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One of the things that made it an immensely valuable time was that you couldn’t do that and discount what was going on in the rest of the world. We were fol- lowing the Nine O’Clock News and wanted our work to be seen as important, as challenging, as relevant as the programme that had just preceded us. We want- ed people to have the same kind of critical attitude to what we were doing.
So you had to discuss what was going on in the world, you had to take a position on it. It was informing what the writers were writing. It was central to the whole enterprise. Any group of people in any production team that are engaged in turning out contemporary work must engage with what’s going on in the world. And what strikes me when I see a lot of work today, particularly on television, is that the people are living in a bubble. They are not making those connections which should be central to the quality of the work.
I’ve a feeling that muscularity of writing has gone. Or if it’s there, I don’t find it very often. The result is much weaker, tamer, watery kind of writing and watery kind of productions and I think we have to rediscover it somehow, though I don’t know how.
...What is acting? This is some- thing that has really absorbed me for a long time and the people I’ve worked with. When we began, television acting was very
much from the theatre, the sets were made as television sets and the cameras pointed at them. The performances were rehearsed and they were played and they were shot and I found that this was really not working. I found that very often the best performances came at the read- through. You’d think, ‘that’s good, that person’s really caught it. Then I’d get to work in my kind of leaden way and we’d plot it on the set, we’d mark it out with tape and after three weeks it was terrible, it was predictable, it was second hand, all the feelings that they had had been trodden out of them and it was leaden.
I tried to imagine what kind of performances one would want to see, and it was people in front of the camera who were as authen- tic as if you were making a docu- mentary. You would see by the cut of their hair, by how they stood, by the texture of their skin, by their teeth, by whatever, who they were. They would have a three dimensional presence.
To try to find that, to create that really, has been, I suppose, a life-long pursuit and it’s had cer- tain consequences. First of all, you have to find people who, when you see them, really give you something. You try and find something in common with them, and the notion that ‘I’m an actor, I can play everything’, is one that I don’t generally subscribe to. I know there may well be people here who disagree very vehe-
mently with that, that’s fair enough, but I think we have to draw a distinction between act- ing in the theatre and acting in the cinema.
When acting in the theatre, the actor has to imagine the whole part, has to construct the mechanism for the part, work out the motivations, the triggers, the high points and low parts, has to moderate at certain times because there’s a high point coming up. It’s an absolutely conscious process, where the arc of the performance is worked out in rehearsal.
I think film acting is quite differ- ent to this. It’s a series of moments where you have to play the absolute truth of the moment and the camera sees the actor making that conscious leap. The camera sees the actor making a judgement about the role, about
the person in the scene, about his or her own character and the consequence of that is often the moment of acting that’s most successful, and a surprise.
It’s gut instinct when the per- son in front of the camera just responds as they would do if the thing was actually happening. That, I think, is the way that we have tried to steer our films.
The David Lean Lecture on
January 28 was produced by BAFTA in association with Anthony Reeves and The David Lean Foundation
”
the school of sound
London
A unique symposium exploring the creative use of sound with the moving image
Proposed speakers include:
Susanne Abbuehl Dede Allen
Gustavo Costantini
Dogme sound team
Nigel Helyer Isaac Julien
Ren Klyce
Jerzy Kucia Richard Leacock Skip Lievsay François Musy Sally Potter
23-26
April
2003
If you work in film, TV, commercials or multimedia, you will find this forum an inspiration for new and innovative work
For information or to join our mailing list, send an e-mail to sos@schoolofsound.co.uk, phone +44 (0)20 7724 6616, or visit www.schoolofsound.co.uk
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PHOTO: SYLVAINE POITAU