Writing For Actors pt 2
April 11, 2008 by clive
It’s taken me a long time to get round to writing this post; partly because I’ve been busy setting up a new business… but mainly because I knew what I wanted to say about writing for actors is quite controversial… and simply by writing it, it may harm my very good relationship with the acting community. Which is never a good idea for any film maker who relies on good will to make films.
However, after many years experience of both directing and training actors I’ve come to a conclusion about the causes of bad acting and it basically comes down to two things:
Bad scripts and/or self consciousness… and NOTHING else!
Good acting happens the second the actor stops thinking about their performance, because they are busy doing something else.
The reason most indie films are so very, very bad, is because the scripts suck and the performers are very inexperienced… and, inexperienced performers are incredibly self-conscious. This combination of self consciousness and bad scripting is what makes so many indie films hideous to watch.
Now, one way to make your bad script into a watchable film, is to do what Hollywood does… throw money at the problem. Basically, if you throw a brilliant director and some great actors at a piss poor script, providing they have license to mess around with it, they’ll turn out something somebody is prepared to pay for… especially if you spend enough money on CGI.
At the indie level, although we can get creative with cheap ways to do CGI, and other ways to emulate Hollywood production values… but, we CAN’T buy our way out of a bad script and therefore the biggest advantage any indie ever will ever have is a script which makes it easy for actors to give good performances.
But, how do you write a script that makes it easy for actors to be great, effortlessly?
There are two important things to understand about writing for actors:
The LESS time actors have to feel self-conscious, the better the scene will go…
and,
The easier it is for them to UNDERSTAND why things are happening, the better they will perform.
It’s traditional for screenwriting gurus to tell you “Do NOT tell the actor how to do their job.” I’m now going to tell you the opposite… in order to get great performances you have to tell your actors EXACTLY how to perform the scene. I know this is a controversial statement… but, I stand by it, because it is self doubt in actors which cause self consciousness. However, what do I mean when I say you have to tell actors exactly how to perform the scene?
In basic terms, every scene is in the film for a reason: to give the audience insight and clues about the unfolding story. The first thing a writer needs to understand is what is the scene in the film for? Where many writers go wrong, is they get self indulgent… the writing is there to serve the ego of the writer rather than the needs of either the audience or the actor.
A great scene, like most great literature, should be incredibly simple:
Somebody needs to do something… something or someone gets in their way and in the process the audience gets either a piece of information which explains something they’ve already seen… or, they get a clue which will become significant later on. What makes the acting process easy for the actor, is if the writer links every part of the process to an action… or an interaction with an object or person. Or, in other words, your actors should always be DOING something… and, their action should be linked to the character’s objective.
Let me give you a concrete example:
The retired Russian Army Captain, Grigori, wants to save his daughter from the Serbian Gangsters and by doing this, win back the love of his ex-wife. Half way through the film, is a scene where Grigori discovers his daughter is a sex slave in Romania. How this happens is: an American journalist takes him to a strip club to meet the owner, whilst they are talking Grigori sees his daughter’s image projected onto the wall of the club, acting in a porn film.
The question is, how to make this scene easy for the actor?
Well, in my experience, the trick is to give the actor actions which betray his true emotions, whilst his words are trying to hide the truth. In other words, the audience knows that Grigori wants to kill the club owner, but that he can’t if he wants to save her. And, the way you show that, is by explicitly writing in a visual clue for the actor to perform… in this case Grigori appears relaxed and natural from the waist up… but under the table his knuckles are white with stress, fingers straining to press down on the trigger of his Glock. At any moment he may shoot the guy… but he doesn’t.
What you’ve actually done, is take the true emotion of the scene and shown it to the audience… and, at the same time given the actor a specific way of communicating the emotional content of the scene.
Now, and this is the controversial part… acting is only difficult because 99.9% of the time writers don’t do their job properly. We don’t provide the action which explains the emotional conflict of the scene and because of this we expect actor to do this for us. In other words we write a scene; we then expect the director to work out the emotional route of the characters; and, we then expect the actor and director to figure out how to show it to the audience… and, if the director is lazy s/he delegates that job to the actor.
