HOW ACTING CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER DIRECTOR

Back in the days of VHS and late night horror on TV, when I was about 15 years old, one of the rare pleasures I had was staying over at my friends house, who had Cable TV and access to a whole host of rarities that would never, ever air on the 4/5 terrestrial channels most of us in the UK had. On one of these nights we watched a film that I had no idea what it was, a slasher horror set in supermarket that was fairly interesting and fun, yet the main thing that baffled me about it and made it stick in my mind was that one of the actors in it was 'Sam Raimi' the DIRECTOR of Evil Dead.

The film I later discovered went by several names, which made actually finding it again pretty tough. I eventually found it under the title Intruder (although it did go by Night Crew : The Final Checkout in the US for a while) and was always confused about why Raimi had turned up, outside of that his actors profile was pretty sparse (mainly reduced to cameos) and it just always stood out to me as odd. Years later the Evil Dead Trilogy finally came to DVD and on it was a very entertaining tit bit of information about 'The Intruder' via its special features. Raimi talked about how he wanted to get more experience as a Director by being on the other side of the camera to put himself in his actors shoes.

It was something that, to me at least, made perfect sense. What better way to understand what it was like to be an actor than to be an actor? I had done some acting for other peoples projects when I was young, simply because I was there and available and, most importantly... Free! Because of this, I knew that it would fairly easy for me to gain some more experience as an actor simply due to the fact that I work around other filmmakers all the time and as a result I ended up with, what I call, an 'Accidental Actors Resume' in order to gain more of an insight into what actors go through on set.

Here are the 3 things that I learned whilst acting in other peoples movies and how they helped me grow as a Director.

1. ACTING IS THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE ON A FILM SET

On set of Vampire film HUSH (2011)

My love has always been for Directing (or more accurately filmmaking), but that and most other production jobs come with a bucket load of stress. The one job that I always find breaks this rule is being an actor, now thats not to say it doesn't come with its own responsibilities, like Learning lines, hitting marks and, sometimes portraying extreme emotions, as well as it being physically taxing at times. All that aside though, its a good time, in reality you're playing pretend and its great fun to interact with other performers and if you get a really juicy role it can be the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off, unless thats required for the part of course.

On Legacy of Thorn, we had to grab some reshoots and inserts, our stunt performer wasn't available and I got to spend the evening running around as Thorn, due mainly to me being the only crew member there that was over 6ft. It was the most fun I had over the entire shoot, which was a fairly good experience to begin with, but it really was so good and cathartic just to run around dressed as a masked maniac for the afternoon. This really led to me not worrying about my actors when we were on set so much. Every so often I would get people who would complain, but for the most part actors are having a great time and so I learned just to let them get on with that. If people are happy and having a great time they'll give you a much better performance and create a much better atmosphere on set.

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2. HOW MUCH INFORMATION YOU GET INFLUENCES YOUR PERFORMANCE

Playing the title Character in WishMaker

This seems fairly obvious, the more information you have about your character and how your director wants you to approach that character the better. This isn't always how it works out though. A few years ago I would cast an actor in a role and then begin to talk about things like character and watch their eyes go vacant, all they really wanted was to go home, pop the credit on their IMDB and move on to the next thing. Of course, I took this for a long while to mean that actors didn't really care about anything that wasn't laid out in black and white on the pages of the script. In actual fact, good actors DO care and if there isn't enough information available they fill in the blanks themselves.

A few years ago I worked on a short film called 'Liam Is...' as an actor, the director gave me a huge insight into my character, his life, his backstory his relationship to the other characters and we worked on how he would be portrayed. Up until this point, I had mostly walked onto a set, said lines and been killed or chased or attacked or whatever and then gone home, hoping I'd done a good job. With Liam Is... however all that information was amazing to have and for the 3 or 4 days I was on set, I found it amazingly easy to slip into that character whenever the cameras started rolling because I had a sense of his past as well as his presence and for the first time I really understood the discipline of being an actor.

Now I make the effort to talk about our characters in as much depth as possible, even the small ones in order to try and make them more rounded. Of course, I still often get the glazed over look from some performers, but for the ones who listen it makes all the difference.

3. YOU SHOULD BE AS LITTLE OF A PROBLEM AS POSSIBLE

Being gutted on set of NightMan 3

This one works backwards from my other points, but being a director and producer on low budget stuff, I was fully aware of how much constant questioning can become a problem. Some actors want to know everything, or just want to create problems for you. From things like "I can't get there for the call time" after they cleared it with you 3 days ago to "I have to work today sorry" after you've covered everyone else's expenses and paid for locations and catering, and these are just a couple of the most common ones. Some actors just want to create more problems and that just adds pressure to the already impossible task of making a movie on next to nothing.

