How do you find actors for your movie? Are they hanging around the mall shooting pool just waiting for something to do? Maybe. Finding actors for your film can be daunting especially if you have not directed much before, or at all. If this is your first time organizing a shoot or your first film it will naturally be a learning curve.
There are several things you can do to maximize your chances of understanding actors and the process and therefore pinning down exactly what you are looking for:
- Read books on acting. I recommend anything by ‘Directing actors’ by Judith Weston, who has great understanding of the process but there are plenty of others out there.
- Try out some acting classes at a local college or evening class. There is nothing better for learning a subject than throwing yourself into it, if you have the courage. It will build confidence too and you will start to get a hook on the language and methods of acting.
- Watch them work. Live theatre is a great place to study actors in the moment. You will soon start to recognize people who lose themselves in their characters and people who don’t. Good and bad acting will start to shout out to you and you will develop the skill of seeing when an actor is really listening and when they’re just saying the lines. You may need front row seats for this though otherwise it’s the binoculars.
- Check out nearby drama schools that often have regular free or cheap performances of both well known works and more experimental stuff. It’s a great place to find local talent and possible collaborators.
Working with actors is about you as a director being able to draw the performance you want from another person. That other person is not a robot or a machine but a human being who is making themselves vulnerable every time they go up for a role in a film or a play. To put oneself in that position time and time again takes a lot of guts and stamina. In order to protect that vulnerability, most actors will need to feel ‘safe’ working with you so that they can fully express their emotions and do a good job. It is up to you to generate that ‘safe place’ and the freedom for them to create. We are not talking about a physical place as such; it’s simply means having their director’s (that’s you) confidence and trust.
Directing actors can be frustrating at times like any human interaction, but it’s mostly rewarding, exciting and an incredible learning experience; of which you will probably become aware of much later. For the most part it’s a short term relationship, but a relationship nonetheless and if you go about it the right way, it could lead to much longer, mutually beneficial collaborations.