Raindance: Directing Masterclass with Ate De Jong

• 
  Directing Masterclass with Ate De Jong
  Time: 5:30 pmJoin us for a masterclass on directing, featuring examples from Love.Honour.Obey. Cult movie director Ate De Jong will be talking about working with actors as well as the camera, and how he, as a director, navigates and imagines his way around a script before, during and after a shoot.
  

The only thing that counts is you, and the only thing you can do is do it!

Make all the mistakes that you have to make

Everybody can make a film but not everybody can make a good film

If you want to make a film – DO IT

You have to have the desire to communicate with your audience

You have to want to tell something whether its personal, political or anything.

Two major elements in film making

1.     working with other people (actors, crew, distributors etc)

2.     mastering your tools – know what a camera can do, what is it capable of doing.

Working with people is so dependent on working with specific people.

If you work on a set particularly with actors, and they want to be an asshole, don’t take it personally. Let them be an asshole if its going to make the film better.

Psychology is very important. People get tired on the set it can be very stressful.

Its so important what a writer puts on a page – he needs to be very specific

Danger of writing…

As a writer you need to be extremely careful with the stage direction grammer.

Question marks and... 

Action in a script is for example writing the door, not dialogue.

Writing action….

‘the room is empty and then the door opens’ different from ‘everything in the room is covered with dust for the last 20 years,’ which is different to ‘the clock is clicking and then the door opens’.

-       take an article, a quote or sentence from a report. Re-write it in 5 different ways. The mind is provoked with 5 different images.

The choices of words….

Miami Vice:

What happens when you have a perfect set with a perfect script. James brown is the guest actor – but his reading is terrible

A great script is only the start and you get other elements, but it doesn’t always work out.

Drop Dead Fred:

Ultimately if the camera isn’t in the right position, you don’t tell the story in the best possible way

In this scene you have to see that mickey is still in love with Elizabeth

We see fred but mickey doesn’t see fred

You have to keep the same shot position of where fred is in the shot, as where fred isn’t in the shot.

If you’re a film maker, the choice of your shot will tell more about the content of your story

Its totally going to make your view and your vision of the story.

Another example of camera use in drop dead fred

(the power of the camera where the director steps in)

The issue that we had to solve, was that every child has his own imaginery friend, but nobody can see other imaginary friends other than himself. The way to do it is you……

Show all the imaginary friends in a wide angle all together. Then to show the audience that each kid is imagining their friend dancing around, the camera would zoom into the face of one of the kids, then show only one of the imaginary friends dancing around on his own. The camera would then zoom into another kid, and then show his imaginary friend dancing on his own.

-       it is difficult to describe how this would be done in the script and that’s where the director is so important.

Feature film - the director is the star

Tv - the writer is the star

Miami Vice:

(add picture of main characters walking together)

To show unrest: the camera always moves. The camera tracks in front of them is not by accident, its called ‘walk and talk’ indicates that they have both come to a descicion, Dom has made a decision that (the other actor) doesn’t necessarily agree with but they are now ‘on a mission’

A different camera shot i.e from behind them walking, say if they were walking from a building to their car, would show a different atmosphere that they would be lost and not come to a conclusion.

German film scene:

(add picture of woman walking around in her house)

Simple scene – german woman speaking, testing her senses, watering flowers, smelling dust, and camera reveals the woman is speaking to a camera, obviously she is going to die and is leaving a message to someone – her kids. we know this through the camera not through the dialogue.

If you do it right, you should be able to tell the story through the camera. Dialogue is not always heard. It doesn’t penetrate as strongly as the visual. Dialogue reveals sub text and…..

Sound quality is not that important, its dependant on the quality of the dialogue, having sad that the dialogue is supporting other information through the images.

Highway To Hell: difficulties of shooting a scene.

(add picture of beatles in the scene)

All beatle cars – not an accident, purposely all beatles driving because they are German, because their going to hell.

The city through the wall is a matte painting

The trained dog didn’t wee on the shot, so they had to have a wire off frame behind the dog so it looked like he was weeing.

Make up on the black guys eyes took 3 hours

The boat on the river had to be accompanied by a safety boat for health and safety reasons which took an hour n a half for a simple shot.

A trailer doesn’t need to be a reflection of the film

Process with working with the actors

Action: actors are moving set pieces

Practice exercises in rehursals: explore all the different possibilities

Lets pretend this dramatic scene where you don’t know what happened but use the same dialogue but just flirt

Try another version where one of the character has something but they don’t know how to say it.

Sometimes blind fold one of the actors and have the other actor walking around. Even if the blind folded actor is supposed to have power, explore the tension.

Another exercise: with (the dutch singer/actor) Ate gave the actor a ping pong bat whilst delivering an emotional speech and it made him deliver his speech much much better.

Key element for directing?

Above everything – communicating with the audience

Desire

Working with other people

Psychology

Knowing how to use film tools

Organization

Blocking?

Depends on the actor – try to work with the actors, give them the general set up, if your lucky you can explain in a psychological way how to show an actor how you want them positioned – it has to be right for the character. The technique has to support the character.

What next for Ate?

Very provocative edgy films aren’t being made enough – will team up with randance to produce.