CHAPTER 25
FINAL REHEARSALS AND PLANNING COVERAGE
THE DIRECTOR AS ACTIVE OBSERVER
So far our rehearsal priorities have given primacy to the actors' sense of what their characters must do, moment to moment, with the director observing and steering the results by way of critical feedback. Soon you must turn from interpreting characters and text to planning their presentation on the screen.
Habit will make you want to sit while observing and taking notes, but this is dangerous because it leads to experiencing the action like a theater-goer and to choreographing the action for a static camera placement. Clearly this is not cinematic and arises largely out of the director's immobility.
So, as the action unfolds, move around and adjust your viewing position. Take the most involved and privileged view, whether of the whole or significant parts. This leads naturally to finding a point of view for the scene itself and the camera angles that reveal it. Your mobility also prevents actors from habitually relating to you as their audience in one flat plane, which they will do if you are known to occupy a fixed position. No longer knowing where you are, their action becomes enclosed as they play to and for each other—just as it happens in real life.
When you get to the point of fine-tuning the blocking of actors and camera in relation to each other and to breaking the action into separate shots, it should all proceed with few conceptual problems.
FORM: SEEING IN AN UNFAMILIAR WAY
What makes films fresh and memorable is often not what is told, but how it is told. This is form as opposed to content and should be your concern all through the conceptualization of the movie. Innovative Storytellers seek language that uniquely serves the tale at hand. Cinema storytelling form is influenced by many determinants such as photography, lighting, set and costume design, choice of location, story construction, and editing style.
The question of form—what options exist for best presenting a story's particular world—is at the very heart of original cinema, indeed of art itself. If you haven't already read it, Chapter 16: Form and Style, contains a detailed account. Here I want to draw your attention again to form's importance, because not even dialogue scenes should get the all-purpose industrial treatment. The whole film should aim for a kind of revelation that is somehow special to its content and nature and to your purpose for telling the tale.
Remember that first you occupy the position of the Observer; then, as your Observer gains an active storytelling purpose, you become a surrogate for the tale's Storyteller. Create a personality sketch for this person and make him or her someone other than yourself.
BLOCKING
This ugly word, suggestive of building Stonehenge, refers to positioning actors and camera in relationship to each other. In my outline of a scene's development, the director encourages the actors to freely develop movement and action without initial regard to filming restrictions. Where each character moves, and why, comes from what each actor feels his or her character needs and what the director sees as necessary. With repeated rehearsal—and especially if the rehearsal is taped— this organic and experimental development will eventually settle into a tacitly agreed pattern of actions that express the flow of the characters' internal movements (perceptions, thoughts, feelings, will).
However, what emerges is by no means the only pattern possible. The exigencies of filming impose changes, and other advantages occur that you simply discover. By altering a walk from one side of a table to the other, for instance, an additional camera angle and a lighting change can be saved. Such changes at the point of shooting seem like nothing but confusion to the cast, so avoid this disruption by trying to rehearse in the actual location and by involving the camera crew early. But blocking still remains, from first to last, a process of mutual accommodation, and any part may change at a moment's notice. Actors, geared up for a big moment and then put on hold for a lighting change, are apt to become frustrated unless thoroughly forewarned of the changeable and sporadic nature of filmmaking itself.
For this and other reasons it is best to maintain an open attitude about how the scene may eventually be presented. This way you will not forfeit time and morale when shooting begins.
BENEFITS OF REHEARSING AT ACTUAL LOCATION
The script will often specify locations such as a convenience store or a drugstore that can easily be visualized. Everyone knows what a laundromat is like or what it is like to wait in a typical train station, eat at a typical hot dog stand, or cook in a typical suburban kitchen. But wait, all kitchens are not equal! Each location in some way portrays its owners or its patrons, and a messy, greasy, dark kitchen imposes different physical and emotional conditions on the user than a light, airy, modern one.
A scene rehearsed to a hazy, generalized idea of the location and then transplanted into an actual kitchen at the moment of shooting will contain characters who barely connect with their surroundings, a serious deficiency. But actors can interact with their surroundings in a highly specific way when rehearsals take place in the chosen location.
When multiple on-site rehearsals are not practical, take the actors for a research exploration, or at least show them photographs, so they have a distinct mental image. Director and actor alike can benefit from research. Michael Apted regularly sends his cast out ahead of shooting to research their characters. Aidan Quinn, for instance, in Blink (1995) spent time with Chicago detectives before playing one himself.
Research you do might include a documentary taping of an actor at work in his or her own kitchen to learn how the character and her mood are subtly reflected in the actor's actions. Notice how often action is focused and purposeful, compared with the vagueness and gesturing of someone who only signifies living in a kitchen. An example of this focus and clarity of action is Peter Falk's performance as an old Polish baker in Roommates (1995).
