Do stars read lines or fake them?

Cafe Society
21

Multiple takes generally happen because the director wants multiple interpretations of the scene, so he can go back later in the editing room and have a number of options available to choose from for the final product. As an example, I was recently listening to the director’s commentary for an ep of “Six Feet Under” for a scene where Ruth has a break-down outside of the knitting shop. The commentary explained that they did a bunch of takes to cover the entire spectrum of intensity, everything from full-on sobbing to just a quiet teary moment. They ended up going with something in the middle.

Also because sometimes things just go wrong, especially if you’re on location (hi I’m saying my line and a car drives by and honks in the middle), or you’re working with small children or animals (try making a cat walk across the room on command. Go ahead, I dare you. :smiley: ).

As already noted, sit-coms and other “recorded live” shows have three cameras running simultaneously, and usually only one take. For dramas, they might actually have multiple cameras available, but the logistics of the set-ups require multiple takes. If you’re filming a conversation between two people, a standard technique is the “over, over, two-shot” which is basically – one angle over Guy 1’s shoulder, looking at Guy 2’s face; one angle over Guy 2’s shoulder, looking at Guy 1’s face; one wide shot showing both of them. For any of these set-ups, if you tried to use more than one camera per take, the cameras would be visible to each other in the shot. (This is called “coverage” btw – multiple takes to capture multiple camera angles and shots.)

There are VERY few scenes in movies or TV dramas that are filmed in one take, or where the different camera angles for a single scene all came from the same take. Except for things like oners (one long shot where the camera follows the actor [or the action] around), it’s logistically impossible. Hell, sometimes one side of the coverage isn’t even filmed the same day as the other, and two actors may be having a conversation “with each other” that’s actually weeks apart.

22

I’ve read that Kevin Smith expects his actors to follow the script the way he wrote it. He lets a few actors like Ben Affleck or Seth Rogen do a little improvisation but even then he expects them to do the scene first from the script.

23

There’s a moment in the commentary on the Carnivale season 1 DVDs when the producer and director are talking about Toby Huss, the actor who played Stumpy. He was in the practice of improvising and at one point he went a little too far off track. The director(?) got exasperated and said something like, “Hey, it’s a script, not a suggestion,” and in the next take, Huss read his lines exactly as they were written, “down to the comma,” the commentators joked.

24

Not an online cite. I believe I read it in a Playboy interview of Harrison Ford. If I come across a link that confirms this, of course I’ll post it.

25

And behold, I found it. Harrison Ford Playboy interview, July 2002

I may have overstated Lucas’ response. According to Ford, Lucas “went nuts.” Not quite on the same level as being furious, but Lucas clearly didn’t like his script being tampered with.

In “The Empire Strikes Back,” in the scene where Vader has Han carbon-frozen, Ford also suggested having Solo respond “I know,” when Leia said, “I love you.” Lucas was also “crazed” at that.

26

Thanks.

God, he’s terrible. I hope he never “directs” again.

:frowning:

27

Well, Lucas didn’t direct either “Raiders” or “Empire.” And as producer, he did have enough respect for his directors (particularly for Spielberg) to let their changes stand in the final cut.

28

Hey, thanks to everyone correcting me on the sitcom bit.

It’s interesting to me that most of the sitcom shoots I ever attended had fewer cameras than the drama shoots. . . guess I just know how to pick them, eh? :slight_smile:

BTW, one of the most impressive camera setups I saw on a TV drama was the one for Battlestar Galactica-- their director Michael Rymer routinely uses a three-camera setup. He also does a lot of takes to generate raw material for editing later on.

29

It’s a little known fact that by themselves they mean nothing, but all of Lucas’s films run together to form a multimedia invocation of the Great Demon. Every time an actor goes off script just makes more work for him in later films to get the correct sequence of words, images, and music which will open the dimensional rift and summon forth the Underworld, which explains why he’s gotten more strict and tyrannical over the years.

Rumor has it the chant must include the correct sequence of the following words: 1138, meesa, dark side, and NOOOOOOOOOOO!

30

Sometimes writers or directors will just give the basic outline of a scene and let the actors do the rest. In Taxi Driver, one scene listed in the transcript simply says “Travis looks in the mirror.” We all know what became of that.

31

This is pretty much the answer, even though it’s all questions. In an ideal world* actors play a big part in creating the characters they play. Good actors know what sounds natural and appropriate for their character, because they’re the ones who have to speak the lines.

They don’t simply read or fake lines, they participate in a collaborative effort.
*I’m sure there are tons of examples of writers, directors and actors who don’t fit in this ideal world.

32

I understand that Marlon Brando rarely bothered to learn his lines. He would use either cue cards or an ear piece with someone off stage feeding him his lines.

