Directing actors in a realist film

Directing actors in a realist film

 by Lukas Agelastos

I am intrigued by watching “slice of life” dramas, as this naturalism makes me identify with the protagonists. Like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, in my films, I want to give ordinary people depth to unfold their stories. For example, Loach’s marginalised but jovial characters resonate with the people I met in Scotland as a student in my teens and twenties, and Leigh’s three-dimensional personalities make me think about the way we deal with each other. Leigh wants the viewer to come away from a film “reflecting on the way we live from various points of view” (Leigh in MacGregor 2011).

But as a film director interested in doing Social Realism films, how do you direct actors? This was a question that I constantly worried about when I was moving from documentary to fiction film. This article deals with the research I did prior to embarking on my own journey into directing actors while studying towards the MA Film at Raindance. I compared Ken Loach's and Mike Leigh's approaches, two of my favourite Social Realism directors, to more mainstream methods as read in Judith Weston and Sidney Lumet.

Sally Hawkins' wonderful performance in one of Mike Leigh's best films, Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Even before directing my first short fiction film, I thought that a director's job is to facilitate actors rather than to instruct them. Maybe this wishful notion came from my lack of experience and the trust I needed and wanted to place in actors’ abilities. That meant I wouldn't have to worry so much about the intricacies of acting. For example, Lawrence (2007, p.202) mentions that actors require to be free to live in character while the director judges 'the big picture', meaning that the director should give the actors feedback and create a sympathetic environment. Also, because of my photography and documentary background, I was more of a visual person than someone who was experienced with acting. As long-time TV producer Patricia Eyerman observes, directors with a film background are often more concerned about camera placement and leave the outcome of the performance to the actors. In contrast, theatre directors spend rehearsals analysing the script with their actors, and often rely on seasoned assistant directors for camera blocking (in Lehman 2012, p. xix). The film director Alexander Payne believes that his “number one job is to foment the creativity of others” (Payne in Advanced Filmmaking 2014) and Michael Rabiger (2013, p. 213) states that casting is 75% of a film’s success.
But even if you're a visual person or one without a theatre background, a director needs to be experienced in directing actors and good actors prefer a director who speaks their language and who understands how to break down a script (Arney in Lehman 2012, p.xix).

Judith Weston's approach

One of the most important contemporary theorists on directing actors is Judith Weston. Weston (1996) believes that an actor depends on the director to evaluate his/ her performance as s/he cannot do this alone. The actor has the responsibility and prerogative to create truthful behaviour by following the structure in the script that the director has unearthed. This is done through clear, playable, brief direction. This direction should not be result-based or intellectual but objective-oriented and experiential, by discussing the character's objective or intention.

The director needs to break down their ideas about the character into a series of playable tasks

 (Weston 1996, p. 501/4994).

Actors need to be “in the moment”, tapping into their subconscious, but bringing choices and understandings to the role, in order to think real thoughts and feel real feelings, freed of the social veneer. “The best work happens when actors are caught in unguarded moments of simplicity and truth” (Weston 1996, p. 999/ 4994).

Weston (1996, pp.624-896/4994) proposes five tools to shape performances:

• Verbs: using action verbs, such as “to complain” instead of “be defensive” and instead of emotions, descriptions of character, judgements, and line readings. 
• Facts: used instead of psychologising, or explaining “what the character is like”.
• Images: e.g. the kind of images that are created by the words of the script.
• Events : every scene has a central emotional event and communicating this to actors is important.
• Physical tasks: asking the actor to do something physical rather than to be something, allowing them to naturally and spontaneously concentrate on the moment, rather than intellectualising it and creating a stiff, rehearsed-looking performance.

Michael Keaton in the exhilarating Birdman (2014), directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, one of Judith Weston's students

Ken Loach's approach

To heighten the feeling of authenticity and spontaneity, the British Social Realist Ken Loach often picks non-professional actors. He prompts them to improvise and to adjust their lines to achieve vernacular speech. He describes his actors what the situation is, where they’ve been, where they would like to go, and then letting them “just talk to each other” (Laverty 2016, p. 3920/4596). He holds back the full script from the cast, giving it out only on a need-to-know basis for everyday shooting, in sequential story order, so that at certain key moments actors are caught off-guard. Loach believes that “acting is about reacting. The first time you hear something, you respond to it in a way that you never would if you were to hear it again” (Loach in Fuller 1998, p. 96). Improvisation is allowed, but after the first take, he steers subsequent takes into a specific direction and suggests different lines, and then actors incorporate them in the improvisation (ibid.). Aside from shooting many takes, he frequently also films his actors before or after a scene to collect documentary-like footage (English 2006, p. 264). He asserts that “the director can grab the spontaneous reaction of an actor”, (Loach 2017) and that “you not only have to guide their performances by talking to them, you actually have to create events for them to respond to” (Loach in Fuller 1998, p. 87).

