Progress With Margo

Day 1

Preparing the shoot for Aaron’s project, “Blue Rose”, I thought it would be more productive to work with Margo on her performance.  She doesn’t have any previous acting experience and was nervous about performing this role.  Even though she was worried, she was willing to get involved as she wants to help.  Whilst writing the script I had to keep in mind what Margo would and would not be able to perform on a convincing level.  Luckily her character is a somewhat simple one. Rose is suffering from dementia and basically stares into deep space, therefore, what Margo would have to work on were her facial expressions.  She needed to look: - happy, worried, shocked and most importantly dazed. Trying to explain how I wanted the facial expressions was difficult to explain so I thought it would be better to show Margo examples and the one I think worked best was this one below.

0.48 – 0.52

The face that we first see from Barbara is excellent.  It tells you so much. There is no emotion there, as if she has no feelings and this is a face of someone who is soulless.  She is an empty shell of what she once was. Then she suddenly clicks on and smiles. That is the type of response I would like to achieve from Margo. As if her character isn’t completely aware of her state and thinks she has just nodded off. 

I gave Margo the script a couple of days in advance so that she could have a read through and see if she is comfortable with everything. She told me she thought that she knew all her lines so I thought it would be more productive to re-enact everything so that we could work on her facial expression. As we progressed I realised she struggled to remember her lines but that’s to be expected at this early stage.  As we had already started I didn’t see the point in stopping and decided we should just continue and work on her facial expressions.

We started off with working on her “no” expression face, where she is gazing at the wall. We did have to work on this for a while as she kept demonstrating a depressing face which I believe isn’t what we want. The character Rose isn’t aware that she has a reason to be depressed, she doesn’t know how she is being treated, she doesn’t even realise that she has this condition. After some time we got something I think is exactly what we are looking for.

 

We started getting side tracked after this point because we had re-enacted the segment where Mick creepily leans over Rose and takes deep breaths in. Both Margo and I found it difficult to do, we would keep laughing as we started or just as I started to breath intensely close on her. Also, we struggled moments before this as I didn’t like the idea of shouting at my grandmother but we had to get on with it. Eventually she got used to me doing this and didn’t react when I approached which is a big step up for her but I am worried that she has got comfortable with me doing this and will be uncomfortable when it comes to the day and she is working with a stranger. I am going to try arranging it for Margo to work with a friend of mine so that she can get used to the idea of someone invading her personal space.

It was difficult trying to work as we weren’t at the location and had to improvise so that we got it to scale with the proper shoot. What I really liked about working with Margo is that she wanted me to explain each aspect of the script as we progressed; this gave her a better understanding of the situation and allows her to really connect with the character which will improve her performance. To me this showed she was actually interested in performing well and is dedicated to do her best.

Overall I was more than happy with her progress. I thought it would be difficult trying to get the facial expressions required but she did very well. Margo needs to work on her lines; now and again she struggles remembering them. Next session I will focus solely on her learning her lines.  At this moment in time I am not worried on how her performance will be and very glad she is a part of our production.

Day 2

On this day session we were unable to work long as Margo had other things to attend to and I had to catch up on blog work, therefore, I only focused on trying to support her remembering her lines. Fortunately, she has taken the initiative and has spent a lot of her spare time reading the script. We were basically reading the script and not re-enacting the scene which I think had a major effect on her performance. We went through the script really easily but she had one moment where she couldn’t remember the script so I gave her a moment to remember that specific line, then we did it all again.  

As we had a bit of time left we went through the script in character but we didn’t act out the scene and I noticed this had a big impact on her performance drastically.  For some reason she had changed her attitude to more cheery, this isn’t want we want. The character needs to appear more weak and frail. I advised her to imagine her character in this manner and that it is even a struggle for her to get words out. During this she kept changing her attitude which was annoying to work with but I am taking it as not properly being in character. I am hoping that if she was in her proper position, as she was on the first session, then she would act appropriately. I have advised Aaron that I think it would be more of a benefit if Margo was to visit the set with us and rehearse there.  This is so she would have a better understanding on when to expect her lines and also the group may have input that she will have to work on before the actual shoot.

Day 3

Over the week I have been working with Margo on her performance and I believe that she has vastly improved, but I was aware that Aaron wants there to be a bit of improve and will have his own form of input on the shoot day. I am worried about this as Margo isn’t a professional actress and may get confused on the day which will affect her performance so I discussed with the group f or her to join us on our last reccy and work with her. She had to wait around for sometime because we were working on lighting for the duration of the morning but this gave her a chance to interact with the group and become more comfortable with them. Once we had finished working on the lighting and had a quick lunch, Aaron and I began working with her on set. We showed Aaron a quick run through on what we had done for the last week or so but due to her being nervous she wasn’t performing to the standard she had previously. She wasn’t making the character weak and frail when she talked, there was hints of happiness between her and other character so we had to work on that but once Aaron explained in a bit more depth on the character, Margo performance dramatically changed to a standard everyone was happy with. Whilst re-acting the scenes we made some changes due to the fact it didn’t feel natural or necessary to the plot, there wasn’t major changes but enough to confuse Margo so we finished off with one last run through, by this time she understood everything. At this time Aaron noted to Margo that things may change on the shooting day depending on our male protagonist performance but she shouldn’t be nervous by this. I am more than happy with Margo’s performance as we have worked on it and she behaves in a professional manor but I am still cautious by the fact we will be having a real professional actor working along side her and he may be expecting a higher standard of acting. Hopefully this wont be an issue and everything will run smoothly.