Bear in mind that the emotional component that’s so overwhelming in the final cut, is virtually absent on set. If you’ve ever seen a movie scene being shot, you know it bears little resemblance to what you see on the screen.
I knew a guy who played a priest in a Lifetime movie once. There was a scene where the little girl came into the church to deal with being sexually abused by some family member and the priest basically told her that she was a bad person and it was all her fault. He said that his dialogue and her reaction shots were done separately. She came on first and the director told her there was a monster that was chasing her to get her to look horrified and guilty. Then she left and Guy I Knew came on and said his lines while looking at a yardstick that was placed where the little girl was seated.
IIRC, the director twisted Brooke Shield’s big toe to get her to make an “orgasm” face for Endless Love. I’m willing to bet that the director took a similar approach to Bastard Out Of Carolina.
I remember a scene in a living room of a house. First he beat her, then he threw her down on the floor.
That’s a movie I can’t really sit through, so I only got bits and pieces of it.
I haven’t seen it in a long time, but the Australian movie Rabbit-Proof Fence had some bits in the “making of” vignette about preparing the child actors for a horrifying scene in which some Aborigine girls were physically ripped away from their mother.
Since the actors were actually Aborigine and they already knew about this part in their culture’s history, they couldn’t really be kept in the dark about what was happening. But, at the same time, they were actually mature enough to realize the importance of making this movie. So, they just had to have a lot of hugs and kisses before, during and after the scene and a lot of dialogue with their mom and other people on the set about how to deal with it.
Terrific movie, btw.
You have to remember that the filmed scene is often the umpteenth take, and that the actors have no doubt rehearsed it before. Plus, while it looks like a bedroom or hotel corridor to you, in reality the actor or actress can see the end of the set, and the cameramen, and the director, and the lighting guys, and his or her parents, so I don’t think any kid gets confused about this kind of thing.
I haven’t seen the Bastard out of Carolina movie - was it one uncut scene? If not, it is possible it was broken up as the camera moved, and the scene wasn’t even shot in sequence. As for the Shining, perhaps Nicholson had kidded around with the kid just before the take, so the fear factor was reduced. I’ve seen kids switch from kidding around to their character instantaneously. I think adults think through a role a lot more than kids do.
A more serious problem is hazardous stuff. A friend shot a Daniel Stern movie which was mostly done on location in a park, and was shot a lot later in the year than the movie was set. The kids got really cold, and some scenes involved them in water. They had to be dried off and warmed up almost immediately. His mother said everyone was miserable all the time. The movie was a bomb also.
My daughter had to eat lobster for a scene, during a period when she was a vegetarian. She did it, but they had stuff ready to let her rinse out her mouth.
Kids are surprisingly resilient. They also snap into character very fast – they understand playing “makebelieve” pretty well. Younger kids can be more difficult to work with. Some directors are very crafty. They will plan their shots in such a way that they will get reaction shots from the young kids, get coverage, all that… and then get the close-ups (close-up, oneshot, twoshot, whatever… or do it in whatever order) --the point being that they will pull the small kids away for the intense language-nasties or physically violent/possibly traumatic bits needing to be filmed. Scenes are never shot in sequence . 
Theatre is a different matter. There, we tend to cast older kids who look younger than they are. We also hire social workers and/or mental health specialists to make sure the kids are okay, both in theatre and screen work, if necessary. There are also union rules at play.
Couldn’t have the props people prepared some kind of faux-lobster meat made out of non-animal products? I wouldn’t think the cost of doing that would’ve been too much of a budget-buster.
Brooke Sheilds was off-camera, having her big toe twisted?
I doubt it. Jena Malone is a good little actress, and Bone wasn’t having an orgasm. She was being raped and the look on her face was sheer terror.
I think you’re right, that sometimes it’s the people playing the “bad” part that are more affected by the scene.
I am in an acting class with me and six guys. (That’s just how it turned out; it wasn’t planned that way.) A few weeks ago we were doing a scene when one of them made an extremely vulgar sexual gesture to me as part of the scene. It was funny and it totally worked, but afterward he and several others (at different times) came up to me and apologized profusely for possibly having offended me. Which they didn’t at all, it was hilarious and would have brought down the house if it were in a show, but they all felt really bad about it. Not me though!
I just filmed a video yesterday and even with adults they film everything so out of order that if you didn’t know what the story was, you’d never figure it out. People talking to emptiness, people going into rooms that are going to be different rooms on screen, people who weren’t in a room together who are going to be after editing. It’s really fascinating to watch .
I wasn’t there of course but they could have edited all that together.
They tell the kid, Hey we’re gonna play hide and seek in this hedge! And they make it a game but tell him he’s supposed to pretend to be scared. They could have been playing carnival music during it, they could have been stopping every 20 seconds and telling jokes, etc. And then later on they film crazy Jack and add in the scary music and the screaming. The kid might never have seen or heard any of that.
This show was filmed on location in New Jersey. I doubt they could have come up with something realistic enough (it was a big lobster - that was part of the gag. It was okay - she learned she had to suffer for her art (and her paycheck.)
Technology’s amazing, isn’t it? They can do anything these days. I mean, Anthony Hopkins was replaced with a mechanical doll years ago, and nobody seems to have noticed.
No, but it’s a time buster. And you can find a child who won’t complain and cast accordingly. So most child actors will just suck it up and “suffer for their art” 
Seriously though – if you had to bend to every actor’s whim, you’d never get anything done… especially if you already have to contend with the leads’ quirks, half the time! (You also have to think about the fact that not all directors are like “Two Takes Frakes” – some will shoot and reshoot the same damned thing from a gazillion angles, plus coverage and making 30 damned fake lobsters for a gag just wouldn’t be feasible… )
Aaaah, the fun, the fun…
To be honest, most child actors are pros at what they do. They’re well rehearsed, well coached, and true pros. Their parents sometimes are fit to be tied (stage parents drive me nuts) and the kids can be over-managed and over-worked and downright abused if you ask me… but on the set? They’re consummate professionals. They get the job done from “action” to “cut”.
“Can you hear it, Clarise? The squeaking of my cams?”
<snerk>
I never saw a kid complain on the set. And she was an established character. However, her partner bad guy, in the first show they shot, was a real pain in the ass about showing up on the set and learning lines - so my daughter picked up most of his. He would up getting fired, though he had a perfect look.
A bunch of the shots in one of these shows were done at night, so the actors went to school all day and then had to start working. Lots of stuff violated union rules, but in the East SAG might as well not be there. But I’m in awe of most kid actors. One, who is now very well known, had to do a scene at about 12:30 am when she was about 10 years old. She was the very image of a kid about to lose it through tiredness, bugging the crew and looking to be on the edge of a tantrum. But when the cameras were rolling, she was right there, and did it perfectly. Kids who had it could turn on and go into acting mode.
I never ran into any obnoxious parents on the set. In agents’ offices, plenty. For those who haven’t done it, kids always audition without parents present, so it is easy to tell who wants to do it and who doesn’t.
In fact, more parents seem to knuckle under than make trouble. Our manager told us to never sign a contract without calling him first. In one shoot he negotiated a lot of extra travel money, which the other parents signed away.