November 2004 Archives

Just finished filming my first fairly serious independent short film. It was just one scene, 10 minutes of screen time. It was from a full length feature screenplay. The short will be eventually shown at festivals in order to promote both the director and screenplay, and to find funding for a full-lenght feature. The scene was well written with definite, believable characters and a believable situation, and it was shot with film (24fps), not digital.

General Insights/Principles: Problems and Lessons

I found it difficult work -- at times quite difficult, a mixed bag of successes and failures, and I'd give my overall performance a C,C+/B-: not bad, but not great.

I think I may have been miscast. The director was also the screenwriter, a very talented guy, but given this, I think the first misstep took place at the audition: the audition required a monologue, which went well. However, as the writer, naturally enough, he had very definite ideas about my character, how he should be played, right down to specific lines. These ideas were great -- however, I don't think he anticipated the difficulty I would have giving him exactly what he wanted. I suspect that if the audition consisted of reading sides from the scene, he would have had a much better idea of whether or not I could give him what he wanted, and if I had auditioned with sides, I suspect I would not have gotten the part.

But I did get the part, so what lessons can be learned from the experience?

Lesson 1: When auditioning for a film, make sure I'm reading sides for the role I'll be playing -- I suspect the director/writer has also come to this conclusion.

Second Problem: Increasingly my approach has been to decide as clearly as possible what my character wants, try to emotionally connect with that, and then during performance, I "simply" ('simply' in quotes here because it's anything but -- but it is what I strive for), I "simply" let go, and go on impulse and intuition. My standard for success is that I surprise myself -- I don't plan it out, esp. for film (and most of the advice books strongly recommend this, e.g., The Art of Film Acting, A Guide for Actors and Directors by Jeremiah Comey).

Today, however, the director, for the most part, had a very clear idea of what he wanted to see in terms of character, and he would often give line readings. The problem that I had (stemming back to miscasting) is that the line readings put me right into my head, breaking most of my emotional connection -- it was exactly the same problem I would have if I had a "picture" or "movie" of the character in my head and then tried to "do that" during performance. At least for me, that's the way of ruin. My performance is always forced, head-driven, and flat.

How I experienced the character was different then how the writer experienced him when creating him. I could not bring myself in alignment with what the director wanted. Fortunately, it was not a disagreement about what my character wanted, just about how he was going about getting what he wanted. That necessarily isn't a problem, but it is if the actor's and the director's sensibilities are fundamentally different, i.e., I should have been reading sides for the audition instead of doing a monologue, but that is lesson one, so there I was, with a problem. What to do?

Lesson 2. The Principles of Good Acting are never MORE important than when you find yourself in a position where you are struggling. In short, there wasn't really much I could do -- but I could at least stick to first principles, and that saved me at least some of the time, and today, the first and most important principle was taking in fully, completely, my partner and responding only to that -- forgetting all direction and any pre-conceptions about what I thought the director wanted to see or hear. And a few times, it worked like a charm -- the director seemed happy or at least satisfied.

The steps I tried to apply were these:

1. Before the director called "action," I reminded myself what I was after, tried to feel it, emotionally connect with it.
2. After "action," I put full attention on my partner, taking him in from head to toe, tried to sense what he was feeling and emotionally react to it even before I started speaking.
3. Go with my impulses, "ride them" (because they seem to grow and change if I let them).
4. Give myself time to react -- don't rush.

At times I just failed to do this because I'm inexperienced, and once because I had no partner -- I was talking directly to the camera. In that case I got a lot of line readings from the director, a lot of specific direction, and my performance seemed to steadily deteriorate. Again, in this latter case, I don't think there was much I could do -- the director had a very specific idea of what he wanted to hear, and I just wasn't able to do it.