When someone asks me to play a role, I take this on board, fully aware of the stress that it causes myself and my producer Anna, and I work on making myself as flexible as possible. I read the script, learn my lines, check if I need to bring anything (Costume, food for specific dietary requirements), find out what time I need to be there and then apart from that, I simply make contact the day before to confirm the time. That's it. To my shock and amazement, I've found that filmmakers actually like it when people don't cause them extra problems.

I recently work on a short film called 'Night-Man 3' and the director Kieron Johnston contacted me about a week before shooting to ask if I would take a role in it, he'd had an actor drop out and I was fairly local. He was having problems getting in touch with his actors and I could sense that it was a little stressful for him. Of course, the last thing I wanted to do was add more stress to his plate. So I asked him when we were shooting, what I needed to bring and left it at that until the following week, when I checked in to make sure the times were still correct (things like that shift fairly often) and up until I arrived I got the feeling that no one was sure if I'd actually turn up as I had been so relaxed about the whole thing. If you knew me, you'd know I'm on the least relaxed people on earth, so if I didn't make it an issue its not that tough, trust me.

Once there, I also tried to make myself as useful as possible on set in between takes and that went a long way to making the day, way more fun and helped us get done quicker. Going that extra mile aways helps.

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Overall its good to stand in someones shoes, it helps you understand them and their craft and as a filmmaker, standing in the actors spot helps you realise what its like to be them and what kind of information you need to be fed so you can apply that to your craft. Not only that, but acting is fun, at least until you have to watch it back and you realise you suck. 

MJ

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INDIE INTERVIEWS : FILMMAKER/AUTHOR - JAMES PLUMB

Based in Cardiff, Wales, Filmmaker and recently debuted Author James Plumb is well known in the UK for directing brit remakes of classics 'Night of the Living Dead' and Slasher classic 'Silent Night, Bloody Night'. Plumb also debuted his first novella as part of the 'Year of the Zombie' book series with his new undead tale 'Little Monster'.

I caught up with James Plumb to talk about remaking classics, his latest film 'Kerb Krawlers' and the challenges of being a first time author. 

Every journey starts with an origin story, How did you know you wanted to make films?
Origin story, huh? Well, I was bitten by a radioactive video cassette on a school trip and the next day… Wait, wrong guy…

I guess I’ve always known. I was obsessed with film at a very early age when my parents were watching “Jaws” on TV while I was in my bouncer. Every time Bruce would eat a kid, I’d go mental clapping my hands and shouting “Big Fish, Big Fish!”

Later on during school holidays, when my mum was doing her studies at the library, I’d plonk myself down in front of film reference books which dissected films through its stills. So I was exposed to famous horror set pieces from “The Exorcist” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” years before I got to see the films themselves.

In 1987 my dad brought home a JVC VHS homevideo camcorder from work and let me get my grubby little hands on it. I was seven years old and the thing was nearly as big as me. Straight away I was making these weird little Twilight Zone-esque shorts. Creepy little films about dopplegangers, ghosts and crazy cat ladies with skeleton babies… These gradually became more and more elaborate.

As a teen in the 90s, I was lucky enough that my local newsagent stocked Fangoria, Gorezone and Starburst cementing my genre fandom. I got a job at the local indie videoshop and devoured the horror section, moving onto sci-fi, action, basically any genre stuff.

After that I guess I didn’t have a choice.

How did you become involved in Night of The Living Dead : Resurrection and Silent Night, Deadly Night : Homecoming?
Both of those projects came from the producer Andrew Jones. He saw my short film/love letter to slasher films “Final Girl” back in 2011 and asked if I wanted to make a zombie feature. At first he didn’t tell me it was a remake of NOTLD, just a zombie film. I was initially hesitant as, although I’m a fan of a number of zombie films, from Romero to Fulci to O’Bannon to Kitamura, there’s been so many bad or unremarkable zombie films I didn’t want to add to that mountain, unless there was a hook, something to hold my interest. Then he revealed it was a remake of THE classic zombie film, I freaked out and started crafting a polite e-mail why I didn’t want to make a zombie film, let alone a remake…

Thank god I didn’t send that e-mail, because here was a guy offering to produce my first feature film! Anyway, I turned that polite e-mail into a manifesto of why I’d do the film under certain conditions. Andrew was very patient, and at our first meeting agreed to each and all of the points.

