Performance Parts!

Ok, I’m a first time director but most first time directors have worked their way from Runner to 3rd Assistant Director (“AD”), maybe to 2nd AD or 1st AD and then given a chance to direct. They’ll be directing actors who’re trained, paid and trying to further their career. These actors know their craft, they’ve realised if ‘the method’ works for them or maybe Meyerhold or some sort of alienation effect. They’ve gone to LAMDA, RADA, Rose Bruford, The Arts Educational School, or another. They’ve seen themselves on screen, analysed, realised and honed. The usual first time director will be placed into a machine where the actors have established themselves, 30 or so directors have already sat in the chair they’re now in and production might just be able to cope without them. There are no chances taken by a company with a recognised track record. These directors are babied, mollycoddled, protected. Now let me tell you about Pizzaman. Pizzaman combines actors with non-actors; it puts people with years of amateur experience (by amateur I mean unpaid) together with people just having a go. Most weren’t trained, some had already been in ‘Merlin’, ‘Dr Who’ or ‘Casualty’, others rediscovered a passion in themselves after years away from the craft. How was I meant to get consistency? It was on the first day of a weeklong rehearsal in a church vestry with the cast popping in and out that I was subjected to a revelation. The week was more for me than it was for them. I had to learn how to communicate with them individually in order to get the performance out of them. I made notes on each style; I played around with ways of speaking, up-front honesty, intimidation and even getting people to copy me. I sent people out of the room to hear them on the phone. I wanted that spark of believable reality and I had to remember how it was achieved. I focused and observed closely. I believe you need good performances and it’s possible to get them from most people. Relaxation is key. It has to be said I have my own beliefs regarding good and bad acting and it would probably take too long to explain them here so I will focus on one actor, our lead, Sunny Patel. Sunny had a spark in the audition and he looked right; he came from a dance background and was studying a Masters in Pharmacy. He read with naïveté, he “said” words and “acted” as he thought emotions should be played. It was either wildly melodramatic or insanely underestimated and I didn’t believe a word of it. I then discovered a method of presenting Sunny with a horrific situation and getting him to keep the thought of that situation in his mind when doing a particular scene. Somehow it worked - he believed it, I believed him. Given some pain, the mediocre scene (which had nothing to do with the horrific situation I told to Sunny) became exciting, enthralling even. This kind of method worked tremendously for Sunny until he got better. What happened was he intuitively learned how to create the correct feeling in himself in order to hit what I wanted in a scene. At midway through the two-week shoot it was one hell of an unexpected curveball. I had to realise quick that I could just ask for more of something very directly and he’d potentially be able to hit it. Of course there were a few times I had to draw it out of him but I couldn’t use the established method we’d built. I had to adapt, change and relearn what I thought I had. In fact I had to re-align 38 times more in order to get what I wanted. I’m a stickler for a good performance and only time will tell if it worked.

Internet! It’s Evolving!

Do you remember that advert on the BBC, “TV it’s evolving” spoken over the Coldplay Clocks track? Well now it should be “Internet and TV, it’s converging.” Project Canvas, which you may or may not have heard about is, yes I know, another set top box for your TV. Like my own Virgin Media box it has all TV (if I pay for them), pay per view, ITVPlayer, iPlayer, 4OD and even VirginPlayer but Project Canvas is different. It will be the culmination of the Internet, or at least the video part of it including YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion to name a fraction of the few, with TV, effectively merging the two. As was said at a Shooting People conference I went to over the weekend “terrestrial TV as we know it will always be there, it will never change, it will just become a dated format with less popularity”, which sounds like radio to me and I love radio. With statistics popping up like more people watching BBC’s iPlayer now than actually watch the BBC TV channels the questions that arise are numerous with a few ringing in many an investor’s ear. To name a few: what will happen to scheduling if you can watch anything at any time? What will happen to advertising if you can use your mouse to move the timer past them (unless watching ITVPlayer)? What will happen to drama series if there’s no-one to pay for them to be made? Of course the final one stings this director’s ear. My thought is that they have to get better. They have to push the talent to the top in order to attract the investors, or is that the other way round? This whole moment in history is very confusing for the TV/Internet current grey area. Inevitably it has to come together and inevitably branded advertising will have to follow its audience if it wants the public to know about its products. A step in this direction has been taken by the company MOFILM. They set up short film competitions from specific product or branding briefs (it’s worth checking it out). What is the next stage? Of course people have beaten us to it in the innovation stakes with the Ford car company paying for Internet drama “Where are the Joneses?” and Bebo sponsored “Kate Modern” (good ideas, but not as developed as “Pizzaman” I might add). Even the BBC got there before anyone with an interactive series called “Wannabes” despite the enormous swaying to the Internet with their flagship “EastEnders”. The truth is nobody knows which way its all going to go but a few things are obvious: people love good drama series, companies want you to buy their product and market advertising is changing at a pace that is mind-bogglingly difficult to keep up with. Did you know that the recent Shane Meadows feature “Somers Town” was even paid for by Eurostar? So if TV and Internet do merge then it leaves this blogging director with a question: will there be a day when a neighbour will talk to us about what they watch and we’ll have never heard of any of it? (This would of course be because there is so much of it out there and we’ve chosen our own specific set of programmes they may not have heard of either.) A scary prospect but this is where “Pizzaman” beats them all. Surely you and your neighbour still want to see your street in a programme? Aren’t you more likely to watch because of your own patriotism to your home area (why else would you live there)? Would this not unite you? Would it not unite a city? Would this not spread like wildfire and wouldn’t you want to be part of it? Who knows, but I think you would.