Third Problem: self-direction. I've done this in stage work, and it's a disaster there too. In one case, I simply had to walk up to a person in the scene, sit down next to her, and then dialogue would start. I made a decision, because it "felt" like something the character would do, to be looking down, checking over over some forms I was carrying, as I approached her, not looking it her at all. Now, the problem was NOT this choice per se or it's consequences, that is, not looking at her until I sat down. Trying it was the right thing to do, but immediately after the first take, the cinematographer said it "felt awkward."

My mistake was sticking to my self direction, and the choice I made turned out to violate, I believe, the above principle of taking in and reacting to my partner. For whatever reason, the scene wasn't working, and I think had I taken her in as I approached her, started to react to her even before she started the first line of dialogue, I strongly suspect the scene would have gone much better. However, at the time, I simply wasn't able to debug it like this, and I probably should have run my self-directed first choice by the director before attempting it. He probably would have said "try it," and it may have helped him debug that scene. Also, I did the same sort of thing for another scene, and again, I got into trouble, again unable, until now, to pinpoint exactly what the problem was.

Lesson 3. Minimize self-directing and when I do self-direct, or if I think I am, let the director in on it. I think I just really wanted to do it, but I was afraid I'd be told no, so I just did it, and then got into trouble without knowing exactly why. Ultimately this is a problem caused by lack of experience, so I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to learn this. Another problem was doing a scene as if MY eye was the camera (really self-directing there) -- that was clearly a mistake, but it was easily corrected on subsequent takes.

Lesson 4. Surprisingly, despite the stress, especially during the scene where I was just talking to the camera and things were starting to fall apart, I was able to maintain concentration and focus, and I was able to maintain a sense of focused relaxation for the rest of the day. I can't say exactly how I did this other than I just refused to succumb to the slings and arrows that were starting to come my way. I was simply determined to stick to first principles and do my best.

(The thing that also really helped was just staying by myself, staying quiet, closing my eyes, and meditating/relaxing between takes).

Conclusions

All in all, a very valuable (albeit painful) experience, but one (after a few hours of serious reflection) I'm glad to have had. The problems, I feel, really came down to not taking every opportunity of reacting to my partner, and second, to basic miscasting. However, I was very, VERY, surprised at how simply doing what I wrote in lesson #2 above counteracted the problems of miscasting. It really saved me, when I was able to do it.

And with all the takes, with any luck at all, my C/B- performance might be upgraded to a B or maybe even an B+, at least with some cuts/scenes. Editing will certainly improve things, at least to some extent, and there should be lot of opportunities for editing: it was a 10 minute scene that took about 20 hours and 40 "shots" to film -- that's 2 hours per minute of screen time. It was a serious, well thought-out, detailed shoot.

November 19th, Friday, 2004 New York City.

. . . ah, the benefits of being un/under-employed:

I spend a weekday (Friday) on the set of "Sad Serenade," the name of a few episodes of a very popular South Korean television series being shot in N.Y.C. for a few weeks. It was a paid job, "Background Extra," that came by way of Desiree, a commercial agent who works with non-union actors for non-union jobs: some I have to audition for, some I do not -- this job I did not have to audition for, and it paid $90.00 for the day, minus the 10% commission to the agent.

Call time was 10am, 25 West 40th Street, Bryant Park Grill in Bryant Park, Friday morning, a cool, surprisingly colorful, N.Y.C. fall morning. Bryant Park is a beautiful part of N.Y.C., and interestingly, near the location where I saw my first show one of the first times I was in N.Y.C. 5 years ago -- a small modern dance show, a friend from Illinois, in a small open performance space near 6th Avenue and 42nd street. It was there I first encountered the drive, ambition, and amazing creativity of many of the city's independent artists, people who somehow made work in the middle of the hustle & bustle of one of the world's largest, most complex and expensive of cities. Drive, ambition, and flowering creativity -- it was hard not to fall in love with these people, their work, and the N.Y.C. independent performance art scene they were helping to create.

