Chapter 12

All the Other Stuff

It would seem the simplest kind of scene to direct is with two people, sitting quietly in a room, talking about some personal issue. (Bethany gets a lot of these on Brothers & Sisters.) But even two-person scenes can have hiccups that cause them to be difficult to shoot: the actors don’t like the script; they don’t trust you as their director; the camera operator is out sick and his replacement isn’t up to par; the backing outside the window is too close, forcing you to block the scene somewhere you hadn’t planned; and so on. The point is that directing even a simple scene can be tricky. And then you get the really tricky ones: those that include animals, children, intimacy, special effects, visual effects, choreography, or stunts. These types of scenes require additional knowledge of how to accommodate the special needs of those with whom you are working.

WORKING WITH ANIMALS AND KIDS

Animals can’t tell you what their special needs are, but their trainer can. The trainer is the person who is the conduit for your direction to the animal. Let’s say it’s something fairly routine, like the dog crosses the room, picks up a toy in its mouth, and crosses back to the “mom.” First, you will have to cast the dog. Your prop department will contact the various animal actor companies with the breakdown. (“Needed: one medium to large dog, with happy personality, will interact with regular cast and do some simple action.”) The companies will provide you with pictures of their animals that meet the requirements. Then you will have a “casting session,” where you can meet the contestants and assess them for your needs. The trainer will put them through some simple exercises (sit, lay down, shake, roll over, etc.) and you will pick one. Be sure to tell the trainer everything that is going on in the scene, even if it doesn’t involve the dog. Mary Lou auditioned a dog that could do every trick perfectly at the audition, but she failed to mention to the trainer that even though this was an interior scene, there was a simulated hurricane happening outside. The actors would be wearing wet raincoats and have wet shoes. This dog hated walking on any wet surface. Oops!

After the dogs have been duly complimented and handed treats, you will sit down with the trainer and the script and talk about what the dog needs to learn in the next week or two during prep. The trainer will be candid about what the dog may or may not be able to achieve. This is your opportunity to ask how you and the production might be best served in shooting the dog’s work. The basic thing to know is that an animal will get quickly bored with repeating the same action, so your best takes will be the first ones. Never rehearse with an animal, for that reason. Your prop department will supply some facsimile of the “animal actor,” usually a stuffed version in roughly the same size, for the DP to light and for the cameras to rehearse with.

Animals are unpredictable, so your camera operator will need to be flexible and ready to go with whatever the animal does. Generally, the dog will have been trained at home for a particular gag, or specific action, using food or treats as his reward. On set, the trainer will show the dog the new environment and walk the dog through the basic concept, and then you and your actors are ready to shoot. Usually there are two trainers, one to start the animal and one where the animal finishes, who stand just off-camera and send commands to the dog via hand signals and small noises. The basic thing to know is that an animal will get quickly bored with repeating the same action, so your best takes will be the first ones. You never rehearse with an animal for that reason.

Some animals are more trainable than others. Dogs and horses are the best, but cats are not good candidates, because they are not as eager for approval or treats. Others (snakes and hamsters for example) just do what they do, and you work them into your script. In cases like that, you just try to keep the set quiet (so as not to spook them), work around them while setting up, and then start shooting. Mary Lou worked with a bear that necessitated having no food anywhere on set—including craft service. Bethany had a bison in a bank lobby, which worked out fine, except for the craft services person, who had to bring an extralarge pooper-scooper that day!

Children wear diapers (thankfully), but otherwise, working with them can sometimes feel like working with animals. But instead of a trainer, you have a parent. Make friends with the parents. Assure them that you will be kind to their child. Many of the same shooting rules apply: keep the set quiet, don’t rehearse with the child present, shoot the master and the child’s coverage at the same time. Basically, you want to steer the child toward doing what comes naturally and hope your actors in the scene are patient and good with children.

If you want the child to laugh, make funny faces. If you want the child to cry, give him a new toy, roll camera, then take the toy away. Be patient and kind, and use the element of surprise or new things to elicit the reactions you need. Mary Lou’s second book, Acting for Young Actors (Back Stage Books), will give you more insight into working with young talent.

