Directing with Action Verbs!
A game to help filmmaking students analyze dramatic scenes and give direction to their actors.
Film production sets are high-pressure environments and you may not think of the best direction to tell your actors under the circumstances. Playing this game provides a framework to help you think on your feet.
PRE-GAME PREPARATION
Leading up to this playtest, the students had read Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television, by Judith Weston – a long-standing formative text on directing actors. The students were well versed at this point in what Weston calls “Action Verbs.” Speaking as an acting coach, Weston explains:
In other words, rather than to direct an actor by telling them the result you want, such as: “You are sad in this scene," you might say something like, “You’re getting dumped by your partner and you love them and you’re trying to persuade them not to leave you.” Sadness may very well be a result, but the playable, actionable direction for the actor could be “to persuade, to plead, or even to belittle.” This way, the actor has possible ways based on the complexity of human behavior to get the scene to the result you want. The game helps students to develop this way of thinking; to see how a scene derives from the different actionable intentions of different characters colliding and intertwining. Leading up to this playtest of the game, the students had also learned how to analyze the dramatic structure of a scene. Specifically, the students had by this point thought a good deal about the “Dramatic Unit.” With origins in Aristotle’s Poetics, the dramatic unit is a conventional principle in drama theory. It provides a way to analyze scenes by centering the following elements:“Actions speak louder than words. Verbs describe what someone is doing, so they are active rather than static; they describe experience rather than a conclusion about experience. Although we can’t decide how to feel, we can decide what to do. This makes the verb something that we are doing, a playable choice and a playable direction. Using action verbs instead of adjectives is a way of approaching the emotional center of a scene in a way that is experiential and playable rather than descriptive and result-oriented.”
- The character’s intention: What they want
- The obstacle: What the character must overcome to get what they want
- The stakes: What are the consequences of whether or not the character will succeed?
- The beat: The moment, or moments, in the scene when the character realizes they need to change their intention because it’s clear that they have gotten what they want or they will not be getting what they want.
To begin the game, students are divided into small groups. In this playtest, there were eight groups of three students. Two of these groups are designated as the "Jury." The other six groups each get twelve cards from the game deck. Each card is one "Action Verb." Next, a scene is screened for all groups to view. The goal of the game is to identify possible action verbs that the film’s director might have used in this scene. Now, the scene may very likely include more than one character, and since the instructor did not tell the students which character to focus on, they need to pay close attention to all the characters. When the scene is over, the instructor asks: "What do you think that the direction was for this actor in the scene?" And the groups discuss which of their twelve action verbs might be most suitable. Sometimes, an action verb is right on the nose but more likely, players must do their best to make it fit – they need to be creative with their interpretation and their language. After deliberation, each group submits one card face down. The judges flip each card over and then discuss out loud what they think. Each judge has a vote, which they signify by placing a chip on the card. Majority wins and in the case of a tie the executive producers decides (i.e. the instructor). Each group now gets one more card to replenish their set back to twelve and they take a moment to collectively decide which six cards to pass on to the group on their left.
The game serves as a bridge between theory and practice – between reading about directing actors and giving actors actionable direction; between reading to learn how to identify all the dramatic elements in a scene to putting the learning in action to direct a scene. Even when players do not win a round, they are engaged in not only the subject of scene analysis but also in expanding their working language around directing. The idea is that nothing is going to go perfectly. Film production sets are high-pressure environments and fledgling directors may not think of the best words to tell their actors under the circumstances. This play-based framework helps them practice thinking on their feet.
Table of Contents (also available on this window's upper left corner):
1. Introduction
2. The Film Directing Game
3. Future Tripping Machine
4. Directing with Action Verbs!
5. ideaDECK
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