Today I was on set all day (11 hours), and when I arrived, I and another male extra were upgraded to waiter, purely based on our looks (many actors are waiters, so I must have looked like one). I had no lines but I started 2 or 3 scenes (e.g., seating a couple of the principle actors at the table, etc.). I worked for about an hour, a couple of different scenes, different ways of doing things, different takes from different angles. Being upgraded from a Background Extra to a waiter was a good bit of luck because you're more visible, and you get to do something, and handling these little roles, I've learned, is a specialized skill -- not a difficult one, but there are a few skills I've needed to learn, and paying attention on set being one of the most important.

Usually with these small non-speaking roles, I'm given something to do, e.g., carry beer to a table of customers and then walk out of the shot. I'm surrounded by crew (ADs, 2nd ADs, PDs) and equipment (lights, booms, cords), so it's very easy to get nervous and self-conscious.

What helps to realize is this: this is 'essential' stripped-down acting, i.e., I have no words, but am doing doing a specific action, and in this case, doing exactly what a waiter does. So before the shot, I first simply walked around the set that consisted of tables, other background extras seated at the tables, and I simply noticed who was at which table, what food was there, where the empty tables were, etc.

In short, before the shot, I simply asked myself what would I do if I was just hired to be a waiter (which essentially was what I was hired to do, under extremely controlled conditions), and that helped focus my mind off of the fact that I'm on a set and about to be filmed. Then once the blocking was explained to me by one of the ADs, e.g., carry two beers across the set, place them on a table, and exit the set, I did it as if I was really hired to do exactly that --serve people and take care of customers -- so on "action," I just threaded my way through the tables to bring the beers, but I also turned my head to check out each table to see how the customers where doing and to catch the eye of any customer who might need something -- just what I would do if I was really waiting on tables.

One minor problem arose after I set down the beers during the rehearsal shot -- I clumsily exited the shot, and I realized that it was because I had nothing to do after I set down the beers. Ah, the classic mistake of not being clear about what you're doing during a particular beat of a scene.

This was very simple job/action, but it did have two distinct beats: 1) bring the beers (and check out customers on the way), and 2) after I set down the beers, I need to go somewhere and do something, and thinking "ok, now get off the set" immediately made me feel weird and self-conscious again. So before the next take, I picked a table out of the shot, and thought 'ok, I need to get these beers to these people, then I need to clear and wipe down that other table. Perfect! It give me something specific to do right at the end, and the whole sequence felt natural and easy.

Some of the other shots where a bit clumsy for me because I've never really waited on tables, but we did a few takes, trying different ways of seating people, and I tired, on my own, different and specific ways of doing things that made sense, and things got more natural with each take.

Again, my role was a very small part of the scene, really just the opening shot of a scene or part of a seqway (sp?) to another scene, but I was surprise at how the "rules" of acting applied in order to make my part appear natural and easy. If someone isn't looking for me, I doubt they would even notice me in the shot, but that's a measure of success, really: if I was doing something weird or awkward, it would be distracting, and I wouldn't be doing my job.

What also was a BIG help -- I was an unpaid extra on the set of Hope and a little Sugar, and a woman had been cast as a day player, a dinner waitress, with a couple of lines. She did very well, and much of what I did today I learned by watching her.

However, movie sets are busy-confusing places, and during one shot, she missed "action" and didn't do her entrance after the camera started rolling. No big deal, but a bit embarrassing for her when the director said "Cut -- where's my waitress?" So I wanted to avoid any glitch like that, so I kept my eyes and ears trained on Curtis, the AD on the set, for my visual signal to go -- in fact, I told Curtis ('it's a bit hard to hear, so just give me a signal when to go'). Paying attention on the set -- it's a big help.

