Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

En liten nerdete fransk bok om hvordan regissører jobber reddet dagen for Lars og Christoffer. Piker og Pistoler fortsetter sin utforsking av regifaget.

Som regissør er det ofte vanskelig å finne svar på hvordan andre regissører man liker jobber. Leser man et intervju i avisen eller på nettet finner man som regel bare svar på hvorfor filmskaperen valgte en viss skuespiller eller hva den ville formidle med filmen. Dette er jo selvfølgelig interessant, men det gir deg ikke noen oppskrift du kan stjele og bruke i din fremtidige lavbudsjetts kortfilm eller musikkvideo. De spørsmålene som ofte forblir ubesvart (og sikkert uspurt) i disse intervjuene er hvordan regissøren praktisk har jobbet – Hvordan forholder han seg til skuespillerne? Hvordan jobber han med fotografen i forarbeidet? Ønsker han å lage filmer som sier NOE eller vil han stille publikum spørsmål? Godt er det da at vi snublet over den lille regi-nerdeboka ”Moviemakers’ Master Class” av Laurent Tirard.

Boka, som ble utgitt i 2002, har det enkle premiss å stille en rekke profilerte filmregissører spørsmål om hvordan de faktisk jobber. Alt fra Woody Allen til Lars von Trier kvekker ut det ene gullkornet etter det andre her. Forfatter Tirard har gjort en knalljobb med å lirke hemmeligheter ut av brødhølene til noen av vår tids største RegiStemmer. Noe av det som i tillegg er spennende er at mange av de samme spørsmålene blir stilt til de forskjellige filmskaperne. På denne måten åpner boka for (oppspilt) sammenligning mellom arbeidsmetoder. (Hva?! Verken John Woo eller Wim Wenders lager storyboard?!)

Vi tenkte det kunne være spennende å dele noen av disse betraktningene regissørene har over samme tema. Dagens spørsmål er: Hvordan jobber du egentlig med skuespillere? (i redsel for å miste noe grunnet mangelfull oversettingsevne er alle svar, som i boka, på engelsk)

Sydney Pollack:

SydneyPollack1

I usually start with the actors. And when they get on the set, the first thing I do is send everyone else away. Even a cat or a dog. Actors are very self-conscious. I don’t care what they say; I know they can easily be humiliated and that they might not try certain things if there are people watching. I never give an actor directions in front of other actors. Because otherwise, when he does the scene again, he knows that I’m watching and judging him, of course, but he also knows that the other actors are watching and judging him. So it’s a very private process. In fact, the first thing I do is keep actors from acting. I say, ”No acting, no performance, just read the lines.” That relaxes them a lot.

What I’m trying to do, really, is hold the acting until it happens by itself. Because it will. Pretty soon they’ll start moving around as they say their lines, and you’ll get a sense of what they want to do. I never tell them, ”You go there and you sit here,” because then they feel excluded from the process; they feel like they’re not part of it. I might start directing a little bit, but very progressively. My feeling is, if there are seven things wrong with the scene, just talk about one. Then, when it’s fixed, talk about another, and so on. Solve problems one at a time. … So once I think we’re getting there I bring the crew in and send the actors to their trailers for make-up and wardrobe, and the I go see each of the actors privately and talk to them some more about the scene. That way, each actor has a different sense of what he or she will bring back to the set. And then, once they get on the set, I always try to roll the camera too soon. It makes the actors a bit tense, it cathes them off guard a little bit, and it tends to give better results.”              

Martin Scorsese:

martin_scorsese_mpaa

Personally, I have to like the actors I’m working with, and I try to give them as much freedom as possible to make the scene come alive. … I guess you can tell from my movies that most of the time, my shots are very precise. But I always try to work it out with the director of photography so that the actors eventually have space to move.

On a film like ”Casino”, there was a lot of improvisation, which is fine. If an actor really feels comfortable playing that character in that world, I let him improvise within a given scene and I cover it in a pretty straightforward manner: medium shots, close ups… When you do that the world is pretty much created by the actors. I place them in the frame, and the set around them is part of their life, but they bring the life to it. When that happens, and when it goes in the direction you wanted, it can be incredibly rewarding. Often on that film I found myself sitting behind the camera not as a director, but as an audience member. I got so involved in watching that it was like I was watching a film somebody else was directing. And when you get that feeling, you know you’re on to something good.”

Woody Allen:

woody_allen-2011

”People often ask me what is the secret of directing actors, and they always think I’m being facetious when I answer that all you have to do is hire taltented people and let them do their work. But it’s true. A lot of directors tend to overdirect their actors, and the actors indulge in that because, well, they like being overdirected. They like having endless discussions about the part; they like to intellectualize the whole process of creating a character. And often, that’s how they get confused and lose their spontaneity or their natural talent. Now, I think I know where this all comes from. I think the actors – and probably the director too – feel guilty about doing something that is so easy and so natural to them, and so they try to make it more complex to justify being paid for it. I stay away from that thought process.

