We are led to those who help us most to grow

Yesterday’s filming for the student assignment: Wow, what a wonderful learning experience! Everybody that I met was so supportive and generous, it was incredible. (I’m not used to finding that.) I had been really afraid that I need to be completely put together and know exactly what I was doing, and not have any doubts, but both Melissa and Anthony really were very nice and supportive, and helped me with the things that I hadn’t learned about yet as an actor. Thank you both so much!

So my adventure begins with my arriving in LA at Melissa’s apartment so that we could rehearse together for about 30 minutes before carpooling to the Brooks Institute soundstage. I am so grateful to Melissa for being understanding of my nervousness and inexperience, and for being supportive, I learned a lot from her.

All three of her roommates were home and hanging out in the kitchen area while she and I ran the scene together for the first time. They commented that it sounded very natural, they didn’t even realize we were actually running the scene until Melissa couldn’t remember one of her lines. But Melissa commented that we hadn’t connected, and I had felt that too, I knew that it was somehow my fault but I couldn’t figure out why right away. Melissa asked one of her roommates for an improv game we could use to get connected, and he asked each of us what our objectives in the scene were. Turns out it was my objective that was keeping Melissa and I from connecting, my objective was very internal and couldn’t affect her, there was no way for me to play it. So that was lesson #1. I remember reading about objectives in a couple of my acting books, but I hadn’t yet really learned to use that tool effectively. So I started thinking, thinking, what does my character want to do to her, want from her?

As we got ready to leave, her roommate asked me if I had figured out my objective yet, and I said I was still trying to figure that out, so he pulled out a piece of paper with a list of verbs/actions on it. (I think that was so cool of him to do that!)

"I remember this, we got one of these in my acting class, too!" I said.

Melissa said she had a book full of verbs, Actions: The Actor’s Thesaurus. She suggested we bring it along with us, we could use it for running lines while we drove to the set, the drive would be at least an hour. So we each picked a couple of random actions from the book and ran the scene a couple of times, it was really interesting. I think it really helped us connect as actors as well, get a feel for each other and feel comfortable working together. (Although Melissa was so open and supportive from the beginning that I felt comfortable with her right away.) And Melissa complimented me when I did connect with the moment, and listen & react to her. So that helped me learn when I was doing something right.

Then she suggested that we just relax until we got to the set, which sounded like a really good idea, because I tend to worry too much, (as if my regular readers didn’t already know that, lol) and I probably would have gotten myself so worked up and tense by the time we got there, it would have been much more difficult for me (for both of us) once we started working the scene for real. So thank you again, Melissa, for your guidance!

We had also talked a bit about the training each of us had had, I said I’d never learned any specific techniques, but that for this scene I’d written down everything that I had learned about my character from the script, who she was, how she felt about her sister, how she felt about Graham. Melissa said that technique didn’t really work for her, it got her too inside her head and not in the moment. So Lesson #2: Don’t be inside your head, be in the moment. The exercises we did with the actions helped with that too, helped me get out of my head and into the moment. And while I still believe that all the writing I did was very important to understanding my character, after a certain point I think it just needs to simmer into the unconscious, and that’s where learning to trust yourself comes into play again. You just have to trust that it’s all in there, affecting your actions and reactions in the moment.

So finally we arrived at the soundstage on time, and Anthony was waiting for us. He came over to the car, and told us that the prop house had closed early, so rather than using an empty set, we’d go to his apartment to film. He was very apologetic about the whole thing, and he seemed disappointed, said he’d had two rooms in the Erin Brokovich house picked out, was planning a dolly shot between the two rooms. I was disappointed as well, but what can you do?

Once we got to Anthony’s apartment, it turned out the only tripod they’d brought with them, the head was broken in half. Anthony said the only piece of equipment that he hadn’t checked was that tripod. Murphy’s Law was on a rampage that day, it seemed. All of the shots would be handheld.