Being upgraded from Background to scene work is lucky, and it's actually not the first time I've had luck with this. A month ago, I was a non-paid extra on Searching for Bobby D...: It was another 12 hour day (on a Thursday, I think). I "played" a camera-guy, paparazzi. ). I was given a real working camera by a real photographer who was working on the set, and so all day, between takes, I practiced taking pictures of people on the site, like a real photographer would. The call was quite early (7am), the shoot lasted all day, but I simply made sure to pay attention to when they needed me for various scenes. After 10 hours, most of other camera-guy 'extras' couldn't take it anymore and left (we were all unpaid), but I stayed, and the call came that they needed some camera-guys on set, so I went outside. The director, Paul, was specifically looking for one of the camera guys who had been there earlier,but left, and so he pointed at me and said "you'll do."

This was completely out of the blue: I suddenly got pulled into a 15-20sec scene with one of the principles, Tony Darrow, who roughs up a camera-man. The scene was simple: watch a limo pull up, wait for Tony's character to get out, stick a camera in his face, and then Tony shoves the camera and me aside. The director did about 4 takes. He only gave me some simple direction after the 1st take -- the final three were apparently fine.

The lesson here: near the end of the day, they needed to do a short (15-20sec) scene with an extra and one of the principles. All the other extras had left by then, but because I stayed and was available -- I got the job.

Audition: independent short.
Director: N
Location: Hunter College, East 68th and Lex. Ave. (upper east side)
Date: Friday, November 6th, 2PM

Looks like Shrdlu's monologue paid off -- N cast me in the role of a hard-nosed doctor. Doesn't seem my type, but let's see where I am with this guy.

It's a 10 minute short, one-scene, apparently centered around my character, but will be shot on real film, not digital, to be used primarily as a marketing tool to get funding for a full length feature. N said it is a 4 page script, but at least half the acting will be 'reaction' which, from all I've read, is quite typical in film, e.g., if two people are talking, the camera spends at least as much time on the listener as it does on the speaker.

It was "risky" to do the monologue -- for one, I decided to do the audition only over the weekend because at first I didn't have a 1-minute monologue, but Shrdlu's monologue is about a minute-10/15sec, so I e-mailed N is asked if this length would be OK. Then I really only had time to go over the monologue in my head, mostly trying to memorize the lines and visualizing the beats: a poor substitute for actually practicing a monologue on your feet.

But what the hell . . . I gave it a shot . . . and it paid off.

The first read-through/rehearsal is tonight, and the shoot is around Thanksgiving.

Audition: Cold reading of a very short side (single paragraph) for the role of a doctor in an industrial video (about malpractice)
Director: Kim ?
Location: ADM PRODUCTIONS, 40 SEAVIEW BLVD, PORT WASHINGTON, NY. 11050
Date: Monday, November 9th, 2004, 1PM.

This was my first audition for paid work: 2 days @ $300.00/day (minus 10% booking fee to Desiree, the casting agent).

Positives

A professional actors motto is: Be Prepared. Be Available.

As I'm semi-unemployed at the moment, I could take advantage of this opportunity in the middle of a workday. So, first positive -- I was simply available, and I got there early.

I had a great conversation with the taxi driver from the L.I.R.R. station to the studio: he's a guy that has come out of retirement as an independent manager for singers. He worked with major labels in the late 60's & 70's, and 80's, signing and managing artists. He recently felt the urge to work again, and was auditioning various singers who he thought were good -- but then he was instroduced to a young woman, and during an interview in a Starbucks, and she started to sight-read a sheet of music and sing (i.e., cold reading for singers) . . . and she blew him away. He didn't need to hear a recording of her voice. He knew she "was it."

As he drove (so caught up in the story that he was actually driving me to the wrong location), he continued:

you know, it was an epiphany. I've been in the music business for 50 years, and if I've finally learned one thing, it's this: I've listened to a lot of singers, and I always listened for quality of voice, technique, etc., but when I heard this girl, I realized, for the first time, that "talent," what one really has to offer -- comes from the heart. That's where she's really singing from, and that's what it is -- first and last -- finally, all about.

He was telling me a story about what happened to him -- he was also telling me what I needed to do today.