From my own appreciation of Loach’s films, this approach generates genuine, documentary-like contexts. Loach is mostly interested in social circumstances and how they impinge upon characters, rather than interactions that stem from personal problems. This means that characters may seem less developed than in a Mike Leigh film. Further, the amateur actors he often uses won’t have the acting experience to respond to the rigours of tapping into the subconscious that Weston (1996) mentions. Vis-a-vis Leigh, the story context is imposed on the actors, rather than developed from their own experiences and this result can feel more superficial. Also, I imagine if a scene where the cast is surprised doesn’t work out first time, the unpredictable element is lost for subsequent takes. Moreover, when casting amateurs an element of unprofessionalism could creep in. Last but not least,  a visual person who isn’t experienced in directing actors, will want to rely on the experience that professional actors can bring to a production.

David Bradley in Kes (1969) by Ken Loach, his distressing coming-of-age story set in and around Barnsley, Yorkshire

Mike Leigh's approach

In Mike Leigh’s method the director goes through the following stages over roughly six months:

• Irvine (2008, p. 9) notes that Leigh does not start with a preconceived notion. But most of the other authors on Leigh (see below) state that he usually starts from a basic premise. I personally believe it depends on the project. For instance, for Secrets and Lies (1996), Leigh had stated that he was always interested in the topic of adoption implying he went into rehearsals with this in mind (Leigh in Raphael 2008, p.253-254).
• In auditions, actors provide caricatures of people they know. This showcases their skillfulness to observe real people and convert this to a performance. Some actors thrive on being permitted to improvise while others prefer the precision of a script. Leigh looks for the following traits in his actors: Focus, intelligence, a sense of humor, non-overwhelming confidence.
• He meets each actor separately, and s/he talks about people s/he has known, fleetingly or more intimately. The actor produces a list of people they know of their sex and roughly their age. Leigh will eventually get the list down to about five and ask the actor to compare things like their class background, sexuality or insight of art. Eventually, one is chosen as the starting point. 
• Over the next months, Leigh and the actor construct an intricate alter ego, sketching his life in great detail, and exploring every corner of his personality. What isn’t known is invented.
• Once individual characters are established, Leigh contemplates how some of the characters could be brought together. He issues improvisations like "Character A meets Character B in the pub" or "C sleeps with Character D" (O’Mahoney 2002).
• Leigh progressively brings the actors together for loose improvisations to assemble their collective world. Throughout the process, the actors never know more regarding the story than their characters would. 
• After some time, they go out to interact with the unsuspecting public and other characters, while Leigh observes from a distance. Actors live in character in order to form fully realised personalities. 
• Leigh writes a sketch of scenes. The actors improvise around these, the best moments and lines are refined and scripted, and shooting can begin (Johnston 1993 & 2008, Poole 2004, Irvine 2008, Veltman 2009, O’Sullivan 2011, MacGregor 2011 and Frost & Yarrow 2015).

In a Leigh film, the characters are “laminated before they are recorded” (O’Sullivan 2011, p.6), but there is effectively no on-camera improvisation (Van der Vliet 2008). While Loach maintains unawareness for his actors throughout production to secure their impulsive reactions, Leigh’s cast cautiously shapes the unexpected and spontaneity they have discovered in preparation (O’Sullivan 2011). Their goal is the same, however: to induce believable performances from their actors (Van der Vliet 2008).

For me, Leigh has a wonderful sense of deep characters that deal with real psychological issues. He is interested in human interaction, but this is to the expense of the social context that Loach’s films emphasise. Ulaby (2005) points out their most obvious difference: “Leigh's films inevitably look askance at the class system but his polemic tendencies are generally checked by his humanism”.

Difficulties with Leigh's method of rehearsing for half a year can be that such a long rehearsal span is difficult to achieve, especially if you're working with a limited or non-existing budget. Additionally, one needs to exhibit real leadership skills to build trust and authority and have the ability to see what works in improvisations to shape the story from scratch. Lastly, while Leigh sometimes surprises his cast, this element that Loach uses extensively is not of such importance in Leigh’s work.

"Realistic" performances?