Andrew’s initial idea was to do a British spin on the original, which is such a classic tale that you can set it anywhere. So we didn’t try pretend we were shooting in the States or even London, we decided to make it Welsh through and through, to give the film it’s own accent. By setting it in the UK, we turned what could be seen as disadvantages into strengths, e.g. in the UK not everyone is packing heat. So it would be harder for our characters to dispatch the zombies, no double taps to the head. Developing that led us to the conclusion that if a family member got bitten, the characters would not necessarily jump to the conclusion that the logical course of action would be to kill their loved ones. If there was even the slightest chance that their relatives could get better, wouldn’t they take that risk? This led to locking undead relatives inside the house, creating a pressure cooker environment, which meant that inside the house is just as dangerous as out there.

While editing NOTLDR, Andrew approached me with SNBN. I loved working with the cast and crew, so the opportunity to reteam with my new extended family was an easy decision to make.

As we all now filmmaking can be tough, what were some of the downside of going out on your own?

I don’t have much frame of reference cos I’ve always been an indie guy. But juggling filmmaking, the day job and parenthood can be a little rough sometimes. But totally worth it.

On the flip side, what were the upsides of doing it by yourself?
Independence! And the control that comes with it.
That’s what I love about your Mychoverse, you have complete creative control over it. 

What were the differences for you between working on an established property like Night Of The Living Dead or Silent Night Bloody Night as opposed to working on a Brand New work like Kerb Crawlers?

There was a level of freedom with an original property like Kerb Crawlers, which I didn’t feel we had with the remakes. We could literally take the film in any direction, across any number of genres. With NOTLDR, we took the film in a number of direction within the zombie siege sub-genre, but it was still within that box. With SNBN, we chafed against the complex giallo-esque plot, so we ended up following the original more than I would have liked.

With Kerb Crawlers, we set up our protagonists in Act One, then flip the tables entirely in Act Two, by Act Three we’ve changed it up again.

When I saw From Dusk Til Dawn at the cinema, it had an immense effect on me. Starting as a hard-boiled crime film and then flipping to a vampire monster movie so suddenly, showed me how a film could manipulate and subvert an audience’s expectations.

Basically, I love mindfucking the audience.

If there was one piece of advice you could give to filmmakers, apart from 'just make movies' what would it be?

Just make movies.

No?

Learn basic storytelling.

The ability to convey information through mise-en-scene.

Show don’t tell.

Horror is one of the purest forms of cinema, the intention is to make the audience feel something: fear. It’s all well and good having beautifully composed shots but if they don’t convey meaning, then you have to rely on the characters spouting exposition, and in a horror film that will grind your film to a halt.

The angle of a shot, and the way you cut to another shot: 100% affects the meaning of your film. Learn the grammar of cinematography.

And finally, what is next for James Plumb?

Middle of last year, I decided to put the filming on the back-burner due to health reasons within my family. It was a hard decision, but the right one for me at the time. The day after I made the decision, Wayne Simmons (author, horror convention organiser and lovely humanoid) dropped me a message to ask if I’d like to take part in a zombie novella event as part of David Moody’s (author, bald and also lovely humanoid) Infected Books label. I was speechless.

When I did regain my speech, I told him I was honoured but could I have twenty-four hours to think about it. I’d just decided to put my family first and although I’d written a number of scripts over the past few years, it had been awhile since I had written prose, let alone a novella.

But I was intrigued. It was a challenge; could I write a novella? And I had an idea, originally it was a film idea, one that I had plotted out, and written about 40 pages of script for. But there were elements of the idea, which appeared to work better as prose.

So I bit the bullet and agreed.

Aaaaand it was a challenge. A fun/rewarding/terrifying/frustrating challenge.

Funny thing about the feedback from early proofs of LM, everyone said it’d make a great film. So I may dust off that script and finish it…

The book is “Little Monster”, it’s out on Amazon Kindle from 1 June 2016 as part of the Year of the Zombie event. Blurb below:

Your six-year-old daughter has been bitten by a zombie and now hungers for human flesh.

What do you do?

Do you double tap her in the brain?

Or do you become the ultimate enabler and feed her human flesh?

And where do you get human flesh from?

This is the dilemma that Gareth and Jen face with their beautiful daughter Ana.

What will they do?

And how far will it go?

You can pick up a copy of 'Little Monster' now at HERE

MJ

IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE. You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)

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