… As I said earlier I shoot long uncut scenes, which most actors love because that’s what acting is all about. Most of the time, in films, they do a three-second shot where they move their head and say two words, and then they have to wait for four hours to shoot the end of that scene from another angle. They’re just getting warm and then they have to stop. It’s extremely frustrating, and I think it goes against the very thing that makes their job enjoyable.”

Wim Wenders:

wenders

I’d usually begin by preparing the frame, then I’d position the actors, telling them where to stand and how to move within it. But, little by little, I felt that this was becoming a trap. And then, just before shooting ”Paris, Texas”, I had the chance to direct a stage play. And this experience immensely changed my way of working, probably because it forced me to concentrate much more on the actor’s work and therefore allowed me to better understand and appreciate it.

Since then, I have done the opposite of what I used to do. In other words, I find my scene construction in the action. I arrive on the set without any preconcieved ideas about the shots I’m going to film, and only after working with the actors, after making them move around the set, do I start to think about where I’m going to set up the camera. This process takes much more time, of course, because you can’t light the set until you decide on the shot breakdown, but I know now I need to ”live out” the scene before shooting it. … There are as many methods as actors. And in the end, all you can do as a director is put the actors at ease so that they no longer perform, so they no longer pretend to be someone else. You choose actors for what they are, so make sure that they can be themselves.”

Lars von Trier:

 Von Trier

”A few years ago, everybody would have told you that I was the worst director of actors in the whole industry. And everyone might have been right, although I will say in my defense that it was the kind of films I made which caused that. … I realize the best way to get something from actors is to give them freedom. Give them freedom and encourage them, that’s all I can say. It’s like everything else in life: if you want something done well, you have to be extremely positive about it and about people’s ability to accomplish it.

In the beginning of my career I saw a documentary about the way Ingmar Bergman directed his actors. After each take, he would go to his cast and say, ”Oh, that was great! Beautiful! Fantastic! Maybe you could improve this a little, but really…marvelous!” And I remember I wanted to throw up. It felt so exaggerated and overdone and… well, it seemed fake to the cynical young filmmaker that I was. But today, I’ve come to realize he was right, that it is the right approach. You have to encourage actors, you have to support them. And let’s not be afraid of the cliché: you have to love them. Really. I know that on a film like ”The Idiots”, for instance, I came to love my actors so much that I became extremely jealous. Because they had developed this very close relationship amongst themselves, they had created a sort of community from which I felt excluded. It couldn’t have lasted very much longer, because at the end, I was getting so upset that I didn´t want to work anymore. I was pouting like a child because I was jealous. I felt like they where having all the fun and I had to work, like they were all kids and I had to be the teacher.”  

Fortsettelse følger…          

Les forrige innlegget i Piker og Pistoler: En filmskapers intuisjon

  • ”Piker og pistoler” er en ny blogg av regiduoen Christoffer Lossius og Lars Åndheim.Tittelen refererer ikke til NRAs årlige kalenderutgivelse, men til nybølge-pioner Jean-Luc Godards definisjon av hva man trenger for å lage film. Bloggen vil ikke i særlig stor grad handle om Jean-Luc Godard. Men den vil handle mye om hva man trenger for å lage film. I tiden fremover vil man her kunne lese om våre personlige, usensurerte betraktninger rundt regifaget, den kreative prosessen, filmpolitikk, inspirasjon, kunst og menneskelig adferd. Således omfatter postene våre tweets, artikler, serviettmanifester, YouTube-linker og Spotify-spillelister. Formen avhenger av dagsformen og vi skiller ikke mellom høyt og lavt.
  • Christoffer Lossius og Lars Åndheim er utdannet fiksjonsfilmregissører fra Film &TV-akademiet på NISS og jobber til daglig med reklame og musikkvideo i produksjonsselskapet Go Happy. På siden eier de og driver sitt eget selskap Filmfaktisk, hvor de for øyeblikket utvikler kortfilmer og sin spillefilmdebut.

1 kommentar til Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

  1. Sam, I’m still watching and see where your going. and it is getintg closer. good job. job costing next I hope. on one of your pages you asked for specific features. report on time and material bi compared on actual time and materials spent. pleses include a way to add a burden someway to give all overhead cost to be included in it. Qxpress lets us add an additional amount to each employee like right now i’m adding a little over 9.00 based on last years total hours vs total expenses (from QB excluding actual payroll and inventory.). I have seen where some other software it is there just seperate.one comp. had it under supplies and you just listed it as anonther expence but I think that is cheesy and not the best way. They also have just man hours bid compared to actual. to show employees if they are hitting your marks. This is great to see where they are compared to the same properties in previous years employees. Thank for the continued additions.

