Flawed Artists - The Power of Insecurity

Artists can be said to have many flaws. One of the greatest is sometimes said to be insecurity. It reminds me of a quote I’ve seen that pops up every now and again. It goes along the lines of stating that those who know the least speak the loudest, and those who are the most qualified keep quiet because they question themselves and the world. I think it may be safe to say that the more we learn about life, or our various pursuits, the more the wisest among us realize how little we actually know. This in turn leads to insecurity in life.

If we look at some of the greatest artists that have ever lived, many in their interviews mention their insecurities over their own work. Old interviews or memoirs of past film stars such as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe show a deep insecurity of their abilities. Some of the most talented writers, actors, and artists I’ve met always seem to think their work is terrible. Those artists I’ve met who talk about their brilliance or incredible talent leave me to wonder if they’re seeing something I’m not when I’ve watched what they’ve done. In most cases, not all but most, I’m left shaking my head wondering what type of inflated ego must possess them to think they are as talented as they seem to believe.

The sad fact I’ve read about most industries, both in the arts and other areas of life, is that confidence will help one achieve more than actual skill and talent. There was an actor turned casting director who wrote a book I had read several years back who had mentioned the same. Those who came in and gave terrible reads but held their heads high and pumped their fists at the end fared far better than those who gave moving auditions but chastised themselves at the end.

The most he could make of the situation was that the casting directors knew little of acting and based their casting decisions on the reaction of the actors when the audition was over. If the actor was excited it must have meant they did an amazing job. If the actor was tough on themselves it must mean they did something wrong. That was the thought process of the many casting directors he worked with.

While it’s sad that our reactions to our own work may weigh more heavily than the actual skill level of the work we do, I do believe that those who are insecure about their work possess the most potential and have a powerful tool in their hands. In life, it is those of us who are most insecure that will continue to strive to learn and improve. No matter what level we achieve we will always feel as if something is missing. As long as that feeling burns inside of us, as long as we continue to search for that missing piece to make us feel complete, improvement will come. That’s when great artists and great art are born.

It is those artists that feel as if they’ve mastered their craft with supreme talent, those that feel they may be a “gift from god” that will stagnate. These artists have achieved their best work, and there’s nothing more to come from them. What reason is there to strive for something more if one already feels like they’ve arrived?

It is that feeling of insecurity that is the most powerful tool one can possess, regardless of the struggles that may come with it. So take heed my insecure friends because it is you who will create art and achieve great things. It is each one of you who will do ten times what the over-confident cannot, that will bring substance to a world filled only with meaningless flare. That substance is what gets remembered for all time, where the rest merely get their 15 minutes.

Flawed Artists - The Power of Insecurity

Auditioning, Acting Tip

Auditioning can be a tough process. Standing out during your audition is an even bigger challenge. Yet most actors I know attack scenes in almost the same manner, basing their audition on the words on the piece of paper. If the scenes they’re auditioning for consist of two people arguing, they go right into yelling at the other actor. The best advice I’d ever gotten during training was that we should look at life when auditioning, and even after we get the part.

It’s been awhile since I’ve auditioned for anyone else since I’ve focused on writing my own films, or building up knowledge to implement the marketing that will be required to get it out there into the public eye. I did recently though find myself auditioning for a film, and I can use the sides we were given as an example of what I’m referring to about basing auditioning on the words on the paper. The audition was for a movie entitled Sin City Players being made by Michael Mahal. With the audition we were given several choices of sides.

Some of the sides had props within them. I haven’t seen too many auditions go well when someone mimes a prop. You can always ask if there’s an item in the room to use, in this case a cup, but I hate doing that just out of respect for the directors and not wanting to burden them. After narrowing the sides down based on if they had props and the characters in the scene, I chose the scene with a man sitting in a restaurant. In the scene a woman comes over and hits on him quite strongly, to which he rebuts her advances. As the scene ends, the women walks away, and then after a few moments returns as the man apologizes for being lousy at roleplaying the sexual advances of what was actually his wife and not a stranger.