For an older child, it’s much the same, except that you can communicate more clearly and directly. When you give direction to a child or children, be at their eye level and engage them. Mary Lou will give a direction and then ask the child to repeat back the direction. If you’re looking for a specific line reading, try to say the subtext using the vocal inflection you want, or equate the situation to something in her own life or age range that she can understand. (“When you’re asking for more broccoli in this scene, pretend it’s just like the new doll you want, okay?”) Be very enthusiastic and give positive feedback when she does what you want. If it’s going well, keep the camera rolling and do it again, giving her ongoing direction and encouragement. (“That’s great! Now say the line again, and give your ‘mom’ a big hug this time!”) But don’t overwork the scene, because a child’s performance can get worse with repetition. If you still don’t have what you need, change it up. Do something different. Surprise her and keep her interest piqued.

There is extra pressure in working with children because of their limited working hours. This is for their protection so that they don’t get taken advantage of and are not overworked or used at inappropriate hours. A newborn (older than 14 days) can be under the lights (camera rolling) for a total of twenty minutes out of two total hours with the production company. The approved hours increase with older children, but there are restrictions in place until they’re 18. That is why on shows like Glee or 90210 the actors playing high-schoolers are all over 18 (or lawfully emancipated, that is, legally an adult). With school-age children, it is the production’s responsibility to make sure they are schooled while at work and that a studio teacher is hired. With a nine-year-old, for example, the total allotment is nine and a half hours to be on set. A half hour for lunch, three hours for schooling, one hour for breaks. That leaves you with only four and a half hours to work with a child actor. If he is in a big scene, you may have to shoot out the child—that is, do the master and his coverage first, and when you turn around on the other actors, they will be interacting with a stand-in rather than the child actor, who has already gone home.

With animals and children, the director’s work is all about spontaneity and being prepared. You need to be aware that there’s a limited time frame to capture the magic, so everyone on the crew (and your grown-up cast) needs to be ready. The shot has been rehearsed; the final touches for makeup and hair are done; the actors stand on set and wait for the actor or the animal to be brought in. (You will have made sure your actors have visited with their little scene partner off-set, gotten to know them, created a little bit of a relationship.) So you roll camera first, then ask the trainer, the parent—or sometimes, if it’s an infant, the social worker/nurse—to step on set with the child actor. You don’t shout out, “Action!” but rather, quietly integrate the child or animal with the waiting actors and let the scene start without any fuss. Unless you need to make some physical adjustment, just keep rolling, reset, and get another take without cutting.

TWO KINDS OF NAKEDNESS

When working with animals and children, your main job is to protect them physically and emotionally because they are fragile. You need to protect your adult actors, too, whenever they are similarly fragile: when doing emotional work or when they have to be physically exposed.

If your script calls for a performance of rage or grief, it will require your actor to open up emotionally, putting him in a vulnerable state. You can honor that and streamline the process by making sure the set is wellprepared for his arrival. You have rehearsed meticulously with the second team, so there will be no retakes because of camera mistakes. You will require quiet on set, because chatter from cast and crew is the norm, but it is distracting. Limit the crew to the absolute minimum. And you will do the coverage on the actor who is bearing the weight of the scene first. As with children’s performances, which are based in a kind of naturalism, the more an actor has to cry or otherwise be emotional, the more difficult it will be to dredge up a performance based in a seemingly spontaneous reality if asked to repeat it too much.

This kind of psychic nakedness demands respect from the director. That means you shouldn’t ask for extraneous takes unless you feel the story isn’t being told. Tune in to the vibe, the emotional point of view the actor is registering, and communicate quietly and clearly. After you roll camera, wait silently for the actor to indicate (usually with a nod) that he is ready before quietly saying, “Action.” It is part of actors’ arsenal to go to this deep internal place, another tool in their bag of tricks, but it does ask more of them than usual. So don’t baby them, but respect them.

A different kind of nakedness is occasionally scripted for a lovemaking scene. This scene, too, requires finesse from the director and the crew. A courtesy screen or drape can be put up by the grip department, which will ensure that only the core crew is there. Your actors will be strategically covered by the wardrobe department in the necessary places with flesh-colored adhesive moleskin and will come to set wearing robes. Talk with your actors about what the intent of the scene is, what you intend to depict, and how you can expand their comfort level. Tell them what the parameters of each shot are, discussing it calmly and precisely. This kind of scene is essentially one of choreography, and you need to be very specific and give them direction while cameras are rolling (“Annie, bring your arm down just slightly, good, now Ben, just a gentle nibble on the earlobe, good, now let’s have a strong kiss then pull back a little and look in each other’s eyes”). It’s up to the director to set the tone for the actors, so approach the work with specific ideas and an aura of calm problem solving. A sense of humor helps, too!

