DGA Monthly

2 8 I D G A M O N T H L Y The DGA's Visual History Program is an endeavor designed to explore the art and craft of the Director and the Director's team via peer-to-peer interviews with other Directors, Assistant Directors, Unit Production Managers, Associate Directors and Stage Managers. Created in 2000 by the Special Projects Committee and consisting of more than 230 videotaped interviews, the Visual History Program serves as an invaluable teaching source for those curious about the craft, a preservation of the professional wisdom of DGA members, and a unique repository for Guild history. The interviews, which last between three and eight hours, emphasize reflective and collegial discussions about all aspects of the creative process in film, television and other media. Visual History interviews are accessible to all Guild members as well as to the general public on the DGA website. The Visual History database is fully searchable by topic, and each interview is indexed, allowing for quick retrieval of segments pertaining to specific interests and topics, either within a particular interview or across the entire collection. Featured here are a few excerpts dealing with Rehearsals. Perspectives on Rehearsals from the Visual History Program Archives View more excerpts and interviews in the Visual History Collection via the link on the homepage of www.dga.org. Assistant Director Frank Capra Jr. on his father's on-set rehearsal practices: "He would rehearse. He liked a very quiet set. And so his Assistant Directors, like Buddy Coleman and Art Black, they [would say], 'Everybody sit down. No work? Sit down. Okay? You can't do that? Off the stage!' And then he'd work with his Actors, block and then rehearse. The cameraman is watching, but not doing anything. And then, 'Okay. You guys have the set. You do your...' And of course the stand-ins have already watched too. And that's the way he liked to work. And then when it was lit, the Actors would come back in. He would maybe do one rehearsal, just to make sure everybody was okay. And then he would start shooting." Director Sidney Lumet on the importance of rehearsals in pulling more from his Actors: "What happens is — and this is invariably true — the lucky accident. It's ten times more liable to happen when you know what you're doing than when you don't. Knowing where you are, where the character is at that point in the screenplay — what's driving the character — is irreplaceable. The result is, when you know that, you are much more relaxed. One of the biggest things you get in rehearsal is you're going over the whole thing, in sequence, all the time. Just around the table we'll cover the script three to four times straight through in sequence, so you know exactly where you are. An internal relaxation happens then for the Actor. And when that relaxation happens, they are really open to whatever the moment is. Nothing seems to throw you once you know what you're doing." Director Mira Nair on casting inexperienced actors through rehearsals for Salaam Bombay: "We went back to Bombay and befriended a gang of kids. And then we had a workshop with 130 street kids in a church in the middle downtown Bombay, of which I whittled it down to 24 in the first week. We had like a six- week workshop in which we improvised and danced and did yoga and debated about life as a street child, then finally brought the screenplay into this workshop in about the third week. I would get to know who could play what. We brought the cameras in, in the last week and sort of created a film set, so that we'd see who could keep the pressure. It was all cast from the streets with a few now legendary, but then beginning film Actors." Director Agnes Varda on shaping her Actor for the lead role in Vagabond: "She had to feel loneliness, you know? She was on beautiful terms with the crew; they had dinner together, but I kept her like this outcast. I made her put her shoes on 10 times. I sent her in the woods with another girl. I said, 'Okay, you spend the night in the woods with a sleeping bag. Do your fire; eat what you want. Feel what is the night when you're outside. Listen to the noises. Now walk. Now you have to understand the noise of your feet. What is it? Was it stone? Was it... You should be blind? You should understand your feet.' So I said things like this. 'Be brisk when you take your bag, put your backpack. Get it on. Do it again. Do it that way and do it one side and brisk.'"

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