable of.
 
I may have to rethink my directorial style...this sounds alot more effective than what I'm doing ;) We went without rehearsals and I had my actors rewrtie the script as we went along. The blocking was relatively staged as well due to inexperience mostly. I'm going to do some shorts next year and hope to implement rehearsals and start making a style for myself that is recognized as well on set...great advice.
 
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