In the movies, you will see children doing things like cussing, smoking or standing around naked adults. Are these children given any special preparation or are they considered to be actors and will do whatever the script says? Also, at least with respect to the nude scenes, how do the adults keep the ick factor down?
If this should be in GQ, move it please.
SSG Schwartz
Mostly by the editor.
The kid who played Danny in Kubrick’s The Shining, had no idea he was making a horror movie.
Basically this varies from production to production. But they don’t have to ‘do’ quite a bit of the adult stuff.
It depends on the child’s maturity, their contract, their parents, etc. In movies like Birth and The Door in the Floor, it is made to look as if the child is seeing a naked adult. However, their scenes were filmed on different days when they were not together on the set (though each actor speaks to the other as if that other person were really there), and it is put together later.
In a film like The Missing, the director tried to prepare the younger actress for a tough scene, but she said it was just a movie, they were just acting, etc., so it wasn’t as if she was traumatized.
In the original The Shining, the young boy playing Danny said many years later that he had learned only bits and pieces of the script and was kept in the dark as to what it was all about. Very young actors wouldn’t read a whole script anyway, in most cases. They don’t need to and it would very likely bore them.
I heard an interesting interview on the BBC about this recently. The director of a TV drama with a variety of adult themes (along the lines you described) said that their main approach was to talk to the children and explain that it was all pretend. He mentioned a scene where the parents were screaming abuse at each other whilst the child looked on and said how they prepared the child and then how, between takes, the child was perfectly able to see that the people didn’t hate each other but were acting. The children in question were between 5 and 10 years old, from memory.
It makes sense when you think about it, cos kids play pretend all the time and seem perfectly able to cope.
Mind you, if your point is more about whether they should be exposed to nudity, swearing, etc. at all, then that goes deeper. I’m sure there are regulations on this but would imagine if it’s integral to the scene then there wouldn’t be a problem provided the parents allowed it.
You have to wonder how Brooke Shields was prepared for “Pretty Baby.” That said, acting in the movie as a child does not appear to have done her much harm – she seems to be one of our more level-headed actresses.
The child actress in Bastard Out of Carolina is brutally raped by her mother’s boyfriend. It’s a very hard scene to watch and I can only imagine how they got her through it.
I was watching a bio on Jodie Foster. She says during the pinball machine rape scene in The Accused, she remembers the director yelling action, and then cut, but she doesn’t remember anything in between. She says the male actors who portrayed her rapists were so traumatized she had to play “mother” to them afterward and make sure they were okay.
That old yarn always stretched my credulity a bit. In several scenes he was either being chased by an insane Jack Nicholson, or was doing something creepy himself (screaming “Redrum!”). Perhaps (c.f. the bathroom “Here’s Johnny!” scene) he was never around when Nicholson was going batshit, just seemed that way via expert editing.
No, I have no opinion on if it should be done. I am only interested in how it is done.
SSG Schwartz
This movie was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title. I felt sorry for Jena Malone and Ron Eldard for being the actors that had to portray the rape scene. Acting can be a very emotionally tough profession.
Just to nitpick the phrasing - the CHARACTER was brutally raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The way it’s phrased here, it sounds like the actress herself was raped on screen.
While it is, I admit, possible the actress was, herself, a rape victim (though I certainly hope not), that wasn’t what you were watching on the screen when you watched Bastard Out of Carolina.
Okay, how does “The child actress in *Bastard Out of Carolina *was involved in a brutal rape scene by the actor who played her mother’s boyfriend” sound?
I think everybody here knew what I meant. The point is, it was a very traumatic realistic scene and I don’t know how they got the girl through it, unless she’s an experienced professional. I don’t know that much about her.
I haven’t sen the movie being cited, but how much of the scene is in one continuous cut? You can really do a lot with a skilled editor and the human imagination.
It seems this board is a magnet for language nitpickers. They drive me berserkers.
But good call on Bastard Out of Carolina. The scene makes me cry every time I see it.
Not only that, but special effects techniques have allowed movie makers to insert characters into scenes they never even saw. Every movie which has a single actor playing simultaneous multiple on-screen roles does this seamlessly.
Now and Then has a scene where the four leading actresses (all teenage girls) come across their nemesises, the Wormer brothers (teen & pre-teen boys), skinnydipping. They then proceed to steal their clothes and the boys are forced to chase them through the woods to get them back. The girls were never present onsite at the same time the boys were. Of course the young actors still had to deal with a female directer, a largely female crew, and a few of their mothers while wearing nothing but flesh-colored socks. :o It’s become very rare (at least in American films) for minors to due actual nude scenes even though it’s not illegal.
Do you mean Bastard Out of Carolina?
The scene was in a car with the girl sitting on the actors lap. The camera was on both of their faces together as they both had to move and react to the situation. While there were changes to the scene I don’t think the editor had to do much with it. It was the emotional drama of the looks on their faces, especially the girl’s that made it so horrifying to watch.
I know that in “Pet Sematary”, the young actor was replaced with a mechanical doll when he went on his murder rampage.
Keep in mind, too, that children may have limited or different concepts of what things like rape actually mean. You tell the kid they’re supposed to act afraid or hurt or whatever, and they can do that (that’s why they’re in the movie) without necessarily understanding what the bad person is theoretically doing to them.
Jena Malone was 12 when she filmed that scene; still a child, but I’m sure she knew what rape was.
Still, such scenes can be made to look at lot more graphic and horrible than they really are. You can play a lot of tricks with a camera.