THE MOVIE MAKING MARATHON DIRECTING TIPS & TECHNIQUES
By Elisabeth Benfey February 2, 2007
Shooting your short film: a step-by-step approach to designing a scene Below is a step-by-step guide that is designed to help you identify and successfully managed the tasks a director must accomplish before, and during the shoot. I tried to address the particular challenge of shooting a short movie with a non-professional cast and crew on a tight schedule. You will also find here practical tools that will help you to visualize the design of your scene, communicate your creative choices to your cast and crew, and organize your footage prior to editing. Those visual tools include examples of floor plans, storyboards, marked script, shot list, and a printable log sheet. The sources for this section of our website (books and links materials) can be found at the end of this document. Challenges you will face as a director–and solutions
A short film (5-12 minutes long) can contain two, maybe three main dramatic scenes. As a director, you start with a screenplay –words on a page. How do you transform the text into images with meaning? How do you make the characters on the page come to life on screen? This process should not take place at the last minute, on the set, when constant demands on your attention risk to derail the shoot. You may have the time to work with your actors and to rehearse the key scenes with them; you may be able to have access to your location hours before you start shooting, but be aware that those are ideal circumstances. You must consider the possibility (the strong likelihood), that you will not have that luxury. In other words, you need a PLAN, which will keep you on track, confident, and available for your actors and your crew on the set. Although he is the hub at the creative process, the one who provides and carries out a vision, the director must learn to use the ideas and talents available to him on the set. Therefore your plan must also be flexible enough to let the creative energy flow between you and your collaborators (cast and crew) during the shoot. Respecting the balance between adequate preparation before the shoot, and open collaboration during filming, is the secret to creating a rich, complex, memorable
movie. Acknowledgments
The following material is based in great part on Nick Proferes’ book: FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS: FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN (Focal Press). Nick was one of the teachers who influenced me the most when I was in Film School at Columbia. His short book is full of insightful comments, and offers a clear, succinct overview of what an aspiring director needs to know to shoot a short film. If you only buy one book on directing, buy this one! At the end of this document, you will also find a list of reading materials, and links on directing short films, directing actors, and editing your movie. I will add more materials (about directing actors, editing, etc.), as we get closer to the MMM event. PREPARING THE SHOOTING PLAN
I- ANALYZING THE (SHORT) SCREENPLAY A scene that has not been thoroughly examined by the director before the shoot will always feel superficial and flat. Your first duty, as a director, is to familiarize yourself with the screenplay, particularly the dramatic scenes (meaning the ones that advance the narrative) in the script. You should count on spending a few hours alone with pencil and script. What will you be doing? 1) Read each dramatic scene through by yourself
Do not force this process. It is Okay if you do not come up with anything concrete yet. The script is making an impression on you. You have a sense of pace, maybe, or of the mood of the piece. Let yourself daydream. Let the images forming in your head guide the creative process. What do you SEE in your mind’s eye when you read? Are specific moments emerging as particularly strong and clear? Do you see characters moving in space? What are they doing? Can you see a gesture, a specific prop that will play a key function in the scene? Can you think of specific locations at your disposal that would work for the scene? For instance, if you are shooting a scene where two people are breaking up -one is packing, the other is following her- you could visualize the scene as some sort of chase from room to room. In this case, do you have access to an apartment, or a house that has communicating doors, rooms that open onto other rooms, or hallways, etc. which would allow you to choreograph the scene?
2) Break the scene into beats
What is a Beat? Writers, actors, directors all use beats, but the word is used with a slightly different meaning by each. For our purposes, we will focus on acting beats, and of course, on directing beats, which we will call dramatic beats. An acting beat is a unit of action committed by a character. To reprimand is an acting beat. Each beat takes place after another beat. The next actor’s beat starts when there is a change in action of the character they are playing. Let’s take, for instance, two lovers who had an argument. In our scene, the man (character A), hoping to make up with his girlfriend (character B), shows up at her doorstep. Character A comes into the scene wanting “to get his foot in the door”. The second beat could be, “to open his heart”, the third, “to put himself in her shoes”, etc. There can be hundreds of actor’s beats in one scene. What is an action?