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Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

En liten nerdete fransk bok om hvordan regissører jobber reddet dagen for Lars og Christoffer. Piker og Pistoler fortsetter sin utforsking av regifaget.

Som regissør er det ofte vanskelig å finne svar på hvordan andre regissører man liker jobber. Leser man et intervju i avisen eller på nettet finner man som regel bare svar på hvorfor filmskaperen valgte en viss skuespiller eller hva den ville formidle med filmen. Dette er jo selvfølgelig interessant, men det gir deg ikke noen oppskrift du kan stjele og bruke i din fremtidige lavbudsjetts kortfilm eller musikkvideo. De spørsmålene som ofte forblir ubesvart (og sikkert uspurt) i disse intervjuene er hvordan regissøren praktisk har jobbet – Hvordan forholder han seg til skuespillerne? Hvordan jobber han med fotografen i forarbeidet? Ønsker han å lage filmer som sier NOE eller vil han stille publikum spørsmål? Godt er det da at vi snublet over den lille regi-nerdeboka ”Moviemakers’ Master Class” av Laurent Tirard.

Boka, som ble utgitt i 2002, har det enkle premiss å stille en rekke profilerte filmregissører spørsmål om hvordan de faktisk jobber. Alt fra Woody Allen til Lars von Trier kvekker ut det ene gullkornet etter det andre her. Forfatter Tirard har gjort en knalljobb med å lirke hemmeligheter ut av brødhølene til noen av vår tids største RegiStemmer. Noe av det som i tillegg er spennende er at mange av de samme spørsmålene blir stilt til de forskjellige filmskaperne. På denne måten åpner boka for (oppspilt) sammenligning mellom arbeidsmetoder. (Hva?! Verken John Woo eller Wim Wenders lager storyboard?!)

Vi tenkte det kunne være spennende å dele noen av disse betraktningene regissørene har over samme tema. Dagens spørsmål er: Hvordan jobber du egentlig med skuespillere? (i redsel for å miste noe grunnet mangelfull oversettingsevne er alle svar, som i boka, på engelsk)

Sydney Pollack:

SydneyPollack1

I usually start with the actors. And when they get on the set, the first thing I do is send everyone else away. Even a cat or a dog. Actors are very self-conscious. I don’t care what they say; I know they can easily be humiliated and that they might not try certain things if there are people watching. I never give an actor directions in front of other actors. Because otherwise, when he does the scene again, he knows that I’m watching and judging him, of course, but he also knows that the other actors are watching and judging him. So it’s a very private process. In fact, the first thing I do is keep actors from acting. I say, ”No acting, no performance, just read the lines.” That relaxes them a lot.

What I’m trying to do, really, is hold the acting until it happens by itself. Because it will. Pretty soon they’ll start moving around as they say their lines, and you’ll get a sense of what they want to do. I never tell them, ”You go there and you sit here,” because then they feel excluded from the process; they feel like they’re not part of it. I might start directing a little bit, but very progressively. My feeling is, if there are seven things wrong with the scene, just talk about one. Then, when it’s fixed, talk about another, and so on. Solve problems one at a time. … So once I think we’re getting there I bring the crew in and send the actors to their trailers for make-up and wardrobe, and the I go see each of the actors privately and talk to them some more about the scene. That way, each actor has a different sense of what he or she will bring back to the set. And then, once they get on the set, I always try to roll the camera too soon. It makes the actors a bit tense, it cathes them off guard a little bit, and it tends to give better results.”              

Martin Scorsese:

martin_scorsese_mpaa

Personally, I have to like the actors I’m working with, and I try to give them as much freedom as possible to make the scene come alive. … I guess you can tell from my movies that most of the time, my shots are very precise. But I always try to work it out with the director of photography so that the actors eventually have space to move.

On a film like ”Casino”, there was a lot of improvisation, which is fine. If an actor really feels comfortable playing that character in that world, I let him improvise within a given scene and I cover it in a pretty straightforward manner: medium shots, close ups… When you do that the world is pretty much created by the actors. I place them in the frame, and the set around them is part of their life, but they bring the life to it. When that happens, and when it goes in the direction you wanted, it can be incredibly rewarding. Often on that film I found myself sitting behind the camera not as a director, but as an audience member. I got so involved in watching that it was like I was watching a film somebody else was directing. And when you get that feeling, you know you’re on to something good.”

Woody Allen:

woody_allen-2011

”People often ask me what is the secret of directing actors, and they always think I’m being facetious when I answer that all you have to do is hire taltented people and let them do their work. But it’s true. A lot of directors tend to overdirect their actors, and the actors indulge in that because, well, they like being overdirected. They like having endless discussions about the part; they like to intellectualize the whole process of creating a character. And often, that’s how they get confused and lose their spontaneity or their natural talent. Now, I think I know where this all comes from. I think the actors – and probably the director too – feel guilty about doing something that is so easy and so natural to them, and so they try to make it more complex to justify being paid for it. I stay away from that thought process.