From what I’ve seen in other auditions I’ve gone on in the past, or even playing these types of scenes in class, I think I can confidently say that most people attacked the scene by rebuking the advances completely. They probably read the scene as a guy saying, “No, don’t touch me. I love my wife.” while the women touched and flirted with him. The catch is, if one plays the scene that way the ending makes no sense. Argument scenes are no different. Everyone yells and wants to be the next Al Pacino, but even Al Pacino knows better. As my instructor use to say, when auditioning or reading a part, we should look to life.

If we think about this scene, we have to look at the ending, and how life plays into it. The words don’t matter as much as where the character is coming from. He’s attempting to roleplay with his wife. Obviously his protests of “No” aren’t really what he’s meaning because it’s roleplaying going on between the two of them. With the apology at the end, again we can maybe take that he’s somewhat awkward in the way the scene plays out. There’s conflict in the character. He’s saying one thing, but attempting another. The words don’t matter as much as the emotional state of the character. In this case he’s saying one thing, but the emotional state is likely meant to be a way to turn each other on in this game of theirs. The conflict itself will make the character more interesting to watch, much more so than completely trying to blow his wife off and then out of nowhere saying the opposite at the end.

So when attacking a scene like this it doesn’t make sense here, or even in life, for someone to be so strong in saying no. It makes much more sense for the character to want to touch back, maybe even doing so and awkwardly removing his hand. It makes sense for him to gaze at her fondly or with want, and then try to hide it in his lousy attempt at roleplaying. I can almost guarantee few people actually did that though if my past experiences are any indication of how people normally attack a scene.

The very same can be said for scenes that contain arguments for the auditioning. The casting directors are forced to hear 90% of those coming in yelling like Pacino and congratulating themselves on a great job. Likely what happens though is the casting director is tuning you out because you just did what almost every other actor auditioning attempted. It may be a great feeling as an actor when you can accomplish it, but is it true to the scene and the character? More importantly, is it interesting? Like Shrek, characters in our scenes are like onions. They have layers. The casting director has probably seen the same layer over and over throughout the day. Why not show him another layer to the character?

In life, not everyone yells in an argument. Some laugh and take jabs calmly with that underlying hate in their voice. Others may have long pauses, because they want to think of the words they’re about to say to do the most damage to the other character. While auditioning there may not be time to hit all those different levels, but it is possible to hit one or two. Once you have the part, an actor can start layering all those things into one based off of the character in the script. Think of how much more interesting you become when you argue differently than what every other actor has done before you, and you’re still staying true to your character but in a different way. When you walk into the door for an audition this is what you want to be thinking about. In essence, when auditioning try to look at the different ways people may do things in life. As a result your character is more likely to get someones attention.

Auditioning, Acting Tip

Directing Actors, a Film Tip

Directing actors is something that I consider to be a fine line that must be walked by a good director. There’s nothing that drives me more mad than the way I’ve seen some indie films work with actors and the manner they go about directing actors. I don’t know if filmmakers aren’t being taught about the proper way of directing actors in school or if the problem lies more with massive ego and control issues. What I do know is that I wish more directors would take the time to attend some acting classes by knowledgeable instructors, with an emphasize on knowledgeable. There are too many “acting” coaches today who teach how to look good on film, or how to get your best side shown on camera. This is not acting. I’d be surprised if very few of those who attend these types of acting classes ever get past community theatre or college plays.

Directing actors is an art form. It’s having control but also allowing the actor to express his own creativity. They should complement one another, or else you might as well have robots reading the lines back and forth. I was fortunate to train under someone who learned the craft of directing actors at Herbert Berghof Studios in New York back before “the look” became such a big thing in the industry, back when actors were truly actors. My instructor eventually moved on to be somewhat of a big agent in L.A., before retiring and training actors across the country based on Herbert Berghof’s vision of affordable classes. For those who are unaware, Berghof ran a non-profit and attending his classes were cheap. He believed that training people in the arts was more important than making money. Berghof worked with big names in the movie and theatre industry such as Uta Hagen, Al Pacino, William H. Macy, and Robert DeNiro just to name a few.

