Our Presentation and Director Research

We began our presentation with a brief synopsis and scene by scene breakdown, to underline our idea. They are as follows:


After a spontaneous night of drunken shenanigans, a man and a woman find themselves trapped within a department store. Over the course of the night, the two strangers are forced to get to know each other and begin to imagine possible outcomes of their relationship.

Scene 1

• Man wakes up and attempts to leave. He realises they are trapped. 
• Woman seems content with the situation, Man is less than happy.
• Man looks for another exit. Leaves bedroom location. Trying to get to know him better, the Woman follows.

Scene 2

• The pair start to bicker, and place the blame on each other. They discuss how they initially met. 
• This leads into the Man’s Clint Eastwood style dream sequence, in which he is a slick Cowboy type character. 
• Following on from this, Woman remembers flash of what actually happened. Incorporates some form of Cowboy related chat-up line and terrible dancing. Embarrassing yet she finds it endearing.

Scene 3

• The two move into kitchen. 
• The kitchen setting results in them slipping into a couple dynamic. 
• Woman’s romanticism results in first imagination sequence – 50s domestic sequence. I Love Lucy – black and white 50s sitcom with canned laughter. “Honey, I’m home.”

Scene 4

• Woman is attempting to converse, to no avail. Man is visibly bored by her topics of conversation. 
• This leads him to imagine a “Royle Family”-turn-horror sequence, where the woman is talking incessantly, in a monotonous tone. This escalates until the Man – as if spooked by a future of boredom – rudely tells her to shut up in both imaginary sequence and real life. 
• Woman gets offended and storms off.

Scene 5

• Man finds woman sitting at a dining table and tries to instigate small talk. 
• Cuts to an actual Dinner table scene; husband and wife at opposite ends of table. Man is apologising for being late and thanking her for all the effort she’s put into the dinner (mirroring reality, i.e. her putting all the effort into getting to know him). It is not made clear who is imagining this, perhaps both? 
• By the end of the sequence, the Woman appreciates the Man’s apology - they have reached a sort of understanding for the first time.

Scene 6

• Show that some time has passed. 
• Full on conversation - in a faux-bathroom - in which the two connect. The Man is shown to appreciate a woman finally putting him in his place and seeing past his bravado. 
• It is suggested that they may consider meeting again, but for the audience it is not confirmed. 
• Exit opens and they are finally free – where do they go from here? 
• END

As director, I created some brief character bio's for our 2 main characters:

WOMAN: 

Visually:
Unassuming and nondescript in appearance.
Wears plain black dress. Slightly frumpy/ill fitting.
Girly.
Aged twenties
Personality:
Chatty. Tends to want to fill all awkward silences and gaps.
Friendly.
Prudish (though not when drunk).
Hopeless romantic.
Very direct and speaks her mind when riled.
Intelligent.

MAN:

Visually: 
Wears a cowboy costume – presumably from a fancy dress party the previous night.
Also aged twenties.
Attractive.
Metrosexual.
Personality:
Laddish.
Arrogant and self-assured.
Emotionally disconnected.
Patronising.

As director, it is my responsibility to manage actors, develop characters and ensure that the style that we wish to achieve is maintained throughout.

I began by looking at other directors methods of working with actors and came across the following interview with David Cronenberg, the "Godfather" of horror films (i.e. The Fly etc.)

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2PcdO7Da8k

I found his opinions to be very interesting, as he maintains that giving actors creative freedom, when directing, is the most effective way to ensure that they perform well. He suggests that while some directors try to get into the heads of their actors; psychoanalyse them and break them down,  the simplicity of just leaving actors alone with each other, to develop their roles and character personalities is the most beneficial and rewarding way of directing. 

He advises Director's to go through the script with actors, and discuss the character personalities in depth with them, so that they get their own sense of what this character is like. From general personality types to nuanced descriptions of appearance and behaviour. He posits that this is the most crucial point in directing, as the actors can really get into the mindset of the character and will need little direction on set, as they will to some extent be that character.

I think that this may be a directing style/approach which I go for when working with actors, and hope that this will be effective, although, of course this will necessitate actors of a high standard and so I will have to make a judgement regarding the Directing style, based on the actors we recruit and what also may work best for them.

I also looked at Michael Rabiger's 9 tips for directing actors and gleaned some useful information from this.

He suggest's you SHOULD:

•  Set limited, positive goals: Say, “See if you can open the door softly this time —not, “This time don’t make such a racket with that closet.”
• Direct the actor’s attention to a particular kind of action: Say, “I’d like to see you try to figure out what he meant as you turn away.” Make the suggestion specific, and locate it in a particular moment. Generalized suggestions that could apply anywhere aren’t helpful.
• Suggest a different subtext: such as, “Try closing the door on him with finality rather than regret.”
• Remind cast members where their character has just come from: Wind them up to each scene with a reminder: “You’ve just come from the stock exchange and seen your father’s savings vanish.” This is vital while directing, because films are shot in small, out-of-order increments, and actors need constant orientation.
• Remind actors that nobody is present: Ask actors to ignore the crew’s presence, act as they do when alone in real life, and never to look at the camera. This helps them avoid the temptation to play to an imagined audience.

