The first day of my rehearsals usually has two read-throughs of the script. The first is a read-through without stopping, just to get a sense of the text. The second one, usually after lunch, is stop and go, with anyone able to make a point or ask a question, and the director has the opportunity to clarify, to help with intention or with pronunciation, or for any other reason. In the course of the read-throughs, the director tries to make clear that the rehearsal room is a place of safety, where no one need fear doing something wrong, or doing badly; the point is made that this is a place of play and enjoyment. To make this clear, on that first day, we often engage in a few theater games or other “concentration” exercises. These games, which I’ll talk about more later in the chapter, were devised and introduced by Viola Spolin in her book Theater Games for Rehearsal and taught by her son Paul Sills, and are fun to do, while also helping develop the actor’s concentration and understanding of the natural hierarchy present in most relationships. It’s important that the actors leave their first day of rehearsal having enjoyed themselves, and feeling safe and wanted.
Actors are also encouraged to wander over to the hat rack and prop table to take anything that catches their eye. The director should realize that the actors may be terrified at finally approaching work, and anything they can hold in their hands or put on their head may give them a degree of confidence. I’ve learned that no matter what problem you are having with an actor—chronic lateness, not knowing lines, an attack on the script, nastiness—most of those things come from the fact that they are afraid. As you alleviate their fears with whatever method, gradually the problems go away. Actors are asked to do a very difficult thing: to perform artistically with themselves as their instrument. It is a terrifying process.
On the days of rehearsal, the actor is led through various activities, rotating between improv, theater games, and attempts at the text, using the tables and chairs as a set and staging some of the scenes. You must vary these activities, so that the day is never boring. I don’t place an emphasis on reading and working with the text. For one thing, one wants it to have a certain freshness, and repetition of the scenes will dim that. On the other hand, improvs, especially when designed to bring out certain characteristics of the roles or provide memories for the characters, are particularly helpful. I always do an improv between characters who have a relationship, either married, or in the same family, or work colleagues, by setting up with each actor privately an intention, and then a situation where they meet for the first time. In life, married couples remember details of how they met, the first time they broke up, how they got back together. Yet we expect our cast to play a married couple with none of these memories. So I try to provide them via improvisations.
IMPROVISATION DURING REHEARSAL
One of the biggest benefits that comes from extensive improv during rehearsal is that it gives an opportunity to examine the character and practice situations of the text without exhausting the freshness of the dialogue. This is of great importance. Often fine actors, including Marlon Brando, try to not know the lines or rehearse them often, so that during filming, the performance is lifelike, in that the character is saying the dialogue for the first time. Marlon, working on The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, was fond of saying, “You can’t care, or they’ll see it on your face.” For my purposes, improvisation offers a way to find new meaning in the character’s situations and problems without reciting lines. Also, it allows you to develop aspects of a relationship you feel are missing, such as the inherent love between siblings, who grew up and played together, even though as adults they are enemies or have some bitter feelings. Improvisation can provide a history with another character, to make a “deposit in the emotional bank account” of a relationship. When the scene requires that the husband tell his wife that he loves another woman, it is worthwhile that he also has that memory of their first meeting, or first breakup, or the joy of the first child. Every decisive moment between people is fraught with many memories. As the actors don’t have those memories to call upon, improvisation can establish them. Of course it’s not as if the character literally recalls all of the possible memories, but they are there—just as they are there in real life, to be flashed on or not, to emerge or not in a natural way.
When setting up an improv, it’s a good idea to tell the participants in private (in their ear, so to speak), what their real intention is. To one: “You want to borrow $5,000 from her.” To the other person, something likely to cause some conflict or complication to be worked out in the scene: “He’s owed you $4,000 for years and never mentions it.” Also, as their rehearsal set is usually only some chairs and tables, it’s a good idea to make things as specific as possible: “This is at the cafeteria at school, and the only chair is next to her.” The director should be nimble in coming up with ideas; often the best ones are suggested by a need to set a characteristic or tendency you’d like to discover in the character. So a fresh and interesting improv idea must be produced instantly, with a specific setting and an intention for each participant. Everything must be specific—and designed to work the characters to a full extent. Day after day of such improv is likely to thicken the sauce you are making, while also turning work into play. Also, any sensual elements that you introduce into the situation—actual food, music or dancing, touching—all intensify the improv and make it stick, so that it is available during the performance period.
The first rehearsal of The Godfather in 1971 was in a back room of the legendary Patsy’s, a restaurant in New York. It was to be the first time the cast members would meet Marlon Brando, and of course they were all excited and frightened at this prospect, as I was as well. I arranged a table like one at home, and sat Marlon at its head, Al Pacino to the right and James Caan to the left, John Cazale to Al’s right, and Bobby Duvall to Jimmy’s left. I asked my sister Talia to serve the food to them, and they ate dinner together. When the meal was finished, that family existed for the first time, and those relationships learned during it remained throughout the difficulties of shooting the film. That’s when I first realized that food was a binding element and made the improv persist for a long time. In subsequent rehearsals, especially large group improvs, which can go on for several hours, and in which the various characters visit one another in their homes and work out various suggested intentions, I found that actually preparing and handling food, for example taking cold cuts out of the wrapping, preparing sandwiches, and then eating them, had the effect of allowing a sense-memory to be invoked in the other aspects of the improv, as did touching, and dancing to music.