33

Famously, the “Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…” line delivered by Bruce Willis in the first Die Hard movie was ad-libbed between the director and the screenwriter on the phone, while Willis was sweating his ass off in the air duct prop.

(On a pet peeve note, I’ve never met a good director who told an actor to deliver the line “a little more angry.” At least not on dramas - on sitcoms, maybe. Most decent directors will try to funnel the characters’ emotions into the line, not blow it up and pixellate it by giving stage calls. Direction like that will always give a cheesy, fake feel to the act. For example, on a recent short I worked on, the lead actor was stabbed in the thigh just after getting out of a really bad situation and after having had the worst weekend in man’s memory. He started to play the line a bit increduously, but the director halted him and started rattling off every last thing that had happened to the character the last week, punctuating each bullet point with poking a finger in his gut. You could see that actor - who was fairly brilliant - get more tense and sweaty and mad with each jab and when the director was done, the camera was still rolling and the deck and shoot were ready, so the actor went right in, delivered the line pissed off as all hell and pretty much nearly broke the other actor’s arm while taking his knife away.

Just like the director wanted it, and it looked perfect on camera. Real emotions trump.)

34

That was probably one of the best lines in the entire franchise.

35

Well, of course, I know this. I can’t readily find the type of reference that I’m talking about. But often, the language used implies or states that the actor in question behaved in ways that would indicate that s/he was truly creating the role, not just putting his or her stamp on it. I think that’s going overboard, unless, as my OP says, there is a much larger degree of creativity involved, such as in creating dialog that helps structure a story, for instance.

36

You are thinking of it backwards. Dialogue doesn’t structure a story, structure creates dialogue. I am not exactly sure how to explain it without having a face to face conversation with references and actors, but actors can create an aweful lot without changing a word of dialogue.

Take theatre as an example. I think theatre is better for this sort of discussion than film because the text is sacred in theatre and you don’t change a word of it without risking the wrath of the playwrite and possible financial damages. Look at the famous Out Out speech from MacBeth. Here is a portion of the acutal text:

There are hundreds of possible interpritations of this dialogue, and even more physical actions that can go along with it. A good director will guide the actor into a choice that conforms with the rest of the production, but that will still leave dozens of potential line readings, and, even if the actor is very stricktly blocked, another several dozen physical options.

The choice to shout these lines in a rage, to whisper them with self pitty, to cry over them, to stand stock still, to move about frenetically, to sit, to stand. All are supported by the text of the rest of the play, all are available to the actor in a variety of combinations. They are just words until the actor breaths life into them. How they chose to give those words life is what acting is all about.

Some actors will want to change a word here or there, paraphrase the dialogue to allow them easier access to the range of emotions and physical actions that they want to portray, a good director will have them use the text as a guide rather than allowing the actor to make those kinds of changes. Some directors (Woody Allen and Robert Altman are famous for this) will give the actors a senario and have them improvise dialogue with the understanding that the actor know what the structure and emotional weight of the scene is suppsoed to be. But that doesn’t give the actors any more creative power than they had before, it just deemphasises the role of dialogue and ups the emphasis on physical action.

Like I said, it would be easier to show you, but that’s the basic idea.

Few actors actually improvise dialogue entirely, and when they do it is typically because they are working with a director that had a hand in the creation of the script. Like I said in my last post, what happens more than anything is that actors paraphrase lines to create a more personal connection to the material, but good actors don’t have to, and if the script is good even bad actors won’t want to.

37

Like others have said, it depends on the director (amongst other things). The Coens, for example stick EXACTLY to script. Every single word is there for a reason. Stars don’t deviate from the script.

The problem with improvising comes later in the editing room. The main responsibility for the actor is to be consistent from take to take. It makes ADR (dialogue replacement) a pain in the ass later on.

38

Oh, you don’t even have to go to Shakespeare. A common acting class exercise is to count the number of different ways an actor can say, “I love you.”

I got to well over 50 before the teacher made me sit down.

39

I’m always in awe of the way a pro can maintain consistency. It’s struck me sometimes watching one of those blooper shows. The “blooper” actor will be blowing his lines, giggling, whatever, over and over and over, and the actor feeding him his cue will be absolutely on program, delivering the line in exactly the same way, over and over and over.

40

I quite agree that the structure of a story can contribute or determine much of what the dialog is. But I question your premise that dialog does not create structure. Of course it does. In fact, your life is a pretty good example of that. What is said determines in many ways what happens next. LIkewise, what an actor *says *can determine or influence what comes next. I know that movies are not made (usually) by improvisation, but how things play out is in great measure a result of what people say. And in terms of the story, it’s hard for me to believe that the actors have that kind of latitude, which is sometimes implied in movie commentary, and what I was asking about.