Tom Reilly: ‘Blocking in overlooked and undervalued’
The perspectives Tom Reilly shares within this chapter certainly are rather contentious, and while in large part I agree with what he’s saying, I do feel he is overly dismissive of the collaborative possibilities of involving actors in the construction of a scene. While I one hundred percent agree that a Director should be intensely aware of blocking and spatial dynamics within the scene they’re filming, I do feel that Reilly’s suggestion that ‘actors should act; directors should block scenes’ is extremely dismissive of the creative importance of an actors involvement in the character they’re portraying. The absolute nature of Reilly’s assertions is the part I find the most troublesome, as I find it extremely difficult to believe that there could ever be a ‘one size fits all’ for how to construct a scene. To suggest that the ‘correct’ way to block a scene is to completely remove the actors involvement in the process, is I think unnecessarily dismissive.
However, as I’ve already mentioned, I do agree that a director should have a very firm grasp of their scenes blocking (though I do take issue with the assertion that most directors devise a scene’s coverage on the day of shooting – that sounds like an absolute nightmare as a DP). Often I’ve found it makes my job working in camera and lighting extremely difficult when a Director doesn’t seem to be able to clearly communicate the intended blocking of a scene, or worse yet is happy to allow the scene to unfold ‘naturally’ and allow the actors to find the blocking as they go along. From an efficacy standpoint it is highly problematic when a director takes this approach, especially for camera and lighting. For instance if you begin shooting a scene and an actor is given free reign of the set, there’s definitely a higher margin of error for a lot of elements – but especially in regards to focus, framing and lighting. As Reilly briefly mentions in the chapter, if the blocking is not firmly established prior to shooting, you could find yourself in a situation where an actor moves somewhere where the lighting or framing is less than ideal – an issue which becomes even worse if the performance is spot on for that particular shot and all of a sudden that’s the one the director wants to use, despite shortcomings in other areas. So while I can’t wholly endorse what Reilly is saying, it certainly would make my life easier if more Directors heeded his advice to have a clear concept of a scenes blocking prior to filming it (though perhaps with earlier pre-thought than simply in the morning of that shoot day).