And SHOULDN'T

• Never demonstrate how you’d like something played: This implies you are an actor and want a copy of yourself. But you are not an actor, and what you want is unique to that actor. Ask the cast for their solutions.
• Never give line readings: A line reading means the director reads the dialogue with the emotional inflection they wish the actor to provide and then tells the actor to “say it like that.” This is insulting for an actor and reveals a director’s lack of imagination.
• Never say, “Just be yourself”: This sets actors worrying: “What did he really mean? How does he see me? Which me does he want?” Focus your actor instead on aspects of her character’s experience.
• Never ask for something “smaller”: An actor takes this as a barbed criticism. Ask for the same intensity but with more intimacy, or for anything else that sounds like development rather than censure.

This is clearly a different style to that of David Cronenburg, but as I mentioned before - the directing style relies upon the actors-  both Rabiger and Cronenburg's styles could be utilised to some extent during filming.

I looked at other directors that may have some influence on our film:

John Carney: Relationships and Reality.

• Director of film "Once" 
• The way that Carney develops the relationships between the two main characters in both his writing and directing is something which I really would like to replicate in our film. The dialogue is realistic and not forced, but comes across as humorous and touching without necessarily having any overt punchlines or romantic speeches and declarations. I hope that the dialogue between the two characters in our film flows as well. Upon reading an article it became evident that Carney and the lead characters knew one another previously and so the intimacy revealed in the film is perhaps due to the fact that the actors are comfortable in the presence of the film crew, and thus relationships behind the camera, are just as important as those depicted in front.

David O Russell: Screwball Humour, Eccentricity and Quirkiness.

• Director of films Silverlinings Playbook and I ♥ huckabees 
• I particularly like the randomness of Russell's writing and the humour incorporated into his films. Although the characters can be quite over the top, there is still a great deal of reality that can be recognised from these characters, as they don't conform to strict stereotypes, but are more complicated and contradictory in their behaviour and are perhaps more developed in that sense. I hope to develop characters fully like Russell does.

Edgar Wright: Intertextuality

• Director of films Sean of The Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs The World
• Wright's films are highly intertextual, humorous and also plain weird. He plays with forms and pastiches, pays homage to and parodies many different genres. I felt that this was relevant to our film as we intend to include similar parodies and allusions to typical filmic discourses. Wright replicates discourses in such a specific and detailed way, whilst still maintaining the overarching style of his films, and this is something which we need to ensure that we do. We perhaps do not wish to go to the great lengths that Wright does to include large amounts of meta-commentary and post-modern features, but we are definitely inspired by the aesthetic mimicry of other genres within his films.

Debbie Isitt: Improvisation

• Director of fully improvised film Confetti
• Isitt didn't write a script or source a script to direct with regards to this film. She simply sourced comedic actors and encouraged them to improvise the situations based around a synopsis/storyline. I do not intend to adopt this method of directing, however the idea of providing actors with a scene outline and the main crux of the dialogue, and allowing them to improvise may be something which we do at certain points throughout our film, as we may be more likely to achieve a more naturalistic and humorous end result by doing this. In this sense this director has inspired us.

I spoke about these directors and directing styles in a more succinct way during my presentation whilst Abi discussed our plans for sourcing locations, casting and sourcing a crew. Dan talked about the aesthetics of the film in general; specifically with reference to the intertextual elements of it. 

Feedback:

Our tutor suggested the following things:

• Perhaps block a scene, in which the actors follow the script rigidly and then afterwards ask the actors to redo that scene in the way that they feel it could be done i.e. an improvisation of the scene, as this may add more realism and fun/playfulness to the scene. I thought that this was a very good idea and aim to enforce this on set.
• Perhaps there should be more focus on the playful elements within the script, as at the moment the two characters appear to only be "playing" in the intertextual imagination sequences, whereas realistically, if you were stuck in a department store, you would mess around and have fun. I think that this is a fair point and hope that we can invest more of a playful nature into our film.
• Approach your ideal department store location (i.e. Ikea) and start there before looking elsewhere as we may be lucky and they may agree to letting as film. Start at the top (i.e. the most desirable locations) and work your way down. Also, he suggested that we think about going about attaining the sets in a Guerrilla way. i.e. we could buy furniture for our scenes, build a set and return the furniture after filming, as this would save us money and wouldn't negatively affect our budget.
• In terms of our presentation: Lose the scene by scene breakdown and create a longer more detailed synopsis. Also perhaps talk about things in a more succinct way.

I am happy that we can take on board all of this feedback and alter our project to make it more sufficient.