How Do Actors Prepare Before A Movie?
Posted on: March 1, 20105 comments so far (is that a lot?)
How do actors prepare before a movie? Are they stuck in their house, reading the script over and over again? Or do they just glance at the scripts, and the director shout outs action and cut until they get it perfect?
I also heard there a famous director that gives the actor and actresses the idea of what scene they are doing at the very last minute. So the actor has to make up the lines of the movie instantly. What is the name of this form of movie?
If you have any other interesting info on movies and the movie making business, can you please mention them?
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March 1st, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Movies are usually filmed only a few pages at a time, usualy only 2-3. And that’s in an 10-14 hour day. Since each page is about a minute of on-screen time, there is quite a bit of time to learn whatever the dialogue is. Television drama often works faster… for instance, “Law and Order” does 7-8 pages a day, but the actors involved tend to have more experience with theatre, where actors are accustomed to doing 60 – 100 pages at a clip.
Since movies are made out of the sequence you see them on screen, they do have to be ready to film the scenes out of order, which means they *should* spend some time making sure what they know or what they are supposed to be feeling at any given moment.
One of the problems, of course, is that they have to repeat a scene over and over, it loses some spontaneity. There are different techniques, of course. Apparently, Marlon Brando became such a draw… and so self important, that in order to keep scenes looking spontaneous, he would not learn his lines, but discover what they were when he read cue cards held just off camera. You can see some of this in Superman, the Movie.
Sometimes, actors with two different approaches have to work together. For instance, during the filming of “The Way We Were,” Barbra Streisand liked to rehearse every facet of every scene and talk about every moment, feeling that she found more of what she out to do with each take. Robert Redford liked to just come in and do it. The director, Sydney Pollock, chose most of the scenes where there was a happy medium between the two, usually in the middle of the day of filming.
The director who waits till the last minute is trying to capture very spontaneous, natural reactions. That is “improvisation.” Woody Allen often encourages actors to improvise, or springs things on them while filming.
The biggest problem I’ve encountered during any filming I’ve been a part of is the boredom. It took two days to make a 45-second commercial-like spot I did. One “industrial” movie (the films companies make for their employees) I was in, I sat in a room waiting for 7 hours, filmed for one hour and went home. The next day, I had to sit in the same room for 8 hours, did an hour and a half and went home. At about $1000 a day, it was good money, but, man, it was boring. The best part is the food.
*****
“Alien” is on and it reminded me that Ridley Scott used a fairly unconventional technique in making it. Apparently, Sigourney Weaver was the only one with a complete script. The remainder of the cast had to deal with the uneasiness of not knowing which character was going to be killed off at any given moment so he would send them down hallways with no one knowing what was going to happen. It made their fear seem more “real.” Then, as they were going on their way, a sign would pop out of nowhere saying that they were attacked by the alien… or the cat.
March 1st, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Up to actor, individual actors have dif’t techniques, I like method-actors who really get into the parts, Wahlberg is one I think.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:30 am
Different actors prepare in different ways. Some are “personalities” who just stand there and say the lines and are so interesting that we enjoy watching them do that – these are pretty rare. Some work with a coach; going over every line, every punctuation mark. Some have played similar parts so often that they are, in effect, playing the same role but with different words.
If there is a particular accent or physicality, you may take the character out into the real world; live with it in everyday life, see how people respond, see how you feel.
That said, for most working actors, the shoot is the easy part. The real work is for the audition; how do you best reveal what only you can bring to a role; what unexpected, imaginative choices can you make for the scene. Once you’ve done that, the rest is pretty easy. And I just shot a film where, with the camera rolling, the director made up dialogue and shouted it to me, which I then had to play. He also asked for different levels of intensity, different emotional states. An exteme case, but it gives the director a lot of choices in the editing room where the film is really made. But it’s not always practical because thousands of dollars are consumed for every minute the camera is rolling.
There are a lot of questions asked on this topic and there is no one answer. What works, is what works for the individual (Anthony Hopkins and others swear that if they can find the shoes the character wears, they have the character).
And preparation for a play is different, in some respects, than preparation for a film.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:05 am
take acting classes. LIKE I DO! YAY!
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:27 am
best ans is 2nd ans