One of the best improvs I ever did was in 2008 during the filming of Tetro in Buenos Aires, when I asked the entire cast to come to a costume party, in a costume chosen not by themselves as the actor, but by the character they were playing. At this party there was a buffet of food, and a band. Things evolved during those few hours that were extremely valuable to the process of transformation, and one by one, each actor turned into his or her character. Actually, it was during that session when I first realized that the actors do not turn into the characters—in fact, the characters turn into the actors. This might be saying the same thing, but as the actor is flesh and blood, and the character is a spirit-like phenomenon, the process is more correctly understood as the effort that leads to the eventual inhabitation of the actor by the character.
I recall a great story Gene Hackman once told me about his first few weeks of The French Connection. He had no idea who his character was. He wore a funny hat, he tried various things, but the character just wouldn’t come. Then one cold morning, he went to the craft services table, picked up a doughnut and dunked it into his hot coffee, took a single bite, and threw the doughnut away. “That’s him,” came a voice from behind him. It was Billy Friedkin, the director, who was always watching. Gene said after that, he had his character.
On the day when the cast is to leave the Actors Room for the stage or studio where the shooting will take place, I always work late, stalling
lunch. The actors begin to get antsy as they are growing hungry, and then late in the day, perhaps even at 3:00 PM, and without our having had lunch, I lead them to the stage, where their chairs and tables have been set up, and instruct them on what will be a large, long group improv, giving each actor an intention, and designating areas to be so-and-so’s house or room.
But then I point to several large grocery bags filled with cold cuts and rolls, drinks, etc. and explain that they are to perform the improv while preparing lunch and eating together. There’s usually great relief when they realize they’re going to eat, and they go to their various tasks in character-building agreeably, while dividing the food prep tasks according to their character, and talk, interact, and eat together. What they experience now in the space they will work in is never forgotten—and they make the transition from the rehearsal room to the shooting stage with pleasure, cemented to the enjoyment of preparing and eating the food together.
THEATER GAMES
These games, devised by Viola Spolin, whose book I’ve cited, are for the most part concentration exercises and hierarchical situations and games. Most importantly, they are fun and a relief to the actors, who, whether they know it or not, are struggling to spend a day wherein they must remain in character. The concentration exercises also build a focus of attention when played each day, and develop the ability to sense what your colleagues are about to do or say, something that is enormously valuable when a dramatic or comedy situation is being played.
Sound Ball is an easy starter. The group stands in a circle and I speak while bouncing an imaginary ball. I explain that I will toss this ball to someone, who must catch it and then throw it to someone else in the circle. But I make a sound when I throw it, and the person who catches it must repeat the sound, and then throw it to someone else while making their own sound. After a few tries they get it, and can rapidly catch and re-throw the make-believe ball, making the proper sounds as they do. At that point I introduce a second imaginary ball, and now they are keenly focused as they catch and throw two balls, with the appropriate sounds. Then I add a third ball. After a while they become quite skillful; at the same time, they are being united by the game and enjoying becoming a skillful group. This game can go on and on; in one variant, the sounds must follow the alphabet, and with the second ball, the alphabet in reverse. The game is difficult at that point, but a practiced group of actors can do it, and they also can do the many other tasks that will be given them where concentration is all-important.
A hierarchical game implies that in most human situations there’s always a boss and a chain of sub-bosses and their assistants. People, especially children, have a sixth sense as to who has the power, and respond differently to that person and according to their own place in the lineup. One such game is Pick Up My Hat. A line is made, with each participant wearing a hat selected from the clothes rack. The first in the line is the boss; in one of many scenarios, he or she is waiting at the ticket booth to get the reserved tickets to something. The ticket seller is instructed to be uncooperative, and eventually the boss gets angry and throws her hat to the ground, shouting to her assistant (next in line) to “pick up my hat.” The assistant throws his hat in anger, saying the same thing to the next in line, and then picks up his boss’s hat and puts it back on his head. Of course, the process runs through the entire line. (I have a theory I hold as to why people in their cars in traffic behave so ridiculously. It is that in such a setting, encased by steel and glass, each person feels that for once, they are not stuck in a hierarchy and can behave as they want.)
I always divide the text, no matter how short, into three acts, and during the rehearsal period, alongside the many theater games and improvs and other hijinks thought up in the moment, we begin staging the actual scenes using our multipurpose chairs and tables as well as a few hand props and clothing articles. Soon, we are able to do a run-through, without interruption, of the first act, and then the other acts, until as the rehearsal period is coming to an end, before the big food improv which helps us leave our safe Actors Room, we can do a run-through of all three acts. By then, quite automatically, the cast know their lines and are able to perform as a whole the entire piece.
