Fatasmagoric Florian

Several weeks ago, I saw The Lives of Others. Bloody brilliant. I was riveted to every single scene. And since then, I’ve thought about it every day…

A movie about the horrific and desperate times in the GDR before the Wall fell, it follows the lives of the theater community who are under constant scrutiny by the Stasi. The story revolves around Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a director, his girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), an actress, and the Stasi officer, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), who, as he spies on them, is faced with the harsh reality of what the Stasi is doing to his fellow countrymen.

Given the powerful subject matter, the cinematography maintains a certain distance from the characters – facts without emotion. I mean, damn – there is so much emotion in the content that if there was more in the cinematography it would be too much. There is one shot that I recall distinctly though, which slams you with emotion – Weisler, alone in the attic, and as he listens, the camera just focuses on him. The desolation is dramatic. At that moment, you feel for him – for his sad life, his desperate loneliness, how hard is job is on him emotionally. Ulrich Mühe was exception. Actually, across the board, the acting was phenomenal.

The production design was fabulous and added to the sense of desolation. Everything was bleak – the streets were empty, the trees hardly had leaves and the colors… oh the colors were perfect. Dull greens, no blue and absolutely no red – no vibrancy. All cold solitude. Lots of empty open spaces – even the park was empty with a blustery wind I could feel. Brilliant.

I walked out of the movie feeling a desperate, gut wrenching sadness. So many people, living in a system where there is no one to trust. Torture would be preferable to having your closest loved one spy on you. Think about it – an entire country of people – a life where you could not rely on anyone in the whole world. The most isolating, desperate of situations. Gives me the shivers even now.

Okay, the movie is fabulous – you get that. What blew me away even more was that it was the director’s first-ever feature. First. Ever. Feature. First-ever feature that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Why just restrict it to foreign film – it was probably the best film there! Better than The Departed (yes, I know Martin won for his lifetime of achievements, as I shared here).

Okay, forget the Oscars. I mean, to come up with such a brilliant film as the first-ever feature? Holy crapola!

Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Florian.
I salute you.

I salute you because you followed your dream. Because you switched careers to film and fell in love with it. Because you went to school to hone your raw talent. Because you were moved by an image of a man sitting alone in a bleak room, listening to beautiful music. Because you made a movie with a message. Because you were born the same year that I was.

Because you give me hope. Hope that 34 is young. Hope that career shift can work. Hope that powerful ideas and powerful images can become powerful films. Hope that I too can make a great film (although maybe not the first one!)

I know others have made great first films. But you, Florian, are my generation. I identify with you for so many reason. And I thank you for inspiring me.

Please go on and do many more great things. I will be rooting for you.

What does the audience know?

Two sentences.

1. If the audience knows more than the character, they get emotionally involved with the character.
2. If the audience knows less than the character, they get intellectual about things and try to figure things out.

So simple and stated like this, so obvious. But also so insightful. With just those two sentences, you can figure what you want your audience to know and how much to reveal and when. Another reason I love any class with Mick Casale.

Acting for directors

When I was doing my 12-week Film Intensive at NYU SCPS, one of the things I heard a few times was that to be a good director, you should take an acting class. As I made UNTITLED, I realized that understanding what an actor goes through, how he/she prepares, can help a director in ensuring she gets the best performance from her cast.

Now, I have acted as a child but as I grew into my teens, I veered more towards debate than acting. Primarily because I started to become extremely self-conscious – the surefire way to be unable to act (clearly this was just my issue – both my siblings acted into their teens and both were freaking fabulous at it). So despite the high will, the self-consciousness meant low skill and the nervousness prevented me from really doing what I used to love.

Anyway, back to the present – or rather, back to early 2006. I signed up for another class at NYU’s SCPS, Beginning Acting: The ABCs¹, taught by Kathryn Rossetter – three hours on a weekday evening that I hoped would cure me of my mental block and help me learn more about how “real” actors do their thing.

I still remember the first class so vividly – she asked us each to share an experience that had an impact on us. It could be positive or negative, but it had to have had a big impact on you. I remember sitting in front of the semi-circle of fellow students and sharing my story. And as I did, I started to look inwards, seeing the events happen again. And I started to cry. As the tears welled up, I stopped briefly, held back, got control of myself and kept telling the story.

Each student told his or her story – some happy, some sad, some creepy. Then Kathryn gave us feedback. She pointed out how I had held back, not let the emotions flow. While it had been great that I could reach into my past and find emotion like that, I needed to learn how to go with the flow of that emotion and let it come out – even in front of a group full of complete strangers.