What this means is our great actors have been those who were good at communicating the emotional subtext… but, if we get actually sat down and did our jobs, then actors wouldn’t need to do that. Their jobs would become easier.
The truth is, the only reason the industry requires so many great actors, is because there are so few great writers.
Welcome back, Clive. Insightful post. I agree somewhat that you need to have some type of action to go along with an emotion. Sometimes, somethign as simple as a flick of the wrist or rolling of eyes or clenching of fists will work to relay the emotional state of the character.
I also try to write the dialogue as to give the actor a clue as to what physical movements are best in those cases when we want to limit the dialogue breaks or even the length of the whole story.
It’s a real art to being minimal without being too ambiguous. You’re right though that there are more good actors than good writers. I think it’s partly because people think of writing as a lottery ticket and not a serious and complex job.
Again, welcome back.
As a one-time professional actor and now a screenwriter/director, I can tell you that you touch on a lot of accurate points.
First, as an actor, the easiest acting and often the best acting is done from good writing. Because actors can get past trying to make the darn script work and actually focus on making a three dimensional character. I know my best work was from great writing… it just flows out.
Second, film acting is a completely different animal because, as you say, the camera can do some of the acting for you. Where, in theater, the actor is responsible for subtext, in film the director and the visuals do that.
In theater, at the most important emotional moment its important to be big. In film, it’s the opposite. I remember reading an interview with a famous Hollywood actress (who’s name completely slips my mind right now) and she said, when a climatic and critical emotional moment happens on screen, do nothing. Let the audience interject how they feel you should feel. If you react differently than their expectations, you’ve lost them. I remember reading both Michael Caine and Gene Hackman say that they try to see how little they can show and get away with onscreen with each subsequent film. They are amazed how intimate your performance can be and still be effective.
All that being said, it’s still important that an actor feel as part of the collaborative process and be allowed to make the character and/or scene work for them. But, they should be very aware of how much the camera helps them and how to use it to their advantage.
hey clive,
thanks for the great post, it was really about time that someone links actions for actors and actions in the script in that way.
you have to give actors something to do, and that is not only the obvious action that is in the scene, it´s the subtext what the character wants to reach in that scene (meaning that the action he/she is doing does not necessarily express what he wants to achieve).
i especially found the book from judith weston Directing Actors really helpful for writing screenplays, writing with action verbs.
many thanks,
Michael
Thanks to all of you… I’ve been reading Judith Weston’s second book “The Film Director’s Intuition.”
In a sense this post came as a reaction to her book, because the more I read the more I felt that all of the processes she proscribes are only necessary because of lazy writing.
I also agree that for film acting, the less an actor does the better.
I think one of reasons screen writing is so difficult is because you have to be able to do the writer’s job, the director’s job and the actor’s job.
I remember a producer saying to me a few years ago, that the trick in writing a screenplay was to make it obvious how the film should be shot, without the director knowing you’d laid the film out for them. I’ve just taken that a stage further, the trick is also to write how the scene should be acted, without them knowing what you’ve done.
Where I think the post is contentious, is once you accept this as a way of thinking about both writing and acting, 95% of method acting becomes obsolete, because the actors just need to know their lines, why they are saying them and perform the actions as they are written. This isn’t to say the process isn’t creative or highly skilled, it’s just not about the internal experience of the actor (unless that’s what they need to remain un-selfconscious).
The more I think about this, the more I see it as a necessary evolution in thinking about film writing and performance. Mainly because “The Method” is a theatrical acting technique, which addresses the very issues of creating the big performances you need for theatre.
Nice to see a new post finally!
Yeap, sorry about the huge gap in new postings, George. I moved from the UK to a new home in Italy over the New Year and at the same time got involved in a new 3D animatics business, which took up all of my available time.
You should see more regular postings from now on… and an expansion of the topic areas. One of the assumptions I’ve always worked on with $1000 film was that my readers knew at least as much as I did about guerilla approaches to production… and my experience of the indie scene told me that writing was the weakest link. What I’ve realised recently is I also have some interesting insights into the production and post production processes. So, you’ll see more written about my and James’ approaches to production over the next year.
I’m also off to Cannes in a few weeks time and intend to post from the festival.
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