10

There were a lot of useful tips in the Working With Actors lecture this week. As I am used to being on the acting side of the camera, I have some idea about how the relationship works and how important effective communication is to produce the team's vision. However, while I know how I liked to be treated as an actor, I never really thought about the strategies a director/crew needs to apply to make this happen. I kind of thought they just...did it. But no. Clearly the directors I have worked with previously have massaged my ego well enough to think that the success of my performance was all me.

But in retrospect, I now realise that I was being subtly coaxed and unknowingly coached on my performance. Words like"soft","sharp", light", "heavy", "fast", "slow", are all very useful parts of the directors vocabulary to convey a sense of character or mood to an actor. Similarly, giving the actors Overall Objectives and Scene Objectives give the actors a sense of purpose, history and future. It was also especially important to me- as a DOP- to know that capturing the change of "beat"- or the change in emotion/direction of an actor is extremely important to a scene- and can often be the main point of interest.

Considering both of the actors that we will be using for our film are acting friends of mine, I already will feel very comfortable directing them. However our main challenge I guess will be remaining professional and efficient on set at all times, and I think that the lecture this week providing me with an insight of how to do this.