A Director Acts: My Experience Directing and Acting in a Short Film
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Running head: A DIRECTOR ACTS 1 A Director Acts: My Experience Directing and Acting in a Short Film Benjamin Alexander Grist A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Spring 2018 A DIRECTOR ACTS 2 Acceptance of Senior Honors Thesis This Senior Honors Thesis is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Program of Liberty University. ______________________________ Michael Torres, Ph.D. Thesis Chair ______________________________ Douglas Miller, M.F.A. Committee Member ______________________________ Pamela Miller, M.A. Committee Member ______________________________ James H. Nutter, D.A. Honors Director ______________________________ Date A DIRECTOR ACTS 3 Abstract The purpose of this creative thesis was to test the difficulties of both directing and acting in a short film at the same time. I began my research by completing three honors petitions that covered this subject and used the information I gained while writing and performing them to inform my decisions while completing the thesis. During pre-production, I prepared for my roles in the film and began to discover the challenges involved. In the production phase, I directed and acted in a short film over the course of five days. This experiment has led me to believe that one must prepare seriously for such an undertaking, as it is not an easy task. A DIRECTOR ACTS 4 A Director Acts: My Experience Directing and Acting in a Short Film In the early years of cinema, it was not uncommon for the star of a film to also be the film’s director, as was the case with Charlie Chaplain (Charlie). As the art of cinema developed and matured, the role of actor and director became more and more separate. However, there has been an interesting trend in recent years of actors directing their own productions again. While there have been a few high-profile actors and filmmakers that have attempted to both direct and act in a film, such as Mel Gibson directing and starring in Braveheart, it is usually filmmakers working with smaller budgets who pursue this course of action (Mel). I have always had a fascination with both filmmaking and acting. While I have experimented with combining these two loves as a child, I had never attempted to do it with any sort of a budget or while managing other cast and crew members. Thus, I decided to use my requirements for the honors program to complete a creative thesis exploring the challenges of directing a film and acting in it simultaneously. The process started during my junior year, in which I wrote two honors petitions analyzing the processes and challenges of both directing and acting in the same film. Work on the creative thesis began in the early fall of 2017, as I entered pre-production of my cinematic arts thesis short film, King Takes Queen (see Appendix), which would double as my honors thesis experiment. The thesis came to a head during the production phase of the film. Honors Petitions The preparation for this thesis began in the fall of 2016. I was fortunate to gain the agreement of Michael Torres, Ph.D., to serve as my thesis chair. After much A DIRECTOR ACTS 5 deliberation, we settled on the topic of directors acting in their own films and set about preparing for the thesis. The honors program requires that three honors petitions be completed over the course of the course of an undergraduate honors scholar’s junior and senior years. At the suggestion of Dr. Torres, I tailored my petitions so that they would help me gather information to prepare for when the time came for me to begin the experiment for my creative thesis. Professional Director-Actors The petition in the fall of my junior year was a case study of Clint Eastwood, Ben Stiller, and Ben Affleck, as they chose to both direct and act in a starring role in Gran Torino, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Argo, respectively. It was difficult to find many articles about the process these men went through when preparing for and making their films as director-actors. This is not that surprising, considering that most authors choose to write about the more technical aspects of filmmaking. Having that option unavailable, I turned to another. While there were not many articles about the process the three men went through as director-actors, there were several articles documenting what they went through individually as directors and actors. I noticed three key commonalities among the three men. First, they had all been accomplished actors before they decided to undertake the role of director in a major film production. Second, as a result, all of them could gather investors easily, as the fact that these famous individuals were in a movie would be enough to convince prospective audience members to buy tickets to go see the film. Finally, all three men had previous experience directing and acting in films, and A DIRECTOR ACTS 6 none of them achieved immediate success. While I did take note of these three commonalities, I did not pay that much attention to them. I should have. How Actors Act and Directors Direct Looking forward to my upcoming senior year, the honors petition I completed in the spring of my junior year focused on the similarities and differences between an actor preparing for his role in a film and a director preparing for his work on a film. While both the actor and the director begin work during pre-production, they both go about their work in very different ways. Having done a little work as both a director in film and an actor on the stage, I had a good understanding of what would have to happen in order to prepare for the film. However, writing this particular petition I discovered two important things. First, comparing the two processes side-by-side made the distinction between the two even more obvious. Second, the petition gave me a greater understanding of the magnitude of work both parties need to do to be properly prepared. Once I had finished writing this paper, I completely forgot about that second discovery. I should have paid better attention. Firsthand Filmmaking and Acting My final petition gave me a chance to actually experience what it was like to help prepare for and act in a film. As I was required to complete this petition in the Fall of 2017, it would coincide with the filming of my cinematic arts thesis film. Dr. Torres, who is also my advising professor, was afraid that I would be too busy working on my thesis film to be able to write another research paper. So, he suggested that I do a creative thesis by assisting him and a few other professors in a one-day experiment with 360 degrees A DIRECTOR ACTS 7 recording equipment. The experiment we were to perform was to see if we could use the 360 degrees equipment to effectively tell a story in a short film. Making this film proved to be a very valuable learning experience. Because of how long we took discussing the narrative possibilities of 360 degrees movies, we had only a few minutes to write and choreograph the film, which helped me learn how to quickly create a film from scratch. I also had to prepare myself for the acting role I would play in the film very quickly, which taught me that it is possible to prepare oneself to portray a character in very little time. Acting in the film was also a unique experience because there were three 360 degrees cameras recording at all times, I could not leave character at all while the cameras were rolling. This gave me a unique and unexpected challenge to overcome, which enhanced my ability to deal with unexpected challenges in the future. This project also gave me great insight into working with a team of people that I may or may not have known beforehand. All these lessons will come in handy in future productions. Unfortunately, this experiment took place after I had already finished production of my thesis film. Pre-Production As I entered the first semester of my senior year, I moved into pre-production of my thesis film. The creative experiment had finally commenced. The cinematic arts department requires that all its students not only direct their thesis films but also write and produce them. For better or worse, I decided to push aside the work of preparing for acting in the film and focus solely on the work behind the camera aspects of filmmaking. This stage of preparing to film a movie is known as pre-production. I had already written and gone through several drafts of my senior thesis film by the time I had reached the fall A DIRECTOR ACTS 8 of my senior year, so there was not much work that needed to be done in that regard. I made a few minor changes to create a final draft, and then left the writing portion of pre- production behind me, determining to do both the directing and producing portions of pre-production simultaneously. Preparations as a Director The directing portion of pre-production proved to be the most tedious, as usual. While I greatly enjoy directing, I have never looked forward to the pre-production phase of it. This is because, for the director, pre-production consists of filling out page after page of paperwork. Now, this paperwork is very important to filming, as it gives instruction to all the departments as to how to go about creating the film.