Make each location expressive and integral to the characters, not a mere container for words and action. And make setting a character, worthy in itself of loving portrayal. This way you will set up an environment that makes the spectators imaginatively inhabit the movie, and maybe leaves them haunted by it long after. Any Wim Wenders movie is a lesson in making full use of settings.
HOW MUCH REHEARSAL IS ENOUGH?
Actors often express the fear that a scene will be over-rehearsed. If rehearsal is drilling to a master plan, this is a real threat. But if it means digging into ever deeper layers of meaning within the scene, developing perceptions and restrictions that flow back and forth between the characters, and creating links and resonances with other parts of the script, it can be unendingly productive. Incidentally, Bresson used to rehearse his “models” (as he called the nonprofessionals he always used as actors) for 30 or 40 rehearsals of each scene to get the authentic sleepwalking manner in which people naturally do so many things.
Not all scenes merit intensive work. Some exist merely to supply an uncomplicated story point—that a letter is delivered to the wrong address, for instance. Such scenes may require little or no rehearsal. Others are a gold mine of possibilities that richly repay persistent exploration. Decide which scenes need special work during your preparation, but also be influenced by the ensemble's growing ability to focus on problem areas and discover their own solutions. This aspect, really a consequence of good leadership and good casting, can be the most rewarding aspect of collaborative work.
If an actor becomes convinced that developmental work cannot improve an impromptu performance, you as director may have to prove otherwise. Do not, however, extend rehearsing when you can see no way ahead. When you reach your threshold, switch to another scene. Seldom can you fully develop a scene on its own because of its dramatic dependence on others. Spend time on related scenes in rotation rather than concentrating exhaustively upon one. This keeps actors' energies high and keeps their attention on the piece as a whole.
ONSCREEN LENGTH, REHEARSALS, AND MAINTAINING TIMING
Films intended for commercial showing have an optimum length related to their content. For television, length is determined by the “slot” and must be precise to the second. A 30-minute non-commercial TV slot usually requires a film of 28 minutes, 30 seconds. Anything intended for commercial TV will have to be written with cliffhangers to accommodate commercials. Anyone who doubts the problems this brings should see Jack Gold's production for Hallmark of The Return of the Native (1995).
Student films are usually limited by the scope of their ideas and budget rather than by any commercial considerations. The tendency is to shoot overlong scenes with too little coverage and far too much dialogue. It's a common mistake to try for the longest possible film from available resources and story content. In the cutting stage it becomes apparent that the compression missing from the conceptual stages must now somehow be accomplished by the hapless editor. Invariably these problems are worse when rehearsals haven't been taped or timed.
How long, then, should a film be? One way to guess at screen length is to decide on the basis of a bare story outline what the shortest screen time should be and to budget screen time accordingly for each of its parts. This calls in advance for a professional economy in the writing. It also means that adding to one sequence means making savings in another. Lengthening your film beyond the original plan has consequences on stock requirements and scheduling, so keeping an account of final screen time is vital.
At rehearsals someone—the script supervisor or the assistant director— should time each scene with a stopwatch. If you are taping rehearsals, simply time the recording and mark the script accordingly. By adding the latest scene timings together you have an overall timing for the whole movie at any time. In rehearsals scenes inevitably get longer because each gathers business. Characters increasingly adopt realistic thinking and authentic behavioral rhythms, so scenes become shorter to watch but longer in real time. Be careful, for collectively they may not hold up! Your piece, a Prince Charming at the scripted 30-minutes, can easily turn into a 47-minute toad.
As work proceeds, check new timings against earlier ones so you can make necessary decisions about length prior to shooting. While axing material is difficult or even traumatic with a tightly written piece, only one script in 1000 has been shaved to its working minimum. During rehearsal, always be ready to review, edit, or tighten pacing as you go.
Can't it all be sorted out in the cutting room? Yes, they sometimes do miracles in the cutting room, but don't rely on them for more than minor savings, and certainly not unless you have provided sufficient coverage and cutaways. In fact, carry this written on the back of your hand as you shoot: “I will never end a scene without shooting full coverage, so help me.”
MAKING A TRIAL MOVIE
An easy way to know what film you will have is to assemble the best-taped rehearsal versions and watch the whole piece through. Seeing it in entirety, especially if you bring in a small audience of filmmakers unconnected with the project, will give you an invaluable new perspective. True, the film will look awful, but even in this trial form it will alert you to redundancies, slow areas, expository omissions, restrictions, or mannerisms in the performances. These lessons will afford you invaluable guidance over pacing, coverage, and point of view. If the assembly is overlong (and it will be), you should run it several times until the cuts you need to make in the text scream out at you. Because you are working on video, you can even try them.
All this, happening before you have begun shooting, need not extend your schedule by more than a week. By this method you can painlessly make your film twice, with the second version profiting immeasurably from the first.