Characters perform actions to get what they want (a “want” is also called an objective). They never take their eyes off the prize. A character performs one action at a time. (To ring the door bell; To peek inside; To get a foot in the door, etc.) Always choose a verb to describe the action, which is in the “now” and contains the immediate intent of the character in the moment (ex. To stop him) The director’s beats
Although directors must obviously be aware of the actor’s beats in the script, his job is to divide the script into larger dramatic blocks, to indicate when the narrative significantly shifts, or progresses in a different direction. For the director, a beat is like a paragraph in prose. It is a unit containing one overriding idea. It encompasses several acting beats. For instance, in the example above, all the acting beats could be included in a directing beat we could call “to get in”. The next directing beat could be “to ask for/to refuse forgiveness”, the next could be “to argue”, etc. Once you have identified your directing beats (let’s just call them beats from now on), take a pencil and physically draw lines to separate one beat from another. Now look at the pages of your script. Each scene (let’s say a two-pages scene, the most common length in a short script) will be divided into clear dramatic paragraphs, separated by a horizontal line. Now write, at the beginning of each paragraph, its
title: “To get in” would be the title of the first paragraph. Function of the beats
There are two main reasons why you will want to break down each scene into beats. The first one is purely practical: smaller sections of the script are easier to work on in detail with your actors and easier to rehearse and record when you are on the set with cast and crew. The second reason, and the most important one, is that identifying the beats of each scene will help you design your scene. II- DESIGNING THE SCENE You are still at home, alone with your script. You have divided each dramatic scene into beats, which appear on the page as paragraphs. Each paragraph now has a title that is simple and clear enough to give you a sense of the main action the characters are involved in. The beats -dramatic paragraphs in the script- will now be used to render the text into spatial paragraph on the set. The beats will help you not only stage, or “block” the actors on the set. They will also allow you to determine your choices for camera placement. Designing=Blocking+Camera placement
Please remember that designing a scene is a rigorous, TWO step process. Do not rush it! First, you must stage, or “block” the movements of your actors (A). The blocking must spatially reflect what is happening dramatically between the characters in the scene. Once the movements of your actors is clear -and only then, should you think about introducing the camera and setting up your shots (B). A- Blocking (or staging) the actors Ideally, you should save time to rehearse the key dramatic scenes of your movie with your actors on location. This is not, even on professional shoots, often going to be the case. Given the tight schedule of the MMM, you will probably have time to work with them on the set only moments before shooting. Again, prepare yourself ahead of time. You will probably need to adjust (and here is where flexibility comes in) the blocking once you are on location with your actors, in function of the real space at your disposal, and of the suggestions and dramatic choices they make during the quick rehearsal on the set. Blocking must accomplish at least one of the following jobs 1-Capture the action.
What is going on between the characters? What are the circumstances? What do they want? What are they doing to get what they want? No movement of the actors should be arbitrary. You must justify the motivation for the movement of the actors. Your blocking of the scene can never be arbitrary. The choices you make must clarify the dramatic moment that is unfolding. Drama is told through the actions of the characters. Their actions must be conveyed clearly, and unambiguously to the audience in order for them to understand what is happening in the scene. 2-Make physical what is intellectual or mental (allow the audience to get into the head of the character). Where should you position the actors to accurately translate the dramatic units of the scene? How can you make the essence of the moment more palpable? When they start arguing, it makes sense for one of the characters to stand up and move away to the kitchen. After they move to the kitchen, the second character may follow. Would it make sense to position one of the people behind the table, creating a physical barrier between the two characters as they argue. The separation visually clarifies their attitudes toward each other for the audience by heightening the physical distance between them between them. 3-Create or Resolve separation There are only main two staging patterns. The characters are separated and come together; the characters are together at first, then one, or both, move away. (Remember, when you think of distance for your staging, that movement always appears slower on screen than on the set.) 4-Familiarize the audience with a location (expository information) Sometimes it is important to make the layout of the location clear to the audience if the environment plays an important role in the action. For instance, you may want to establish, through staging, the distance and the objects separating two characters at the beginning of the scene. That distance may speak volumes in terms of what they feel toward each other. 5-Prepare the audience for a lengthy scene. For instance, a character settles in a big chair, preparing the audience to a long explanation. 6-Punctuate actions
Movement can be a way to suggest a change of pace, or of mood. One character may become absorbed in a task, which gives him time to think. The movement acts as a pause between two beats. Changing the stage within a scene
You can save a particular part of the location, or stage, for this particular part of the scene. In the example of the two characters above, we isolated three main dramatic blocks: To get in, To ask/refuse forgiveness, To argue. Let’s imagine that the scene is taking place in a house. The first beat, “To get in”, could be taking place on the doorstep, in the lobby. You can imagine one character talking, even pushing his way in, and the other resisting. You could block the second beat “To ask for/to refuse forgiveness” in another space –on another stage- for instance, in the living room of the house. They may sit down, or one of them does and the other, still keeping her distance, stands facing the other. The third beat, “To argue”, could take place on another stage, in the kitchen, for instance, or in another area of the living room. Each beat is taking place in a different space. By creating clear, geographical paragraphs for the action, you make the progression of the action visually clear to the audience. Tools to visualize blocking
