Directing actors is the hardest thing faced by both beginning and experienced directors.
Filmmaking hardware like cameras, lenses, and editing machines do what they are told. Actors have minds of their own, often making directors’ lives miserable.
Here is an inspired and insightful must-read for directors at all levels of their craft, based on the extensive experiences of veteran Director John Badham, along with no-holds-barred, out-of-school tales from such celebrated directors and actors as Sydney Pollock, Michael Mann, John Frankenheimer, Mel Gibson, James Woods, Jenna Elfman, and many more.
Beneath the entertaining and instructive war stories lies the truth: how directors elicit the best performances from difficult and terrified actors. You’ll learn how to use proven techniques to help actors give their best performances, including the ten best and ten worst things to say and what you can do when an actor won’t or can’t do what the director wants. It’s all here, put into print by a renowned director with stories to tell and lessons to impart.
John Badham, BA, MFA Yale University, DHL Columbia College, is a director and producer of theatrical films and television including Saturday Night Fever, WarGames, Short Circuit, Blue Thunder, Heroes, Criminal Minds, The Shield, Nikita, and Psych.
The Library of Congress recently selected Saturday Night Fever to be added to the National Registry of Films. Badham’s book I’ll Be In My Trailer, the Creative Wars Between Directors and Actors is used as a textbook in film schools worldwide.
His films have been nominated for five Academy Awards and two Emmy Awards. He has won three Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the Grand Prize from the Paris International Science Fiction Festival.
His areas of expertise are working with actors, action, suspense and fantasy films. As Dodge Professor of Film and Media at Chapman University, he teaches intermediate and advanced directing.
Craig Modderno is an actor and writer, known for The Graduate: One on One with Dustin Hoffman (1992), Love Wrecked (2005) and The Great White Hype (1996).
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