Reshersals

Originally this week we had planned to do the outdoor scenes on the Wednesday and the hotel scenes on Thursday. After some thought I pulled Tom aside and told him that we weren't 100% prepared for the outside shoots so we should push it back to the second production week. As we were technically filming in the final week of pre production I felt we had the time push it back. With that decided we went about rehearsing. Tom had booked a room in uni that had ample space for the actors to move around.

The three actors we had turn up were
Josh who would be playing Ridley
Conor who would be playing Jeffrey
Scott who originally auditioned for Jeffrey

As Scott was eager to play a role we cast him as Richard, the director. That being the case, I was still open to using someone else as I didn't think that he had the right air for the role.

How I ran the session: 
I first got the actors to have a read through of the lines.
I asked whether the lines felt natural to deliver.
We got up to run through the actions.
I told the actors where to stand and gave them queues to execute certain lines and actions.
I checked that it all felt natural and if they had any queries.
I then proceeded with running it through a few times, making tweaks in queues, actions and gestures until it felt and looked right.

I first went through the scenes that involved Richard The Director so that Scott wouldn't need to be waiting around, and then we went through the hotel scenes using the aforementioned steps.

Josh and Conor were very forthcoming with questions and suggestions and letting me know if they had a problem with anything. One instance was in a scene where the action dictates that Jeffrey taps the bed and says "Sit Down" and then Ridley walks over to sit down.

Josh said that he was already moving towards the bed before Jeffrey tells him to sit down and Conor said that it felt weird tapping the bed and then saying sit down.

We ran the scene again with a few changes in place. Josh would just walk towards the bed at the same time Conor taps the bed, cutting the line "Sit Down" I felt  this way worked better because it shows a mental link between the two characters. Josh and Conor also said it felt a lot more comfortable running it that way.

During the session I gave each actor a character to research through watching their show or some clips on YouTube.  I asked Josh to look at the character Will Dancy on Hannibal. I wanted him to analyse how reserved he acts when he is around others, always folding in to himself with an air of haunting in his personality.

I asked Conor to look at The Joker in The Dark Knight. How has complete and utter faith in his beliefs and lunacy. Analysing how he sees through illusions and plays with Batman and can go from cruel to kind.