Use a floor plan, or overhead diagram (picture #) This will help you choreograph the scene. Where do you start? You can start at the beginning of the scene or start with what is the dramatic turning point of the scene to guide you through the design. In our example, you could start designing your scene from the moment the first character rings the door-bell, Or you could choose to start choreographing the movement of your actors with the moment when the two characters start arguing. This might be the dramatic core of the scene, the one you visualize most easily. Either way, you should draw a sketch of the location you will use, and mark the movements of your actors from space to space, following the beats you identified in the script. On the floor plan, you should also include any props (couch, counter, table, etc) that may be important in the action. A few notes about directing actors
Our goal here is not to give you a crash course in acting, or in directing actors. If you are interested in finding out how to get a great performance out of your actors, you can start by reading some of the materials I suggest at the end of this document. Here are a few
tips, however that should be enough to help you get a believable performance from your actors, even if you never directed before. Casting
You have only a few hours to cast the parts. Make sure that the people you cast not only resemble the characters as you imagine them, but that their general demeanor, their behavior, what they tell you about themselves, is as close as possible to the characters in the script. You are not in a position to work long and hard with them to “get” the part and create a character, so don’t hesitate: Type-cast! Communicating with the actors
Learn the vocabulary to communicate with your actors. At the end of this document, I will give a list of definitions for the terms that you will use to communicate with your actors in rehearsals and on the set. If you have the time, read a few books on acting (list below).
Actors do not “act emotions” The emotional life of the character comes from actions (wants) that are contextualized. Emotions derive form actions that are embedded in relationships and circumstance of the scene. You cannot tell an actor to “act sad”, or “act upset”. Be sure to use an active verb that gives your actor a sense of what he would be doing (not what he is supposed to feel, which is only a result of what he does), of what his behavior would be under the circumstances. You can tell them, instead, that they want to “hide in a corner” or “punch him in the face”. Difference between action and activity Suppose you are sitting in an office waiting to be called by your dentist. You are reading a magazine. What is the action –reading or waiting? As soon as the dentist calls you, you will drop the reading. The reading is the activity that accompanies the action of waiting. Dialogue is action! If I say “Hello” to you, it may be a greeting. If you are late, it might be a reprimand. Silence is action. A character’s silence, a glare, a mournful glance are all acting beats. They advance the drama as effectively as words. Once you are done drawing the positions and movements of your actors on the overhead diagram, you are ready to bring in the camera.
B- Setting up the shots: working with the camera In the beginning of the movies, the only function of the camera was to record the action of the actors as the director bellowed to them what they were supposed to do. The camera was placed in a proscenium position, like an audience in the theater. The only dramatic tools the director had at his disposal to tell the story were the actor’s blocking and the quality of their performance. Once he was done directing them, as he would actors in a theater, he would shout “Lights, Camera, Action”, and that was it: one Master Shot covered the whole scene. W.D Griffith, in Birth of a Nation, had a revolutionary idea: he moved the camera in the midst of the action. Suddenly, the camera had a job: it became an active participant, a narrator in the drama. The camera had, finally, its own “voice” to tell the story. A new visual vocabulary began to emerge. Camera placement
Now you have blocked the movements of your actors. You are ready to for the second step of your scene design: selecting your shots. Just as blocking has to serve narrative and dramatic purposes in your scene, so does camera placement. Think about putting together a visual sentence. Each shot must have meaning within the context of other shots. Where do you put the camera so the resulting images will tell the story you want to tell? How can the camera convey behavior, dramatic elements, plot elements, atmospheric touches? There are five questions to answer to help you determine where to put the camera:
1-Whose scene is it? Whose head does the audience need to be in to fully appreciate the scene? For instance, you may set up the camera in a different position if you decide that the person who opened the door is your main character. If you decide it is “her” scene, as opposed to “his”, you will make different choices. You may, for instance, decide to follow her move to the kitchen, while the other character remains in the living room. Make the behavior palpable to the audience. 2-What is the essence of the moment I have to convey to the audience? Once you have determined who is the main character in your scene, you may want to set up the camera in a way that reveals what is going on inside the character’s head. In our scene (two lovers in a room),
capturing the essence of the scene would be to convey the emotions of the woman who opened the door. You could, for instance, start with her, and capture, in close up, her reaction to the man standing behind the door. The image size, and the fact that she is present before the other character suggests her importance dramatically, and allows the audience to identify –possibly to side with her- in the rest of the scene. Watch a great example in the first hotel room scene between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichol’s The Graduate.