During my time in this instructors classes I would see students attending who had recently left “big name” instructors in town. These instructors trained actors in the same way many indie filmmakers go about directing actors. Their performances were stiff and lacked any connection to those in the scene with them. In other words, they were robots. It was sometimes said that we may just as well put a podium in front of them because anyone else in the scene didn’t matter. Depending on that actors talent it would take weeks or months to untrain all the bad habits they had been taught and to get them to connect to the person standing on stage with them. Once that was done though, their performances became mesmerizing to watch. They were no longer doing a scene, but were living in a time and place they had created around them.

The culprit in all of this was in their previous instructors telling them how to say a line, or instructing them to break down their lines in a way that they knew how they wanted each line delivered. Many indie film people do the same when directing actors. When watching it though it literally appears as if the actor was giving a speech on a podium. On their own they may have been interesting to listen to, but with another actor in the scene everything came out feeling and looking very rehearsed. Most indie film directors do just this. They instruct their actors on how they want the line said, or which words to emphasize. This is the death of an actor, and is sure to make everyone involved appear amateurish.

What indie film directors don’t seem to understand is that directing actors is similar to selecting shots. You may have a great idea for the framing of a shot in your head, but in actually shooting it there’s something not right about it. Sometimes it means scrapping the shot completely. It’s the same with actors. You may picture a line said in a specific way, but that normally doesn’t play out in the way the scene works.

In life, when people speak it comes from a certain place in the body and the way our mind interprets how we were addressed. The way we speak, and the tone we use, is also dependent upon the way we’re spoken too. If we’re trying to make a scene believable in its dialogue each actor is completely dependent upon the way the other speaks to him. We’re basically reacting to what we’re being given. When someone instructs an actor on how to say a line, no matter how great that line is delivered, there’s usually a tone that’s missing that normally happens when we respond to another person. It makes the line sound scripted or the actors sound off kilter, as if they’re not speaking to the other person at all. An example of this can be seen in the movie Napoleon Dynamite when the tater tots are crushed in his pocket during lunch. If you close your eyes and just listen to the dialogue it sounds completely off and unrealistic. It had me wondering if they were even in the same room together during the scene being shot.

The goal when directing actors is not to tell them how to say a line, or emphasize a word, but to help them get into the emotional state that the character finds himself in. Once you help an actor find that state then ego’s must be set aside to allow the actors to deliver the lines in a realistic manner because they are depending on each other, and completely dependent on how the actor across from him is addressing him in tone and emotion. This brings a scene to life, and makes the characters much more interesting to watch. It brings the audience into the story which is exactly what you want to achieve. The actors actually have a conversation instead of a line read.

If the actor is not able to achieve the emotional state on his own there are little tricks that can be done although I consider them a last resort. Elia Kazan was said to have pulled some of these when directing actors on his own sets. He did so with James Dean during the shooting of East of Eden. The anger Dean was expressing was not to Kazan’s liking so between takes he purposely became somewhat nasty with Dean in an attempt to anger him. The result was exactly what he was hoping Dean would achieve on-screen, with all the underlying anger as he threw ice down the chute. Personally I wouldn’t mind a director doing this to help me if I found myself struggling similarly, although some actors do not handle it well.

Regardless of the approach you take, when directing actors realize that getting the best performance out of them depends on how well you help them communicate to one another, and not on how you specifically want them to deliver a line. Your actors will appreciate it, and you’ll find a your films benefit from them due to better performances too. Directing actors is an art. Each gives up a small bit of control to get the best out of each other.

Directing Actors, a Film Tip