(P. S. Another advantage of leaving early -- when we arrived, I asked if he was sure that this was the place, and he realized it wasn't. I'm always so shy about asking questions, and I didn't want to suggest he had made a mistake, but I'm glad I paid attention to my suspicions and asked, and it turned out we were only a couple of block away from ADM).

Negatives & Solutions

He was telling me exactly what I need to do today, and -- he was telling me because I still need to learn how to do it, how to simply trust what I have to offer.

I made a mistake of making a choice that a "real" doctor would be restrained and in control, would not show much emotion (i.e. right away, I knew what to do -- and I rejected it). My big mistake was auditioning my stereotyped idea of a doctor rather than just respond intuitively, honestly, without thinking (too much). The result was just what I was aiming for: I "held back" and give a nice restrained audition. It wasn't bad -- but it wasn't good enough, and (more importantly), it wasn't as good as it could have been. More deeply, more simply, I was playing it safe, afraid of being "too big" or "too much."

Also, I didn't use all available information. For example, my character, in the scene, is walking with another doctor, taking to him. While it was just a paragraph from that scene, I should have imagined another doctor right next to me, and directed my comments towards "him." That would have helped me communicate and focus what I needed to communicate.

And what did I need to communicate? Kim, the director, told me: "you're bothered, concerned that this kid isn't getting better, and you're not sure why." Now, exactly how to use this type of direction will be the topic of my next entry, but because I was "acting" my idea of the character, I wasn't able to make full use of this direction.

(My intuitive response was to show more concern, perhaps even growing alarm and fear).

Finally, I didn't simply take-it-off the page. I still have trouble doing this effectively in an audition, but I'm worse off if I forget to do that -- and I forgot to do that because I forgot my little audition notebook that has notes reminding me about what to do before I go into an audition.

So, I still need to learn how to approach the entire audition experience, right down to making sure I've got everything, and I mean everything, together before I head out the door.

I've been working on a lot of monologues over the last year and a half, and now with a monologue coach, Glenn Alterman. Over that time, I've identified at least one feature that every good monologue has (and Shakespeare's soliloquies seems to fit this to a tee): a 3-part structure, like a play, i.e., a clear beginning, middle, and an end, where the character winds up -- at the end -- in a place often entirely different from where they started.

After working on Shrdlu in Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine, I began to understand him, and one day, fairly early in rehearsal, I asked Mr. Shrdlu why he killed his mother (because in the world of the play, I don't believe that Shrdlu ever really understands why he did it -- we know why he did it, but he doesn't. That's really what his problem is). Shrdlu, now much more awake and aware then he was in the world of the play, had this to say -- a short, hopefully nice, little monologue:

Correcting A Mistake

My name is Shrdlu, Etaoin Shrdlu.

Do you know what it was like growing up with a name no one could pronounce? It wasn't anyone’s fault – it’s unpronounceable. My mother gave it to me. She was a typesetter for Osprey, The Niagara Falls Review. They used a Linotype typesetting machine to compose the pages. My name: it’s the first two sequences of letters on the machine, and if the machine jams, the entire two sequences can drop, and if the proof reader doesn’t catch it, my name can accidentally appear in print. Once, the headline of the Osprey read “Today, the president welcomed the prime minister of Etaoin Shrdlu.”

Shrdlu … it means a mistake.

But – I liked to think of it as something else. Etaoin Shrdlu - it could appear anywhere, in any sentence, and as long as it didn't take the place of a verb, it fit. I could be anything. That’s what my name really meant.

Mom wanted me to be a proof reader, so that Etaoin Shrdlu would never be seen. As Shrdlu, I could be anything. As a proof reader, I would never exist. 13 years of wiping myself out of existence. 13 years, and then suddenly it hit me – I need to wipe someone else out of existence.

Pronunciation Key:

Et·a·oin Shrd·lu - et’-ah-oyne Shrud-loo