3-What story points, location, character or props must be introduced or kept alive? What essential elements must be introduced and reinforced to show what is happening in the present and what might happen in the future? In our simple scene, did the man bring flowers to make peace with the woman? Did he bring a gun to threaten her? In this case, the prop will have to “make an entrance”, and be kept into play throughout the scene. You may want to reveal the gun before you reveal the man himself, for instance. If he puts it on the table, you may want to have a “cutaway” of the gun, which you can bring back as a visual leitmotiv during the scene. A good example is the envelope scene in the first act of Hitchcock’s Psycho. 4-What stylistic elements or motifs must be introduced? If you intend to use hand-held camera, jump cuts, slow motion, do it early to prepare the audience for the way the narrator is going to tell the story. It is as if the camera had a personality. It is the way you are telling the story. If it is a comedy, you may want to shoot the scene in a wide shot, to allow the actors to improvise and give them ample space for physical comedy. If you want to create a realistic feel, you may want to use a hand-held camera to give the audience the impression that they too, are in the room. Choosing a style is not an ego trip. Remember that style must first and foremost serve the story. 5-Is it necessary to resolve the spatial separation between the characters, or otherwise orient the audience to location or time? By keeping characters in a separate frame, the psychological separation between them is highlighted. A pan, for instance, is an effective way to resolve the distance (spatial and psychological) between two characters. Note: Coverage is a term you will hear a lot. It is used to express the number of camera setups to render a scene, usually, wide, middle and close. Although you should definitely consider this time-effective
technique when shooting under a deadline, you run the risk of creating a generic design that has little meaning. The narrative elements of cinema
In the first films –filmed plays- the audience knew where the actors where at all times because the action took place within a single camera frame. When DW Griffith moved the camera into the scene the action became more dramatic and engaging for the audience, but it also created the potential for confusion because the geography of a location, or parts of a character’s body, or a spatial relationship, where now framed in separate shots. This is called fragmentation of the action. The director must recreate the visual and dramatic coherence of the action by connecting the shots.
Shots are the sentence of the movies. The significance of the sentence only becomes clear in a context. Ex. If you show a watch on a table, the sentence reads: “wristwatch lying on a table reads three o’clock. The significance of this film sentence will only emerge when the shot is given a context. Eisenstein gives an example of how context changes the meaning of the story. Imagine the shot of a man’s face. The man looks intense, his attention focused to something off-screen. Cut to a woman. The audience mentally connects the shots: the man wants the woman. Now use the same close up of the man, looking off-screen. Cut to a plate of food. Now the audience thinks: “This man wants to eat”. It is the connection and mutual relationships of shots that yield meaning. Context also applies to camera angles. No camera angle (extreme low or high, tilt, pan, etc.) contains in itself any inherent dramatic psychological or atmospheric content. It has to be put in context of other angles. The audience is constantly engaged in an active process of matching chains of shots. The Rules of Film Grammar
Every time there is a lapse in logic of the choice and articulation of the shots, the movie stops making sense. As a result, you jolt your audience out of the world of your movie, forcing them to figure out what is going on on-screen. Therefore, the main concern of a director is clarity. The four rules of film grammar help maintain the visual logic of your film by keeping the audience oriented at all times. Film grammar has only four rules. Three deal with (A) spatial orientation as a result of the audience into the action. The fourth has to do with Space and Time.
