One of the essential skills for a director, even if an amateur one, is the ability to articulate exactly what he/she wants to the cast members so that they are crystal clear with the requirements of a character. For the film I am making, I had been having rehearsals with my cast members for a couple of months now with the objective of ensuring that they are easily able to be in their respective characters when the shoot starts.
While seven out of the eight key characters were pretty much ready to roll, I was struggling with just one character. Maybe I myself wasn't too clear how it must be played or maybe I wasn't communicating it properly but it was one of the roles that was simply not working out. There was "something wrong" every time it was being rehearsed. And the fault was honestly not the actors' but mine since I think I confused him thoroughly with unclear explanations.
Before I left for my holiday, I spent some time to think through the role in further detail and articulate the exact adjectives that could be used to describe this character. I had a meeting with the actor and went through the revised character profile. He seemed to have got what I meant, but we didn't have time to rehearse then.
Today, we had the rehearsal and I am very pleased because the character has finally been cracked. The role came out exactly the way that I had imagined it to and consistently so. Now my entire key cast is ready to go for shoot!
848 more to go.
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