i have just got the idea to start making my own movies.. i have the idea nad the script is in progress..i was wondering, though, i was thinking to have my friends act the parts but when i told my fellow director he said that was stupid. How important are actors in movies??
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How important are actors in movies??
Very. You can get away with making movies with your friends as actors (Peter Jackson did in 'Bad Taste', for example), but experienced actors will do a better job.
If you don't have real actors, one option is to base the characters around the people you have acting, so at least they should be able to play themselves :). Another is to try to tell the story with cuts rather than shots, so they don't need to act: Mamet's essays on directing talk about that quite a lot.
A big thing to consider is what type of movie are you making. Robert Rodriguez talks a lot about how he got most things on one take because (a) He fed he actors one line or so and didn't expect them to memorize the script, then he did a lot of cuts to hide the fact (b) Running doesn't really require acting.
This seemed to work well for him. It's also the strategy suggested by David Mamet in his book ON DIRECTING FILM. He's Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and says basically that actors should just do things. Open the door, don't open it any different way because the character was abused as a child, just open the door. That sort of thing.
Professional actors tend towards the METHOD. Method acting can provide far better characterization if properly done and given time and film to explore and improvise. Gil Bettan in his book FIRST TIME DIRECTOR: How to make your breakthrough movie goes into detail on how to harness the energy of Method actors and I'll tell you it doesn't sound like much fun. He talks about how they blocked a scene in Back to he Future for Crispen Glover and he got so into the role he couldn't follow the plan and walk where they needed him to go so they built short walls of sandbags to channel him in the right direction.
So to sum up, get leading actors who speak another language so that nobody knows the difference if they are good or bad, get a Pulitzer Prize winning writer to do the screenplay so that it's perfect and any change might screw it up, or pay lots of money so that you can afford to deal with the temperment of the professional actors.
RJSchwarz
Yeah, I'd try to avoid using method actors on a first movie :). Nothing against them, but I think Mamet (whose theory is actually mostly based on Eisenstein's) provides a much better way of making low-budget movies.
It's easy for a non-actor or inexperienced actor to screw up if you give them dialog to say or emotions to express: whereas it's easy for them to give a good performance if you give them things to do instead :).
I also agree on the subtitles thing. I think it's definitely true that english-speaking audiences cut 'El Mariachi' actors a lot of slack because they were too busy reading subtitles to look at the acting :).
yea thats sounds like arealli good idea..thanks a lot everyone!
However, i just want to reply to "MarkG's first reply and ask wat he meeants by telling the film with cuts rather than shots...Thanks!
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However, i just want to reply to "MarkG's first reply and ask wat he meeants by telling the film with cuts rather than shots...Thanks!
Read Mamet and Eisenstein :).
There's one famous example, I think it may have been Eisenstein's: you take a shot of an old man smiling, and then you cut to a shot of a baby giggling in its crib, and he's a doting grandfather. You take the same shot of the old man and cut to a shot of a girl on a beach in a bikini, and now he's a dirty old man. The acting is identical, since you used an identical shot, but the cut completely changed the character.
So the basic idea is that you don't get the actors to do anything special, you just cut the shots together in such a way that the audience imply the 'acting'.
Actors can ruin movies. Even if the filmmaker is great.
I agree with one of the comments, that it helps a lot to base characters on your friend actors.
Also, I find that it makes the acting seem much more natural if you allow your friends to improvise. They are inexperienced, and they aren't going to come across very Human if they're too caught up in memorizing lines than being their character.
Good luck.
I agree with the previous commentor and would also add in how creative editing can really help out with inexperienced actors. Get lots of coverage of course, but beyond that don't expect one long artistically perfect take. If the actor get the start of the scene right on the first take and the end of the scene right in the second take you've got the entire scene. Yeah you can do a third or fourth take just to see, but you don't need to drive yourself or your actor insane over htlem. Just plug a reaction shot or something in between the good parts (or change the camera angle or something) and splice it together.
Let those with money to burn worry about the 12 minute scene with no cuts.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
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Get lots of coverage of course, but beyond that don't expect one long artistically perfect take.
Yeah, there's always the Kubrick approach: most directors shoot maybe four or five takes and cut together the good parts to make a good scene. Kubrick, it would seem, would sometimes shoot seventy takes of each shot and cut together the brilliant parts to make a brilliant scene :).
It's very possible to create entire performances in the edit if you have enough coverage: so think carefully about your choice of shots and make sure you get enough. Editing is largely a matter of throwing out the bad parts of a movie so that only the good parts are left.