A- Spatial orientation - The 180 degree rule This rule deals with the sightlines of the characters-where they are looking. When two characters face each other an imaginary line or axis, connects them at the tip of their nose. Character A will be looking camera right, and b camera left. If we shoot them in separation, their sightlines would be correct. The audience would understand the spatial relationships between the characters. What happens if we jump the axis with the camera? The audience will become disoriented. You can jump the axis if you then cut to a two shot from the opposite angle. Usually jumping the axis is used for dramatic effect, on a heightened dramatic beat. -The thirty three degree rule If we are going from one shot of a character or object to another shot of the same character or object without the intervening shot of something else, the camera angle should change by at least 33 degrees. The idea is that, by doing so, you do not notice the leap. You break this rule for dramatic effect (Hitchcock in The birds-used to punch up the discovery of the body) -Screen direction *Left to Right; if a character exits screen right, he should re-enter it screen left. Again you can break the rule to create dramatic tension, but the shot should be varied in length and duration. The last shot of the series should respect the grammatical rule. *Right to Left and Up: since we are used to reading from left to right anddown, more tension is created if the characters moves from right to left and up. *Approaching and receding: a character approaching the camera and exiting frame camera right (bottom) should enter camera left (bottom) B- Film time: A story unfolds in time as well as space. We can shorten what is interesting (compression) and lengthen what is interesting (elaboration) in a single scene. Compression: To shorten the distance a character has to cover, we can compress the distance traveled. In the first shot, he starts walking and exits it. In the second, he enters the shot and is already at his destination.
Elaboration: we take a moment and make it larger, you stretch time by through variation of angles to cover the same action, and by repetition of familiar shots. (Ex. Staircase scene in “The Untouchables” by Brian de Palma.) If film is a language, What is the vocabulary at your disposal?
There are five things you can do with the camera to change what is in the frame. You, as a director will integrate and manipulate these elements to create the sentences to write the cinematic story.
-Cut to another angle: low angle, high angle, overhead shot. The most neutral shot, which mimics what a person would normally see, is at eye-level. -Change image size: master shot (covers the entire scene), Long Shot (LS), medium shot (MS), two shot, over the shoulder shot, Close Up (CU), etc. -Put it into motion: pan right and left, tilt up and down, tracking shot (moves with people in motion), a zoom shot (no actual movement. Just an electronic adjustment of the lens), crane shot (camera rises above the actors’ head) -Change the focal length of the lens: wide angle, long lens, etc. -Change speeds or stop motion with a freeze frame A little more film vocab: -Objective cam: What the camera sees: it can be playful, distant, static, use extreme Close ups etc. -Subjective camera: The camera allows us to see what a character is experiencing (Ex: the frame becomes blurry to convey the fact that the character’s vision is impaired, as in the climactic fight scene of The Cinderella Man). -This is different from a Point-of-View (POV), which is an approximation of what a character sees. Coming soon to the MMM Website…
More about the tools you can use to visualize the shots and communicate your vision (storyboards, shot lists, marked script) and to edit more efficiently (log sheets). For now, here are a few useful books and links: From Word to Image Storyboarding and the Filmmaking Process by Marcie Begleiter (Michael Wiese Productions)
For the relationship between storyboards and overhead diagrams, take a look at http://itp.nyu.edu/~sa1222/BLOGGER/03_01.gif also, http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/storybd/ts9.GIF I recommend that you download a storyboard (framing) sample. Make sure you indicate the Shot #, the Action (ex. Frank picks up the envelope from the table), the size and angle of the shot (Medium Close up. High-Angle on Envelope), dialogue exchanged over the shot you are drawing (Ex. Frank: “I’m going to the post office”). Indicate if there are any sound effects (FX) –the Off screen sound of a keyboard, children playing, etc.) that will be needed in post-production. Example of marked film script: http://www.ryerson.ca/rta/handbook/tvpaperwork/tv_paperwork_forms/ efp_master_scene_script_marked.jpg A few books worth reading On directing: Film Directing Fundamentals From Script to Screen by Nicholas T. Proferes (Focal Press)
Total Directing Integrating Camera and Performance in Film and Television by Tom Kingdon (Silman James) Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video by David K. Irving and Peter W. Rea. Third Edition (Focal Press) Thinking in Pictures The Making of the Movie Matewan by John Sayles. Houghton Mifflin. On acting and directing actors: Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell, and Sydney Pollack (a really great book – DVD also available)
Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen. With Haskel Frankel (Macmillan) The Stanislavski System The first simplified Guide to Stanislavski’s teachings. Second Revised Edition. by Sonia Moore
On editing: The Converstations (with Walter Murch) and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
This Directing Tips & Techniques Packet was created for the Movie Making Marathon at Duke University. For more information concerning the Movie Making Marathon, please visit www.duke.edu/web/mmm. Copyright 2007.