It is because of these methods that the actors are never a problem during the subsequent steps of Live Cinema. They have been prepared and encouraged as a group, have been worked and exercised through many aspects of their characters, and are capable of performing the entire piece without their scripts. Certainly, this is not different from the rehearsal period of a theater production, but quite different from ninety-nine percent of film preparation, where if there is any rehearsal time, it tends to be used bussing the actors to the intended locations and trying to get a leg up on the ultimate staging and shooting of the film shots. There are a million variations of these theater games and the actors love playing them. I find them a useful way to make clear that the process of our rehearsal together is nothing to fear and, in fact, we are playing together; our work together is difficult and daunting, but nevertheless enjoyable play and fun.
Just as water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and salt of sodium and chlorine, it has always been my contention that cinema is made up in equal parts of two essential ingredients, acting and writing. Needless to say, these are the two aspects that are examined, developed, and perfected during the time in the rehearsal room. There is little more than acting and writing at hand here, and the focus is on those primal elements.
*More actors became directors than from any other category of movie professionals, including writers, editors, and photographers.
4
EQUIPMENT AND TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
In this chapter dealing with equipment and technical specifics I borrow the format from the beloved ASC cinematographer’s manual.
THE CAMERAS
Whereas cinema digital cameras are 24p (23.98 progressive frames per second), the standard in television in the United States is 60i (59.94 interlaced fields per second). Much equipment intended for sports and other broadcasting is thus at a frame rate different from cinema. Shooting at 24 frames per second has a cinematic quality that is already familiar to movie audiences, something I feel is important to try to strive for with Live Cinema. In Oklahoma, our NewTek TriCaster was compatible with 24p signals, so we were able to set all of the cameras to 24p. At UCLA, we again set each of our 40 digital cameras to 24p mode:
Canon EOS C300
Sony PXW-FS5 and PXW-FS7
Blackmagic Studio
Blackmagic Micro Studio
To bridge the gap between our cinema cameras (each set to 24p mode) and our EVS/broadcast environment (60i) we converted each camera signal from 24p to 60i using 40 Blackmagic Teranex Express frame rate converters, one computer per camera.
THE LENSES
Nothing has more influence over the beauty and quality of photography than the lens. Some of our cameras, such as the Blackmagic, allowed the use of adapters that would enable us to use C-mount for lenses; this meant that at UCLA we could use a treasury of old Bolex 16mm flat (prime) lenses that the school had on hand. These gave a particular vintage cinematic look, as well as greater speed and a quality that was pleasingly soft around the edges and not overly sharp and crisp like modern lenses.
THE MIXING BOARD
Our video mixing board was an early production EVS DYVI switcher. This was a new board which was given its first big job on our UCLA project. One of the original developers and lead software designers came from Germany to help configure it, to write custom code and create new features, and to make sure that it could do what we were asking of it. The DYVI switcher is essentially a computer that is emulating a standard video mixer, giving us tremendous ability to program it to our needs. With 40 cameras, 14 video streams from three EVS XT3 replay servers, and two additional streams from nonlinear editing systems, we had numerous individual preview streams (imagine 66 thumbnail images populating the video monitor wall) to keep track of.
The D
YVI can be programmed to be set up in a “story mode,” where each scene could be configured and saved as its own stage. That meant we could configure the multiviewer settings for each stage to display particular camera and replay server outputs on the multiviewer monitors. Because our custom DYVI configuration used two multiviewer outputs, we could have the custom display for the current stage on one multiview monitor and the next custom display for the next stage on the other multiview monitor. With clever programming from our German developer, the active monitor’s background could be colored red and the preview multiview background grey. When we’d go to scene 2, the background color of the multiview for that stage would turn red, and the other multiview monitor would be programmed by our technical director to display the pertinent cameras and server streams for scene 3 (the next stage) with a grey background. All of this equipment is available for rental or purchase.
In the mid-1990s, sound mixing boards developed into in the form of computer-based interfaces and control surfaces from such companies as Digidesign. The dedicated sound mixing board, expensive and with only one purpose, was replaced by this newer form, a computer taught to emulate a mixing board, with a surface of assignable sliders and equalization buttons already familiar to sound mixers. All industry standard TV switchers have been digital for some time, but they are hardware-based, while the DYVI is software-based. This gives it extreme programmability, which at my second experimental workshop we tested to the fullest. The system’s principal programmer and creator of the DYVI board, Jürgen Obstfelder, spent some days with us, teaching our technical director Teri Rozic the operational aspects of the DYVI and then two weeks working with her to develop new software code for our purposes. Teri told me our project would not have been possible with the software currently used in mixing boards, the standard of the industry. Some industry-standard switchers do have programmable multiviewer outputs, but they do not currently have the elaborately customizable multiviewer abilities we utilized. Having a video mixing board that could be reprogrammed to the specific needs of Live Cinema was in my opinion a must, despite the fact that this meant all was relying on a new mixing panel that had never been used before.
Live Cinema and Its Techniques Page 4