If your actors are standing or sitting, rather than lying down, be aware that kissing is best photographed in a 50/50 shot because if you’re in overs (OS), the air or space normally between the two faces gets closed as the actors move in to kiss, and basically all you now have is a shot of the back of someone’s head. You will probably have to ask the actors to position themselves during the kiss to the upstage or downstage side, depending on whose story you are interested in telling. A simple, “Your nose to the right,” kind of direction generally does it.

WORKING WITH SPECIAL EFFECTS (SPFX)

Whereas a quiet type of spontaneity is a director’s tool when working with the fragile and the natural, (children, animals, and intimacy), your best tool with special effects (SPFX) is the opposite. This process is extremely rehearsed, so when you roll cameras, the gag or event will happen just as everyone is prepared for it to be. SPFX crews do the unusual gags in production: anything from a “pipe” breaking and water shooting everywhere to blood pooling under a “dead” body or fire raging through a building. The gag will have been discussed in prep and multiple demonstrations of the process done to ensure that it will be as big or as small or as colorful as you want it. You will have committed to your camera positions ahead of time, so that the gag is presented for camera, and the crewmembers who are manipulating the equipment needed are safely off-camera.

Special effects guys (it’s a male-dominated bastion) are well represented by the two SPFX men on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters. They are curious thrill-seekers who want to blow stuff up, but they’re engineers and scientists too who solve the demands of the script in ingenious ways. They can usually figure out a way to do anything you can imagine, as long as there is enough prep time to work it through, rehearse, and rig it. They will do a lot of dry runs, which are rehearsals up to but not including the gag and then refine their preparation. On the day, SPFX guys generally pull off their gag in one take. (“On the day” means “when we do this for real.” It could be ten minutes or ten days from now.)

STUNTS

The same concept is true for stunts. These are discussed, choreographed, rigged, rehearsed, rerigged, rehearsed, discussed, rechoreographed, rerigged, and finally shot.

Most of this work occurs in prep, after you have imagined the scene and have begun shot listing. Your script might say, “And suddenly, Joe throws a punch at Bill. The entire place erupts in a bar fight. Joe gets the worse of it.” So how are you going to depict that? You know you have three storytelling elements: (1) first punch, (2) fight among the crowd, and (3) Joe and Bill’s interaction.

You will have a meeting with the stunt coordinator and your 1st AD. You’ll talk about the tone of the fight: is it down and dirty? Or more stylized? Is the first punch a roundhouse or a jab? (Be sure to find out if your actor throwing the punch is right- or left-handed.) What is your next cut/shot? How does that one punch initiate the fight? Then what? How do you bring Joe into it? What does “worse” mean? Communicate your thoughts and discuss them with the coordinator.

Your next meeting will hopefully be on set, or something approximating it. (You need to know what is physically in the space; if someone is to fall over a table, you need to know where the table is and whether any furniture needs to be rigged to be breakaway, which means primed to break exactly as designed.) The coordinator will probably bring in two stuntpeople to demonstrate the planned moves, doing it at half-speed so that each step is clear. You will advance your opinion (“That’s too John Wayne, what else can we do?”) and there’s a give-and-take exchange of ideas and choreography. Together, you and the coordinator will work through each move and the camera position for it.

Your next rehearsal will probably take place the day of shooting and incorporates the actors who will be doubled, or replaced, for the stunts. The coordinator will have hired stunt performers who approximate your actors’ physicality, and the costume department will have doubled the wardrobe, allowing for the extra room in the garment for elbow, knee, and/or back pads if needed. The stunt double will be supplied with a wig by the hair department if necessary to ensure that he looks as similar to the actor as possible. You will rehearse the scene and determine where the “in” to the stunt happens, so the audience sees the actor’s face.

For example, let’s say the actor playing Joe is saying his lines; then he throws a “punch” toward Bill, missing him by a mile. Now you put the stunt performers in, and the fight commences, punch by punch, shot by shot, overlapping “Joe’s” move in the beginning. Each move and reaction will be specifically choreographed and specifically shot. This is one instance in which we recommend that you observe from the monitors with the stunt coordinator to make sure the punches look as if they land. Just as you overlapped the beginning of the fight, you’ll overlap the end, too, and put your actor in for the final reaction, now with blood on him from the makeup department. When it’s cut together, you will have achieved what the script intended. But remember: better safe than sorry. You can’t shoot with your actor, or principal, if he’s got a split lip and a broken rib.

