Directing with Steve Finn

As part of this unit to develop our skills and knowledge as directors, we had a few days with the director Steve Finn. He has worked on Eastenders for several years and has directed a number of episodes for the programme. As this is a very well known and popular television programme in the UK, I was really looking forward to meeting him and finding out about how he works as a director. We had a day of lecture time with him where he went into great detail about directing as an art form and how to approach it. He told us that the characters in a piece are vital and that actors must always know exactly who they are playing and the circumstances of the scenes. Steve said that very rarely people will sit down in front of each other and talk as if it's an interview. In a casual situation people will walk around and find tasks to do, therefore to make a conversation between two people seem natural, the director must think about the scene and what the actors will be doing. To do this, he said to look at the script and for each line of dialogue to think of an action to go with it. We then had an afternoon session with him where our directing skills were put to the test. We were given a page of a script in which two characters are having a conversation in an office. We examined the script to discover who they characters were and what their motives may be. As a big group we then took turns portraying different roles such as director, camera operator and cast to recreate the scene. It was quite daunting being thrown into the situation but we all worked well as a group. At the very end Steve showed us how he would have directed the scene which was slightly more complicated and incorporated more action making it interesting. For the next couple of days, we were given different scripts to look at. I had a script called 'Ted and Jo' which entailed an unhappy couple having a conversation where Jo reveals she is leaving Ted. When thinking about how to direct the script, I thought about what Steve said in the previous workshop about getting a master shot that will show the scene and both characters' faces at the same time. Therefore I decided to have Jo standing behind a desk as she packs her bag whilst Ted walks into the scene behind her. I then experimented with a few over the shoulder shots and side angles to convey emotion in their facial expressions which would be difficult to achieve with wider shots. Looking at clips from each persons vision was really interesting as they were all so different and really highlighted how everyone will interpret a scene in a different way. However, I will take on what Steve said when completing my prep for this project.