Working with Anthony was awesome, however. He was very respectful and kind to all of us (his two crew guys as well). He seemed aware of what we needed as actors from take to take, and created several improvised scenarios for Melissa and I to help deepen our character relationship and history. He seemed aware that I was nervous in the beginning, and then that I was emotionally raw as we improvised more (Ann’s sister was really bitchy and mean to her) and so was gentle in giving his directions.

As an example: In the first couple of takes, I was crossing my arms a lot. Anthony brought it to my attention, and I said as a way of apology, "Actually, it’s something I’m still working on, but a lot of times I just don’t know what to do with myself."

He smiled, and said, "That’s okay. Just don’t think about it." It was very kind and reassuring the way he said it, and that really helped me relax and allow myself not to think about it. And I think I moved a lot better after that. I don’t think I was always completely natural, but it was definitely better.

With all the emotional work that I did during the shoot, I’ve realized how important it is to know how to take care of ourselves as an actor. It’s not just about the craft. You need to know how to heal yourself after allowing yourself to be ripped open, or at least how to put salve and a band-aid on it. I think I did okay with this last night, but on a scale of 1 to 10, one being normal every day emotions, and ten being losing it and going over the edge emotional, this scene was perhaps a four? I’m not sure how I would have handled it if the scene had been more intense.

It was a little bit weird for me when we first started filming, because Anthony was standing in the closet out of camera sight, and it was weird knowing in the very back of my mind that he was there watching us. It’s different in theater when you have an audience in front of you, and you know you’re playing to them. But to pretend you’re in a room alone, and knowing in the back of your mind there’s someone in the closet watching, it was a little bit weird. And then later they did a take from the foot of the bed, and Anthony sat on the end of the bed under the camera, and the whole first part of the scene I’m supposed to be making the bed. I did my best to not allow that to distract me, though. If I became aware of him or the camera, I just accepted that I’d noticed, and brought my focus back to the scene.

The part I really liked was after several takes, Anthony would come over to us with a big smile on his face, and say, "That was awesome! I’m really happy with that one! You’re both doing great!"

The blocking he gave us was very general, we only had one or two specific marks to hit throughout the scene, so our movements changed somewhat from take to take. I asked one of the guys about continuity and he replied that Anthony was a wizard at editing and that the scene would look great finished. And Anthony said they weren’t being graded on technical issues for this scene, they were being graded on our performance, how he directed us in our performance.

After we wrapped, we ate pizza as we watched some of the footage. What they say about the camera adding ten pounds is totally true, and in my case I think it added twenty. I don’t really have any problems with how I look in the mirror, but I took one look at myself on film and said, "I am so going to work out tomorrow." (And I did work out today, just for the record. Yay me!) In my opinion, every time I sat down on the bed during the scene, I looked like Jabba the Hutt. (Yes, I realize that is an extremely harsh and mean thing to say about myself, but I'm not doing myself any favors by sugar-coating it.) I know a lot of that had to do with the fact I was slouching when I sat, but even when I was standing and moving around, I was not at all happy with my physical appearance. So that was a swift kick in the pants from "reality". I know I don’t need to look like a bikini model to look good on film. But losing even just 20 lbs would make a huge difference, I think.

We didn’t watch all of the footage, but what we did watch, I could see the change in my performance from the takes before the improvisations to the takes after. I was glad to see that, because I could definitely feel the difference when we had been filming, so I’m glad that it came across to the camera as well.

As we drove home, Melissa and I discussed that it was disappointing that all of the shots had been handheld, because a lot of the shots were shaky. And it was disappointing we couldn’t be on a sound stage, Anthony’s apartment wasn’t really an appropriate setting for our characters. Because of these two difficulties, the material would look a lot less professional, it may not be something we could use on our reels after all. I was still happy with the shoot overall, because I did learn so much, it was a great experience. And I would totally work with Anthony again. Because Melissa has such a high regard for Brooks Institute, I figure this was a one time Murphy’s Law technical issues thing.