Directing and Acting for the Screen | aiming for magic

The director sits in at the balance between the performance and the technical requirements of a film. As part of the peer-led filmmaking workshops in Exeter, Simon Tytherleigh will share his experience on both sides of the camera on how to get the most out of an acting performance as a director. We caught up with him to ask what to expect from the workshop

Acting feels like one of the most obvious aspects of a film – but then there’s that quote from Hitchcock. How important is the acting to help make a film work?

Hitchcock certainly didn’t seem to think actors were that important in a film, and were best doing nothing… well. “All actors should be treated like cattle” is his famous quote. For him the staging and camerawork determined the dramatic effect. I beg to differ, having been both in front of and behind a camera.

What interests me is how to get the best possible performance from an actor under the challenging circumstances of a film set. Because if the audience does not believe the performance, then it doesn’t matter how good or bad your staging and camerawork are, the film will not come across as credible. In that respect acting is crucial to make a film work. And Hitchcock had access to really good actors!

Filmmaking is collaborative, how easy is it to overlook and be distracted from the acting aspect, especially if technical issues arise?

Especially with independent filmmaking, where one is invariably short-handed, it is very easy to spend all the time overcoming the technical challenges and just assume the acting will somehow take care of itself. The requirements of the actor are far more than just getting into the right position and not falling over the furniture. There are so many ways a line can be delivered that might subtly change the emphasis of a scene, and good and bad ways for a director to coax what they want from an actor.

9 years ago in 2014, you ran a workshop “how not to wreck your movie” at Two Short Nights. What do you think has changed since then with regards to filmmaking and acting in the intervening years, or do the fundamentals stay the same?

Ah, you remember! This is very similar to that workshop, and really the fundamentals remain the same. I think the most important thing I want to get across is about the right brain/left brain problem. The actor needs to be thinking intuitively, creatively, not analytically (right brain). The crew need to think analytically and logically (left brain) to get the best shot, sound etc. The director has to hover between these two states of mind and somehow stand in for the audience. So the relationship between director and actor is complex and tricky. The best book by a long stretch on this subject is Directing Actors by Judith Weston, and I draw heavily on her experience and insights.

What are the issues about creating rapport and building a good screen performance?

For the actor it is about having a clear idea of the character and of the arc that the character travels through the film, although of course the character itself can’t know the whole story. Having a solid grasp of the character means that the actor can let the unconscious micro-signals convey much of the performance. Micro-signals are the little facial expressions that we all unconsciously make and which everyone picks up on, also unconsciously; many think that one reason why film is so powerful as a medium is that when a face is seen in close-up those micro-signals are blasting out at the audience, drawing them in to a character’s emotional state.

For the director it is about giving direction that enables the actor to shape the performance intuitively, and refraining from jerking the actor out of character and into the cold practicalities of the film set.

We love the personality you’ve imbued into the characters in your stop motion film The Legend of Jan Tregeagle, can you mention one similarity and one difference of working with live actors?

Thank you. I found sculpting the characters was a process very similar to taking on an acting role. I needed to feel the character and just let that express itself in the modelling. People have commented on this aspect of the puppets, so I think it works although it seems a bit magical.

One of the things I have learned while working with puppets that have a very limited set of facial expressions is that the audience brings emotion to a film. The puppets evoke the desired emotion if they are positioned right, and the audience does this wonderful thing of knowing what the puppet is thinking, while simultaneously being completely aware that they are looking at an inanimate object. That really is magical, and endlessly fascinating for me. 

A difference from working with live actors is that for stop motion every action has to be broken down into tiny frame-by-frame increments, which can lead to some very stilted movements. The use of little throwaway reference clips of (usually me) doing an action, known as LAVs (Live Action Videos) helps bring back that spontaneity. Analysing movements in this way can also help in building a live-action character, although this is clearly an approach for rehearsals not on set!

You probably have plenty of horror stories – but do you have an uplifting experience that surprised you or made you smile about working with actors?

Yes, I will probably mention one or two howlers in my talk. But just occasionally I have witnessed an entire film crew captivated by the power of a performance. I recall a little scene between Brenda Fricker and Jean Hayward, a nurse and patient conversation, in an episode of Casualty many years ago. It was so beautifully done and so utterly credible and powerful that everyone seemed to realise that something rather magical had just happened.

Of course we are never going to get scenes like that every time, but it is that sort of magic that I think we should aim for, and it comes out of an approach to acting and directing that creates the conditions for really fine performances.

Thank you Simon!

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