20.4. ACTING FOR CAMERA

Lights pointed to the ceiling to reflect light to actors faces in a natural way.

   Sophia's and Sav's scene was from 'Girl, Interrupted', which is about a young woman who is put into a treatment center for mentally ill, in the 60's. The scene is located in cellar/storage room, so the old canteen at the college was perfect for this shoot. It was full old furniture, pieces of wood and other debris creating a disorganized look. This also created challenges for the scene, since we had to work around filming these objects and film in thigh areas. It meant, that we had to take many shots; shots that were often just small parts of the entire scene. So, we were asked to answer this question on our blogs: What challenges a scene that has many shots, and is bitty, brings to the actor?
   Acting for camera is different from acting on stage, and it isn't only because of the style of acting, place or audience where the difference lies. On the stage, the actor does the scenes in order, not having to interrupt the acting process or being in character. This is different in film acting. You are taking shots from different angles, multiple times. Sometimes you only pick up to a certain part or do a shot that only need a short section of the conversation to be recorded. This means the actor has to know exactly what the emotions and actions in that particular part is, since there is no build up to it, as there would in an ongoing scene. This requires a huge amount of focus, but also knowing your lines and actions perfectly, to be able to pick up at any point, staying consistent to the other shots. The actor also has to take inconsideration how the place of the camera changes between shots, because you still need to cheat to the camera, but do it in a believable way so that it fools the audience to think you were doing the exact same thing in the same exact position as before.

Shooting in a tight place between two shelves. 

    What was special about this shoot for us, was that it was done handheld, meaning the camera was actually held by the cameraman(in this case, Chloe, who did an amazing job) instead of an tripod. We did this simply because we needed a moving shot of Sav coming in, and since one shot handheld all of them had to be so to stay consistent.