Today's class

Some ideas about today's discussion in class:

Roles
The roles of actor, director and writer in film production may be thought in terms of their respective skill sets.

Actor has a skill to not resist influence of the director. Director helps actor arrive to a certain emotional state appropriate for a particular scene in a film. In other words, a director "makes" an actor feel a certain way: angry, sad, excited, worried, confused, etc. An actor knows how not to resist director's influence. Actor's action: actor needs to trust the director on what emotion he/she should exhibit in each scene. Actor's job is to feel this way while saying and acting out what's in the script.

Director knows how to influence actor's emotional state. Also, a director is good at judging what an actor feels at any given moment. He knows weather the actor is pretending, or truly experiencing the emotion that needs to be expressed by the character. Director's action: Director is not to come up with interesting ideas for film, but to clearly communicate in moving images what's already written by a writer.

Writer notices unusual and interesting situations in life or creates them from his imagination. He is clearly recording these situations on paper and explaining why they are interesting. He is usually good at working solo. Writer's action: for example, a writer may notice some injustice in government. Usually, the writer's goal is not to attack this injustice directly, but to merely record what he noticed and let others take actions. Typically, the only action that a writer takes is the act of writing itself. Sometimes, he is also involved in distribution (publishing, for example) or somehow sharing his writings with people.

How much detail is too much in a script?
(1) Script / story is like a comic strip. There should be just enough detail to convey the point, any excessive detail is simply destructive to the reader. For example:



We don't need to know what exactly the agenda items are, or what's the mug (coffee / tea) on the table. These details don't add to the story: some people scan agendas for items not relevant to them and zone out.