Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1097515
32 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: KEVIN SCANLON the scene, where they are in the story and where they are in the world. And every actor is different. So figuring out how to key into each one of them psychologically, especially when you're going into a big scene—somebody dies, somebody's born, somebody falls in love—there's always a lot of trepidation on the part of the actors. And if the tech starts to get in the way and slow things down and become cumbersome, there's a moment where everything needs to just go away and you just need to be with them. F: As an actor, what I learned is most useful to me—because a lot of times [shooting is] out of sequence or certainly it's not in real time because you're filming it over a month, two months or whatever it is—I always found that the best direction for me, at least as a starting point, is giving me my frame of reference, reminding me what happened in the scene before. If we didn't shoot it yet, reminding me what we discussed over dinner or in rehearsal. To calibrate me so that I know what energy to bring in so that I'm fitting into the context. And so often my direction, when I talk to an actor, will be, "OK, remember this scene?" It's like tuning their guitar. C: It's the emotional continuity. And we just spent the last year and a half capturing Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, two close-to-three- hour movies, at the same time. So on Tues- day, we do a scene from Avatar 3. And on Wednesday, we do a scene from Avatar 2. And there were similar scenes in both movies. They weren't straight repeats but they were touchstones in movie 3 to movie 2, and there were some similar moments. And, man, I'd get confused, I'd have to do my homework ahead of time. So all right, this is where we're coming out, this is what we did, this is what it resonates with before. This is what we're setting up for after. But you can't act what you haven't experi- enced yet, so blank that out, you know. And I just sit with the cast and just not be in a hurry no matter how much pressure there is. Let them kind of stumble into it, start to feel it. I've found my cast particularly really loves what I call a two-fer or even a three- fer, where it's just like, "All right, let's just reset, do the whole scene again." And they just love that because once you get to that emotional peak, you may be too primed for the early part of the scene. But man, you're right there in the sweet spot when you get to the back part of the scene. To me, that's where all the really fun discoveries happen. And that's true in live-action work or mo- cap. To me, that doesn't change. That's just a human processing thing between actors. But I love that part. To me, that's as much fun as the visual splendor. F: I agree. It does require a certain amount of compartmentalization to be able to de- construct the filmmaking process. C: When actors are coming in to perform capture for the first time, they have a certain trepidation that it's a highly techni- cal experience that will work against them. And I say, "Look, if I'm on a live-action set, I'm thinking about you. But I'm also think- ing about the light, I'm thinking about the lighting cue that's got to happen for that, I'm thinking about the extras in the back- ground, that waiter is coming in late, he's going to ruin your best take..." F: Yeah. C: And I'm looking at 50 other things. What if I can take all of that out of my conscious- ness and just focus on what you're doing? And we did it. You know, Sam (Worthington) and Zoe (Saldana), they'd come over; they'd be glued to that reference shot. They want to make sure the emotion is there. They want to make sure that they stuck the landing in the scene. And everybody all grouped around the reference camera monitor. Directors' Teams in the Tech Age C: I put a lot more responsibility on my ADs now. I used to just kind of charge in and do everything and make it all happen. I don't do that anymore. I really rely on my AD team to precook everything and get it all set up and do drive-arounds. Maria Battle-Campbell has worked with me now so long she'll even do rehearsals, if it's more of a straightforward thing. I don't mean performance, but if we're doing some kind of straightforward action thing, she'll actually rehearse. And I'll say, "Call me when you've got it working," because there are sometimes glitches or alignment issues and all that. So I let her kind of do that and it really requires such a deep knowledge. I don't think anybody knows more about this specific type of thing we're doing on Avatar, with the underwater stuff and all the motion-capture stuff, than Maria. F: I came into this learning from being on sets [as] an actor mostly. From the begin- ning, the AD was an important position for me, and UPM, because they're there to help guide you in areas you don't have experi- ence in. And so you seek out people who are much more experienced than you to help you look like you know what you're doing, whether it's little pointers like change your socks at lunch or the big things like understanding the interface between each department and making sure everybody's getting to do their job properly, and every- body's communicating well and keeping the set safe and in a good spirit. And right now, my 1st AD, Kim Richards, was a trainee on Jungle Book who then got into the Guild and, because she had knowl- edge of the workflow of motion-capture vol- ume, had been on our whatever you want to call what we did on Jungle Book, hybrid live action, but on a volume so you're still calling the cadence out on motion capture, which is different because now you're not just interfacing with a crew but you're also interfacing with a whole technical staff. C: The brain bar... "A lot of people think there's humanist filmmaking and then there's technological filmmak- ing. I maintain it's all one thing. It should always be one thing."