Issue 211 – Sept. 14, 2020 (Blocking for Story/Character/Camera)

(1) Blocking for Story and Character

As a film director, your job is to reveal a character’s thoughts or emotions through actions because actions reveal more of a character than dialogue. Therefore, actor movement must have a precise objective and goal so you want to make sure that every move an actor makes has a specific purpose.

To accomplish these objectives, you need to create a personal relationship with each actor so you can work together on every scene to find:

1. The emotional structure of the scene (Emotions and feelings)
2. The subtext of the scene (What is really going on)
3. The physical movement of each character (Blocking or staging)
4. The activities of each character (Actor business)
5. The pace of the scene (Timing of dialogue and actions)

(2) Blocking for the Camera

Because viewer emotion is the ultimate goal of each scene, where you place the camera involves knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at any given moment. So when blocking actors for the camera, you need to drive the blocking emotionally so no actor movement is done aimlessly and you accomplish this by knowing why the actor moves; where the actor moves; when the actor moves; and how the actor moves.

1) Two ways to stage space.

Across the frame (left to right & right to left.) In-depth staging (foreground to background & background to foreground.)

2) When you change the space between characters, you also indicate a change in the relationship.

If a character walks toward another character that could indicate anger OR happiness. (Any movement toward camera is powerful – the character takes over.) If a character walks away from another character that could indicate fear OR sadness. (Any movement away from camera is weakened – the character’s presence is diminished.)

3) Character movement is also a way of expressing opposition and resistance. Moving characters create lots of energy – they are dynamic. Still characters create less energy – they are peaceful.

4) The Opening Position of each character is a very important element of blocking. Use your story knowledge of a character to imagine their opening position. For example, different character types tend to move to different places in a room so a strong character could move to the middle of room while a weak character could stay at the side of room.

5) If you are having trouble deciding how to start a scene, place the actors in their end positions and then “reverse engineer” their movements to figure out where they would naturally start the scene.

There is never one interpretation of how a scene should be blocked because every director will block the same scene differently. Blocking actors for the camera is like putting together a complicated picture puzzle – you need to keep moving each piece of the puzzle around until each piece eventually fits into place and you can clearly see the whole picture!

Remember: When blocking a scene, experienced directors not only think about their shots, camera positions and character movement, they must also all the other factors affecting each particular scene such as lighting, window placement, vehicle movement, extras, stunts, special effects, time and budget.

Copyright (c) 2020 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved