My Director's Journal

Week2/3

Observations:

1) A man at the gym stands in the corner thrusting his hips. He appears to be highly focused . He now crouches over on all fours and does the yoga pose which requires him to push his butt high into the air. Not downward dog.

2) I wave to a man from my class while working out on the hip abduction machine. His eyes meet mine for a second and he speed walks past me.

3) a man in a skin tight, pink leather dress squats down in what appear to be 10 inch high white platform heels.

4) a young woman dressed as a unicorn moves her feet in a fashion that seems like she's dancing. Her pace is very fast and I cannot follow.

5) a group of people sit in the corner of the club. One woman wears a flashlight headband and shines her light on a mans forearm. The woman is using a tattoo pen to doodle on his arm. She's very focused.

Readings Reaction:

Reading over the parts of this book that discuss objective, action verbs and unconscious objective reminded me of their importance. One of my professors who also directs show/short films had taught my class all about these in a script. When we would run lines, he'd do exactly what the book is telling you regarding the director noticing "unconscious objectives" displayed by the actors. I think this is very significant as a director to be able to notice these things in rehearsals. It's a great way to be on the same page as the actor, but to also listen to them and understand the process they're going through when creating a character.

I've realized that subtext is very important, however I find it interesting the way Judith says she makes her actors use sex as the subtext. I didn't realize that subtext could be used to keep the actors engaged and focused with one another, in fact I always thought maybe it was just something that needed to be there but isn't too important. This makes me think about observing Subtext in real life. The actions people display before the words escape their mouth. I will definitely try to observe this more for the next weeks journal.