Cardullo (2011) cites “[Leigh’s] willingness to bite into reality at a somewhat different angle from […] Loach, with his working-class portrayals along the lines of ‘docudrama’". He believes that Leigh’s films do not emulate reality, nor do his characters replicate ordinary conversation. The dialogue and events are heightened, as part of an attempt to get behind the actuality of day-to-day life (Cardullo 2011).

A very important trait of realistic performances, and this might be unexpected, is that often, actors’ performances are a bit stylised. Tony Whitehead (2013, Bleak Moments section) calls this “an exaggeration to get at a deeper truth”. 

In Leigh’s films, the ‘real’ can be said to be the worlds the characters inhabit, which are highly recognisable and constructed with great care and commitment to authenticity. The ‘unreal’ is the heightened comedy, the stylisation and comic excess, with which Leigh and his actors portray many of the characters and the situation in which they find themselves 

(Whitehead 2013, Introduction).

Imelda Staunton in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake (2004), one of his more political films

Sidney Lumet's approach

The major issues in many short film projects are preparation and rehearsals or lack thereof. For example, although I have been part of productions which were testament to how a no-budget film can be made guerilla-style, actor preparation for the films was inadequate, resulting in wasted time and unsatisfactory performances.
This made me wonder how more "mainstream" directors would typically approach this. For example, I investigated the late Sidney Lumet’s routines (1996, pp.823-853/2834) and compared them with my own experiences and to what I thought Loach and Leigh would do differently.

• Lumet held rehearsals for roughly two weeks. 
• Out of my own experience, if you don't rehearse, actors rely on their experience and intuition to follow the director's instructions, rather than being allowed to dig deeper.
• The first two-three days in a Lumet rehearsal were spent talking about the script with all the leading actors to establish theme, character, scenes, and lines. 
• Over the next two days, Lumet would break the script down into its components with the actors. 
• On the fourth day, Lumet would start blocking (i.e. staging) the scenes, which took about two and a half days. 
• In a Loach film, blocking is only basic, as he likes his cast to be free to move. Mike Leigh blocks his films to “let viewers vicariously participate in characters’ emotional and intellectual states” (Carney & Quart 2000, p.21).
• Then Lumet would start from the beginning, stopping to ensure every move in the staging would flow from the initial table discussion. He would ask the DP to watch a run-through. 
• This wouldn’t be something Ken Loach would do. I am not sure if Mike Leigh would do this.
• On the final day of rehearsals, Lumet would do another one or two run-throughs in sequence, to give the actors a sense of continuity and the “arc” of their characters. 
• Loach wouldn’t do these. Leigh probably does do them to “laminate” the story before shooting.

With his method, Lumet believed that he helped actors gain confidence in revealing their inner selves (Lumet 1996).

12 Angry Men (1957), one of Sidney Lumet's greatest masterpieces

Loach’s and Leigh’s methods eschew some of the classic script-to-screen processes, so Lumet’s observations are very helpful but not always as applicable to Social Realist films as to a more traditional film.

Conclusion

Knowing how to direct actors is one of the most important steps in becoming a director of fiction films. It's crucial studying important "mainstream" experts such as Judith Weston or the director Sidney Lumet to gain insights into the intricacies of the actor's craft and to understand how you can guide actors efficiently. Social Realists such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have their own methods, but this isn't to say that the work by traditionalists isn't vital learning. In order to find your own method, a good idea is to experiment with different methods of directing actors. For instance, one can make up little short scenes or stories and approach these according to a different method each time to understand how they work in real life. After the experience, a reflective journal of the experience can provide a deeper understanding of which aspects of which method you were most comfortable with. Also, don't forget that "realistic" films do not necessarily rely on "realistic" performances. Often, actors' reactions need to be heightened in order to bring out the "realism" of a scene.

PS.

After I published this article, my fellow Raindancer Jay Jay posted this reply about directing actors.

References

• Advanced Filmmaking. 2014. ‘S202: Discussions About A Career In Cinema: Alexander Payne, Director, Advanced Filmmaking’, retrieved 1 November 2017. https://vimeo.com/101183105 
• Bert Cardullo. 2011. "I Call My Films Subversive": A Conversation with Mike Leigh.  Literature/Film Quarterly; Salisbury, Md. Vol. 39, Iss. 1,  (2011): 14-29.
• James F. English. 2006. Local focus, global frame: Ken Loach and the cinema of dispossession. In: Lester D. Friedman (ed). 2006. Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism. New York City: Wallflower Press, pp. 259-281.
• Anthony Frost & Ralph Yarrow. 2015. Improvisation in Drama, Theatre and Performance: History, Practice, Theory. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Graham Fuller. 1998. Loach on Loach. London: Faber and Faber.
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