Directing Actors

Before reading this post, I want to acknowledge Judith Weston for her book Directing Actors , Sidney Lumet on his book Making Movies, and Constantin Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares, as well as numerous Charlie Rose interviews, The Actor's Studio, and my personal experience on set for informing me about the actor's process and effective ways to communicate with an actor.

BE SAD!! NO, BE MORE ANGRY!!!

The first thing that comes to mind is telling an actor to BE something. That is BAD. You can't tell someone to be, or to feel an emotion (you can talk about an emotional beat of a scene, but we'll get to that later). One example I use a lot is, if your mother dies, you cannot tell yourself to be happy. If you try to be happy, it'll look like acting, like you are trying to look happy (we call this acting with a capital A). Instead, if you give yourself an action to do, focusing your attention on another person, like to 'cheer up' your younger brother, you are doing something active and the performance will be much better than passively trying to be happy. By trying to cheer up your younger brother you will focus your attention on them, and find ways to make him happy, which will make you happier.

If you are an actor, and a director gives you a result direction like 'be happy' try to translate his passive direction into an action.

BE=passive
DOING=active

To 'cheer up' is an action verb. To intimidate, to threaten, to seduce, to entertain, to accuse. These are all action verbs. And in a conversation between Sidney Lumet and Ethan Hawke, Lumet said, all an actor needs is a simple, active direction. Some directors will talk for 5 minutes about what they want from the actor or what they see in their head, but when you are on set, shooting, a simple active direction is the best thing.

My 2 other favorite tools are giving a physical task or an objective. If an actor is having trouble with a scene or something is just not working, it is sometimes helpful to give the actor something to focus on, or take their attention off their performance or the moment. *Quick rule of tumb, if an actor is trying really hard and placing a lot of importance on something, that will most likely show as acting with a capital A. Film is about subtlety, and even if an actor is giving 110%, it can't show in their performance.

An example of using a physical task is: if the scene takes place in a kitchen, between two people talking, but one actor seems to be over-acting, you might suggest the actor make a cup of coffee in the scene, or get something from the fridge. That is a physical task. Give them something to do in a scene.

I personally don't always like physical taks, because in fact they can enable an actor to hide from an emotion. You have to be careful when to use them. Paul Thomas Anderson, when directing Gwenith Paltrow in his 1st feature film, Sydney, (when he was 24!!) spotted Paltrow was using a prop to hide behind. Paltrow, in a diner, talks with Philip Baker Hall, and instead of using her face to express her emotions, or her body posture, she was playing with a coffee cup. PTA called her out on it and she immediately responded. She knew she was doing it, and she respected him for reading her tell.

One excellent use of a physical task is found in the opening scene of The Godfather. Director Francis Ford Coppola, gave Marlon Brando a physical task: to play with a cat. I believe (lol haven't asked him personally, but this is my rationale) he gave Brando the cat, because it is a heavy filled dialogue scene where another character speaks uninterupted. Brando, then speaks uninterupted for some time as well. It's boring to see the godfather simply sitting there looking at the man, as well as Brando simply speaking. It was a balance between giving the actor something else to focus on, and the audience something else to focus on. It was a good balance, because it wasn't extremely distracting, like a poster saying something you want to read, or a man commiting a murder, but it was something active (and unpredictable).

Unpredictable is important also, because acting is about being in the moment, listening to the other person, and reacting to them. Sometimes, if Morgan Freeman thinks an actor he's working with is not paying attention, he'll say "what?" right in the middle of the scene. If the actor is just reciting their lines, they won't know what to do, or they'll fumble, but if the actor is in the moment, and listening, they'll react.

The other useful tool is an objective. An objective is something you give to an actor that you want them to achieve during the scene. So everything they do in that scene is to get them to achieve the objective. One objective I like to give in a romantic scene is: "your objective is to make ______ kiss you." If I was to give an action verb for that scene it would be "try to seduce ____."

To be honest, I don't really give tasks or objectives that much, nor do I give action verbs that often. Action verbs can get of hand, because if you give an action verb, and the adjustment they make is not what you want, it becomes this manipulating situation where you spit out verbs til you find what works best. I don't like that as much anymore. It is imperative you have the knowledge of using it, and the repertoire of verbs at your disposal though.

To me, 90% of the work is done in casting. Then, the most important thing to do on the day (of shooting) is talk to the actor about the emotional beats of the scene. Or if the actor is nailing it, only talk about something if it feels wrong in the rehearsal.

So, if you are just talking before shooting, the actor will probably have a cup of coffee or something and you can talk about the scene, and the emotions. I personally never like to tell the actor what I want them to feel. We go over the script and I address the questions they ask, but I never want to dictate, I want it to be a collaboration where we both agree and understand our decisions. For me, it's about the actor understanding what I want from the story, and organically playing the scene with the other actor.

Below is an email exchanged with a filmmaker I was discussing acting with:

On my 1st film we rehearsed rehearsed rehearsed. Now, I barely rehearse, to me it's about talking in the morning, on the day, about the emotional beats of the scene. About creating an emotional map and answering any questions the actor has. With Marty in The Empty Playground, I told him as a director how I wanted to tell the story. That was very important to me, because he had to know as a story teller how I was using his performance. It's the same to me as an actor being aware of the frame size, it gives them permission to play.