Pre Production: Director Role

My writer/ director role within this project requires me to take on two major roles and almost merge them into one. It may be challenging but it also means you have more control over what happens through out. Since my project is a narrative drama, I will be working with actors and must be able to give great direction to be able to get my vision across and get a good performance. 

First I must understand what it means to be a Director and how I can effectively do this. 

There are many elements that come into play when "directing" is discussed. It is no surprise that this type of craft is seen as an art form. There are just so many things to consider when you are a Director. But one of the main things I wanted to explore was the role of actors and the relationship a Director should have with their actors. I particularly wanted to look at this element because for my production I have to rely heavily on 2 main characters and it is essential for me to be able to get a good performance from the characters as well as make them feel comfortable at all times. My production quality would really struggle without it. I had a read through a few books to gain greater insight on anything that I should consider when directing my actors. 

In "Directing Actors" by Judith Weston she speaks of the communication between actor and director as a "different language" something that you must learn in order to get the message through to correctly. She then goes on to say that "actors must have confidence that you understand the script and that it is "equally important" as making sure they understand the script. So it is clear to me that confidence plays a big part in successful delivery. I used to lack confidence in my work and in my general ideas so I do believe this is something that I need to work on at times. Making sure I fully understand my script and what I want out of it will initially make me confident of set and about the project as a whole, thus allowing actors to be confident in me and the project. So "In any case,they need freedom and permission to explore the implications of your directions and make it their own." This is a very interesting point because I guess the actor needs their own time to become one with the character and they wouldn't really be able to do that if you are constantly giving them vague directions. So it is clear to me that the relationship between actors and directors can be much more complexed than what it originally seemed.  My plans to combat this would be to ask my applicants to send in self tapes of their interpretation of the draft script. This would help me weed out the applicants to see who does it best. I would then have face to face auditions and maybe create questions or situations that the character could be in to see their personification of that character. 

I cam across another interesting viewpoint between the relationship between actors and directors and what you could do to enhance your directing ability. In "Changing Directions" by Lenore DeKoven, She makes a great point that; "in order to viscerally understand thee actor's process I firmly believe that directors should experience some of the basic actor's training exercises". This for me was a little bit of an eye opener because I would've never thought that this would be necessary to direct someone. You usually think about directing as pointing the finger and telling someone what to do and thats it. But now it is clear to me that there is more to it than that. So by participating in actor's exercises I suppose that would allow the director to understand how an actor needs to process things, therefore heightening the various ways you can approach someone and give them useful directions. It may seem like extra effort but now I see that it is this extra effort that can make the biggest difference. For my future projects, if I have to work with actors I will definitely take more care in how I approach them in order to get the best work out of them


Some of the things Andrea Kappos said in her masterclass will stick with me through out this production because she said a number of useful things; 

• She made it clear that the contributors play the biggest part in the content she creates because it has to have a watchability. 
• Get a sense of their personality beforehand, i.e skype, auditions. Natural surroundings
• Its about the methods used to get natural performances from non actors. If you keep asking a contributor or actor to keep repeating the same thing, it may loose authenticity. Its about being efficient. 
• Actors should feel safe and not pressured to do wrong. 
• For Andrea, she rarely uses clapper boards as this can sometimes stun the contributor and hinder an authentic performance. She says you can get the the contributor talking or practicing but secretly record as you can sometimes get authentic, relaxed performances because they don't think they're being recorded. 

When revisiting Andrea Kappos's advice, It reminded how important it is to consider the personalities of the actors too. I will make sure to meet my potential actors in order for them to learn about me and gain confidence in my project as well as me understanding more about them and what they could bring to the project.