We are all conditioned in our lives to pretend, to not show our emotions. But acting is just the opposite – it is about reaching in and being able to bare your emotions for all to see. Yes, within the constructs of the character, but to bare all. To help lose the inhibitions, Kathryn gave me a little exercise to do – as I walked home, I was to skip, shout and otherwise act like a five year old. In the middle of Manhattan. With people all around me. Er… say what? She insisted that no one would look at me and if they did, they wouldn’t do so for more than a second. To prove her point, she started skipping down the street we were on, singing loudly. No one looked at her. And so, that day, I skipped home. I astounded myself – it was quite liberating.

That was the first class. We progressed from there. I learned how to relax my body – the vehicle that allowed me to act, to recognize where I stored stress and held my body stiff, and to loosen up with out embarrassment in front of my classmates. I learned how to react to words, translating them into images and reactions. She’d say “You’re under a warm shower” and then suddenly switch to “it’s scalding” or “it’s freezing” and we would react to the words as if there were events, all while seated in our chairs. There were a whole host of other exercises we practiced – each geared to loosen us up and just react.

We did impromptu skits and role play exercises. We enacted scenes where one person knows what is going on, but the other person, who was asked to leave the classroom, walks into the situation cold and has to adapt. I learned to make up conversation on the fly based on the character traits I was given. I happily flailed about as a lunatic, entangled myself with a classmate in a simulated make-out session (never fear, he was/is a friend, we were/are both married and we were/are patently disinterested in one another), and learned to draw on my life experiences to enable me to emote.

I loved it. Really loved it. From time to time, I would still hold back, but I was improving every class (even if I do say so myself!). We finished off the course with groups of two enacting scenes from David Auburn’s Proof – a great play that was made into a sub-par movie. Memorizing just a scene was harder than I would have thought, but it was worth it and it was so much fun!

To be clear, I have no illusions that I am an actor. I took a very, very basic course. A tiny baby step compared to what so many aspiring actors go through. Could I be an actor? Possibly, but a lot more training awaits me before I could even think of that. And honestly, that is not my dream.

But this class did help me move towards my goal of losing some of my inhibitions. I am sure I could easily slip into bit, fill-in roles if required. More importantly though, it brought back the fun I had a child – when I didn’t care who was looking.

My dream is to direct and in that regard, this class gave me a better understanding of actors and acting – the immense amounts of training they subject themselves to, the preparation required for any shoot, and the effort involved in doing an emotional scene (if you are drawing on real emotion from your personal life – a scene can wreck you for days).

I will definitely look to take more acting classes in my life – each will be a baby step compared to what a real actor will go through, but I am sure I will enjoy each one and that each one will make me a better director.

I would love your opinion – if you are an actor, do you see a difference in directors who have spent the time to learn more about acting? And if you are a director and you have taken an acting class – how has it helped you?

1. This class was not specifically tailored for aspiring directors. It was a beginners acting class and I thought it would serve the purpose quite nicely. [back]

Like no other

Making a advertisement these days is becoming more and more complex as companies and filmmakers try to make unique ads that stand out and capture the imagination.

Of the latest crop of ads, Sony’s Bravia ads are fabulous in this regard. They are brilliantly executed, the music is perfect and you want to keep watching them over and over. My favorite is the one of the colored balls bouncing their way down the steep streets of my old home town, San Francisco. As one of the ad guys says “This is much more about connecting the people emotionally” – to Sony and tying Sony and color together in our minds. The tag line – Color. Like no other.

What I find even more intriguing is how they made this commercial. If you are like me, and are curious as to what went into the making of this ad, watch the behind the scenes stuff – fascinating and so cool! 23 cameras? Nice! Here’s more from the team:

In an age when CGI is commonplace, this makes the commercial all the more extraordinary. Every single frame was shot over two days – with the main sequence involving a 23-man camera crew and only one chance to get it right.

An entire block was closed off and special compressed-air cannons shot the balls into the air, while earth moving equipment poured thousands down the street. Not that you’d know it from the finished product, but these balls can do some damage, so all the cars were props and crew members went so far as to having protective shields and crash helmets.

But when you get it right, you get it right. The goal at the beginning was to deliver a “really simple, visual celebration of colour”. We think you’ll agree the results speak for themselves.

And if you want to watch their other ad in the series – where they explode paint onto and from a housing complex in Scotland, you can see that here.

_{Found the ads through VSL}