… As I said earlier I shoot long uncut scenes, which most actors love because that’s what acting is all about. Most of the time, in films, they do a three-second shot where they move their head and say two words, and then they have to wait for four hours to shoot the end of that scene from another angle. They’re just getting warm and then they have to stop. It’s extremely frustrating, and I think it goes against the very thing that makes their job enjoyable.”

Wim Wenders:

wenders

I’d usually begin by preparing the frame, then I’d position the actors, telling them where to stand and how to move within it. But, little by little, I felt that this was becoming a trap. And then, just before shooting ”Paris, Texas”, I had the chance to direct a stage play. And this experience immensely changed my way of working, probably because it forced me to concentrate much more on the actor’s work and therefore allowed me to better understand and appreciate it.

Since then, I have done the opposite of what I used to do. In other words, I find my scene construction in the action. I arrive on the set without any preconcieved ideas about the shots I’m going to film, and only after working with the actors, after making them move around the set, do I start to think about where I’m going to set up the camera. This process takes much more time, of course, because you can’t light the set until you decide on the shot breakdown, but I know now I need to ”live out” the scene before shooting it. … There are as many methods as actors. And in the end, all you can do as a director is put the actors at ease so that they no longer perform, so they no longer pretend to be someone else. You choose actors for what they are, so make sure that they can be themselves.”

Lars von Trier:

 Von Trier

”A few years ago, everybody would have told you that I was the worst director of actors in the whole industry. And everyone might have been right, although I will say in my defense that it was the kind of films I made which caused that. … I realize the best way to get something from actors is to give them freedom. Give them freedom and encourage them, that’s all I can say. It’s like everything else in life: if you want something done well, you have to be extremely positive about it and about people’s ability to accomplish it.

In the beginning of my career I saw a documentary about the way Ingmar Bergman directed his actors. After each take, he would go to his cast and say, ”Oh, that was great! Beautiful! Fantastic! Maybe you could improve this a little, but really…marvelous!” And I remember I wanted to throw up. It felt so exaggerated and overdone and… well, it seemed fake to the cynical young filmmaker that I was. But today, I’ve come to realize he was right, that it is the right approach. You have to encourage actors, you have to support them. And let’s not be afraid of the cliché: you have to love them. Really. I know that on a film like ”The Idiots”, for instance, I came to love my actors so much that I became extremely jealous. Because they had developed this very close relationship amongst themselves, they had created a sort of community from which I felt excluded. It couldn’t have lasted very much longer, because at the end, I was getting so upset that I didn´t want to work anymore. I was pouting like a child because I was jealous. I felt like they where having all the fun and I had to work, like they were all kids and I had to be the teacher.”  

Fortsettelse følger…          

Les forrige innlegget i Piker og Pistoler: En filmskapers intuisjon

  • ”Piker og pistoler” er en ny blogg av regiduoen Christoffer Lossius og Lars Åndheim.Tittelen refererer ikke til NRAs årlige kalenderutgivelse, men til nybølge-pioner Jean-Luc Godards definisjon av hva man trenger for å lage film. Bloggen vil ikke i særlig stor grad handle om Jean-Luc Godard. Men den vil handle mye om hva man trenger for å lage film. I tiden fremover vil man her kunne lese om våre personlige, usensurerte betraktninger rundt regifaget, den kreative prosessen, filmpolitikk, inspirasjon, kunst og menneskelig adferd. Således omfatter postene våre tweets, artikler, serviettmanifester, YouTube-linker og Spotify-spillelister. Formen avhenger av dagsformen og vi skiller ikke mellom høyt og lavt.
  • Christoffer Lossius og Lars Åndheim er utdannet fiksjonsfilmregissører fra Film &TV-akademiet på NISS og jobber til daglig med reklame og musikkvideo i produksjonsselskapet Go Happy. På siden eier de og driver sitt eget selskap Filmfaktisk, hvor de for øyeblikket utvikler kortfilmer og sin spillefilmdebut.

One Response to Piker og Pistoler: Se han snakker!

  1. Sam, I’m still watching and see where your going. and it is getintg closer. good job. job costing next I hope. on one of your pages you asked for specific features. report on time and material bi compared on actual time and materials spent. pleses include a way to add a burden someway to give all overhead cost to be included in it. Qxpress lets us add an additional amount to each employee like right now i’m adding a little over 9.00 based on last years total hours vs total expenses (from QB excluding actual payroll and inventory.). I have seen where some other software it is there just seperate.one comp. had it under supplies and you just listed it as anonther expence but I think that is cheesy and not the best way. They also have just man hours bid compared to actual. to show employees if they are hitting your marks. This is great to see where they are compared to the same properties in previous years employees. Thank for the continued additions.

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