Select from one of the readings from week 1 or 2 and briefly describe two points that you have taken from that reading. Points that excite you, something that was completely new to you.  

Not being very familiar with directing, Slogans for the Screenwriter’s Wall introduced completely new ideas to me. What was most intriguing about it was the deconstruction of the Director/Actor relationship.

What really struck me is how much attention a Director must pay to an actor, in particular their body language and facial expressions, to achieve a vision of a character. I particularly enjoyed the short section on the biology of the human eye, and how it translates into expression right down to the minute movements of the pupil that indicate thought or stimulation.

The most interesting – and somewhat amusing – part of the chapter for me was the emphasis Mackendrick put on the subtle ways a Director must, in short, manipulate an Actor to get them to achieve the same vision that the Director had from the start, without directly instructing them to do so, “How does the director get an actor to do what he wants?…’You don’t. What you do is try to get the actor to want what you need.’” (p. 190).

I fully understand the logic behind this though as a path to coax an actor into performing a substantiated and hence more naturalistic performance, as opposed to ‘say it like this’ or ‘move in this direction at this point’. I look forward to applying these skills on a shoot this semester.