This same principle of doubling your principals is also used when shooting anything physical—not just fights. So if your script calls for skiing, or gymnastics, or jumping out of an airplane—anything that might cause your actor to be injured—you should plan to double her. That means extra expense for many departments (actor doubles, stunt doubles, hair and makeup, costume), but it is well worth it. You need to keep your actors safe and healthy. Each department will want to know how many takes you anticipate shooting in order to be prepared. So sometimes it’s really not doubling, but tripling, quadrupling, and so on.

FIGURE 12-1 Bethany, stunt coordinator Shauna Duggins, and actors Dave Annable (“Justin Walker”) and Christopher J. Hanke (“Marcus”) preparing for the fight on the set of Brothers & Sisters. (Brothers & Sisters trademarks and copyrighted material have been used with the permission of ABC Studios.)

FIGURE 12-2 Actors Dave Annable (“Justin Walker”) and Christopher J. Hanke (“Marcus”) performing on the set of Brothers & Sisters. (Brothers & Sisters trademarks and copyrighted material have been used with the permission of ABC Studios.)

SHOOTING A BIG GAG

Now let’s say your script reads something like, “The Ninth Battalion rolls into Tehran. A roadside bomb goes off, decimating the lead tank. Bodies fly through the air. Joe lands in some weeds, choking and crying, with half his leg gone.” It took the writer a minute to write that, and it may play on screen in about the same time, but a lot of planning and work will go into it, making sure that the story is told. You’ll have meetings that pull together the relevant departments: stunts, transportation, props, production design, special effects, visual effects, makeup. It all starts with what you want to see, and they will try to achieve your vision. The more specific you are, the better they can make it happen. If you say, “I need two full blocks of ‘Tehran,’ let’s make it a commercial district, small storefronts, dusty and defeated,” the production designer can get started on that. If you say, “We’ll make the explosion CGI (computer-generated imagery) but I want to see at least 30 chunks of ‘metal’ flying, doubled in rubber, ranging from two feet in diameter to six inches across, and the bodies can be weighted dummies,” the visual effects, special effects, and prop departments can begin their planning. If you say, “We’ll CGI the convoy, but I’ll need four real tanks for foreground,” the transportation coordinator can start looking. If you say, “I’ll need a total of 200 extras, 25 U.S. Army and 125 Iranian, make sure there are at least 15 children,” then your AD, costume, and the extras casting people will begin their calls. If you say, “I’ll need to double Joe for the landing on the ground,” then stunts and costumes can get prepared. If you say, “We’ll CGI the leg wound but I want him covered with blood, oil, and dirt,” the makeup department knows what to do. And after the first meeting, you’ll have numerous individual department meetings to assess how they’re progressing with their assignments. And that’s for just one moment from your script—something that takes under a minute of screen time!

VISUAL EFFECTS (VFX)

Though visual effects are done in postproduction, you have to shoot the production elements properly in order to create the total effect you want. The visual effects supervisor will be on set during production to advise you. Very often, you are shooting the plate, or starting image, that will be manipulated in post. For example, let’s say you’re shooting an urban scene on the back lot of Universal Studios with the actors in foreground, and you want to show the skyline of Boston or New York or wherever in the background. You’ll need to shoot a plate that holds enough room in the top of the frame for the visual effects artists to add the skyline later.

Another simple visual effect is when you have a character talking to her twin, as in the movie Parent Trap, or in an episode of Drop Dead Diva that Bethany directed, or an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place that Mary Lou directed. You will shoot the plate for the master with a locked-down camera, meaning that there is no movement. Then you shoot the first actor doing the scene, with the camera still in its locked-down position. (The actor will interact with a stand-in, someone who will be replaced visually later.) The VFX supervisor may have to physically take some measurements in the set if the actor being duplicated moves a lot. Be prepared to start and stop the scene and be specific with the coordinator when you want to see both actors simultaneously and when you expect to be in tighter coverage. After completing one side, the actor moves to the other side of the frame in the set, and does the other half of the dialog. Those three takes, all with a locked-down camera, will be married together, or composited, to create the scene. For the OS shots, you’ll use a double with wardrobe and wig. The Patty Duke Show in the 1960s used the same process—sometimes the old and simple ways are the best. You can also use this process whenever you are portraying something in the frame “disappearing”: film the background plate with a locked-down camera, film it with the object in the frame, and then—while still rolling—remove it. The VFX team will composite the three images, creating simple film “magic”!

