Surprisingly for many directors it’s easier to design fancy camera moves than to directing actors.
Not many like to admit it, but even the big masters get cornered sometimes by the simplest question, “What is my motivation?” That’s because it’s easier to deal with equipment and moving parts than with actors. Because working with actors means dealing with complicated human emotion and behavior. But it is that emotion that comes first and draws the audiences into any story. No amount of editing trickery or post production effects will be able to conceal bad acting. And furthermore, believable acting and genuine emotions will save even a low budget, technically imperfect movie. So how can we be better at directing actors? What tools can we use?
First option is to do lots of rehearsals. But even if you’re limited on time, there are some techniques that can help the actors understand their respective characters, which will improve the overall story execution immeasurably.
Alone Time
Gain the actors’ trust by encouraging them and devoting plenty of your time even if you’re really busy – nothing is more important than these guys after all, and it helps if they can feel that from you. Call for a total silence on set or take them out to a quiet place to do the last preparations. Set the mood for the upcoming scene. A good technique here is to have an eye-to-eye reading – just ask the actors to say their lines by looking at each other non-stop.
Use action verbs.
A common mistake is to show rather than explain which usual results in mimicry. Saying, “Be sad”, and making a sad face will lead to actors faking an emotional state instead of actually experiencing it. Try to use more action verbs, like “convince”, “insist” or “discourage” to make actors go through a thought process that’ll can help them immerse themselves into the story.
Set personal goals.
Give one goal to each actor and don’t them what each others goal is – they will figure that out through experiencing the scene for themselves and therefor they will often give true natural and instinctive performances. These are great for rehearsing, but can even be used as a filming technique – take “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as a great example where the actors are asked to use improve in order to create the scene.
Do the exact opposite of what you want from the scene.
Go crazy. Ask the actors to mumble their lines, or say them as if they are in a musical. They might not like you for it, but these tricky little exercises will help top break down barriers and inhibitions.
Interview.
Using interview is a great way for the actor to get to know his own character. Ask him questions about his past or his attitude towards specific people and events. This will make him get into the character’s head and feel where he is coming from and what is personal motivations are.
Give them a prop.
Actors love to hold things. It gives them a sense of interaction and can often help them to be more creative with their performances. It gives them something to do and and allows them to start thinking more about how the character would behave in a given situation. Of course the object should not be random, it should be relevant to the story and your theme.
Give them interaction with their surroundings.
Allowing the actor to move through a space often gives them crucial visual queues to help them with their lines and in the same sense as with pops – they can also have more action if given objects or spaces to perform to. Thus resulting in more natural lines as well as more interesting cinematography.
Use manipulation.
You can craft more natural performances from your actors by not telling them what exactly is going to happen during the shoot. Remember in Alien when the creature came out of John Hurt’s stomach? SURPRISE!
Work on the voice intensity, that doesn’t mean turn the volume up.
If they actors get too theatrical, never tell them they are being theatrical! Just ask them to keep the voice down. Sometimes they think that shouting will help them convey an intense emotion, but it usually doesn’t work this way.
Invoke their memories
This is often how many actors will connect with a character and draw out difficult emotions by tapping into their own emotional memory banks. Ask an actor to find something in his personal experience that’s similar to what his character is going through. Living through a sad memory, for instance, will help him show loss.
Do one take for safety.
Takes the pressure off, makes the actors believe they did well in the previous take and accomplished what the director had asked them for. Sometimes those takes are the best and are the ones that get in the final cut.
Tell them to never stop acting before you say cut.
It’s also a good idea for them to start acting before you say “action!”