The book On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director is quite enlightening. Even though I am not going to be a director or an actor in the future, but know more about the work of film director and actor is still helpful to be in the film industry. To shoot a good film, cooperation is needed within the crew. Especially when both the director and the actor play an important role in the process of film production, it’s necessary for crew members to understand their work, which can contribute to good cooperation.
I agree with the point that the actor, except experienced one, tends to be too premeditated and cannot give natural physical behavior and facial reaction. Most of the people are hard to act normally in front of the camera. Since when they are acting, their words, expressions and behaviors will be recorded, and there are so many people in the crew watch them acting, they are paid so much attention, which brings them a sense of nervousness and they are hard to behave normally. The method that Mackendrick mentions is helpful. Even though sometimes the action that the actor use prop is meaningless and has no any significance to the film, the appliance of props contributes to the actor’s performance, making their behavior more obvious and physical, and providing them natural physical behavior.
After reading this chapter, I also feel surprised about the collaborative model between the director and the actor. I used to watch a behind-the-scenes clip of a Chinese movie, in which a director was showing the actor how to act by acting the role himself. While the author is strongly against the way that let the actor to do what the director wants. He believes that the duplicate performance of an actor is hard to be convincing, and the actor who is doing that would tend to think about how he would act, rather than listen and watch the actor with real concentration. What’s more, I reckon that the actor, instructed by the director, tends to be dependent and unconfident. They would think their performance is not brilliant, so the director has to show them how to act by himself. Gradually they don’t trust their talent in performance and just rely on the director’s idea, which wouldn’t bring any improvement to their performance.
Needless to say, Mackendrick has great depth of insight into the working relationship between the director and the actor, I have learned a lot from this chapter and gained more understanding of the film grammar.
Comentarios