CGI AND BLUE SCREEN

There are also new ways to do visual and special effects: these are the ones used by Peter Jackson to portray Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and by James Cameron to portray his Na’vi characters in Avatar. Motioncapture involves having an actor in a Lycra suit play the scene against a blue screen with digital electrodes attached all over his body, which allows a computer to duplicate the body language when the character has morphed into its other-than-human shape. The blue screen is replaced with whatever environment has been designed. (The color of the screen is dictated by other colors needed within the scene. If there’s already lots of blue, then you’ll use a green screen, and vice versa.) According to Dave A. Anselmi, director and producer at Practical Mystic Productions, “It’s best to minimize the amount of blue/green-screen, and/or make sure you work very closely with the VFX supervisor to confirm the feasibility and cost of the shot.” In planning a scene using blue screen, you’ll want to design shots (probably the coverage) that do not use blue screen, just to keep your costs down. The artists and other staff required to create these fantasies can total in the hundreds, but the process for the director of describing the vision and then communicating about it through the process from idea to finished product is basically the same as when shooting any other scene.

There is a natural evolution during such a process because it’s a collaborative effort. Your stunt coordinator, your VFX supervisor, or anyone contributing to the realization of the concept may propose a method to which you respond. You may say, “Hey, that’s a great idea! How can we incorporate that into what we’re doing?” There will be many a discussion around the conference table. One good idea will lead to another.

You will be the one who assesses whether the new idea fits or derails what you’re going for and whose enthusiasm will fire everyone up so that they want to help create something cool, new, or big. Everybody in this business got into it because they love making movies: telling a story visually. They then specialize in various areas of contribution to the finished product, offering their expertise in service of your vision. The continuing evolution of an idea may also happen because the first way you tried to achieve it didn’t work, and you have to think of something better, which is why you rehearse multiple times during prep and refine the gag until it’s ready to shoot.

CHOREOGRAPHY

Another specialized area of filmmaking that requires a lot of rehearsal is choreography. Choreography used to be a fairly rare occurrence in TV, until Glee came along. (Every genre rises and falls in popularity with the years; Bonanza and Gunsmoke and The Big Valley were all over TV in the 1960s, but there’s nary a Western to be seen now.) When your script calls for music and dance, you will undergo a similar process in prep as with any other specialized aspect: you will discuss your vision, hire someone (a choreographer) to help you, and rehearse and refine until shooting. It helps a great deal to have some personal background in the arena so you know the vocabulary and can express your vision more clearly. (It’s easier to say, “Let’s see if an arabesque will work here,” than “Can you do that thing where your back leg sticks out and one hand is in the air and you’re on your tippytoes?”) You will attend rehearsals after the choreographer has sketched out the basic concept and communicate your responses and suggestions, in addition to determining what your camera positions will be, based on what you’ve observed. If you have a music background, be specific referring to the precise moment to which you are referring. (“Can he enter two measures or bars later?” or “I need a gesture to punctuate the trumpet sting.”) Also be aware that choreographers work by counting sequentially usually in units of eight (“One, two, three, four, five six, seven eight; Two, two, three, four, five six, seven eight; Three, two, three, four, five six, seven eight” and so on). If you don’t have any background in this area, just make sure that you talk about the feeling and the energy you’re looking for. If you are working to a song, refer to the lyric. If you can find some other excerpt from another film that can be used as a reference point, that’s very helpful. As we talked about in Chapter 4, just as one man’s red is different from another’s, so is one man’s “jazzy” style from another’s. The music element will follow the same process (discuss, rehearse, refine), although it must be chosen before the cast and dancers assemble to rehearse to it. In that arena, you’ll have a composer and a music supervisor to assist you.

When you watch a movie or TV show, you watch the story as it unfolds and emotionally go along for the ride. And then you remember that nothing is there by chance. Every single thing in the frame is a choice. It’s an awesome responsibility for the director to have. We are fortunate to have such experienced and accomplished crews to back us up, to make suggestions, to work so hard to make our dreams become a reality. If you don’t know much about stunts, or special effects, or any other part of the filmmaking world, you will have people to help you. They’ll be happy to teach you and walk you through it. It’s best to confess your naïveté and solicit their assistance. They will still look to you for the inspiration and the imagination; you’re the one who has the vision. You are still the final arbiter, the voice that says in the beginning, “This is how I imagine it will look,” and who says after it’s shot, “That was wonderful, exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you.”