Directing with Subtext
Directing is not a solitary craft but one done in collaboration with actors. Here, author Paige DiFebbo talks about directing and taking inspiration from Judith Weston’s The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques.
Directing Crestwood
by Paige DiFebbo
This semester I worked on Crestwood, a mockumentary style comedy pilot episode. It follows protagonist Kathryn Bailey on her trial day as she makes her case to become the general manager of the Crestwood Gym after her father steps down. The president of the gym, Jenkins, gives Kathryn meaningless tasks to do around the gym much to her annoyance. However, when Kathryn catches a huge budget error, Jenkins finally realizes how much Crestwood Gym needs her and Kathryn earns her promotion. While we were in the middle of production, I read the book chapter “Subtext and Choice” from The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques written by Judith Weston (2003). This chapter taught me a lot about directing with subtext in mind and it informed some of my direction choices for our last two filming days.
Weston (2003) discusses the importance of subtext in television and film and how directors and actors both play a role in bringing the subtext of a script to life. This collaboration to incorporate subtext makes stories and characters stronger, more realistic, and more intriguing. She describes subtext generally as “what we really say, with our body language, the tone of our voice, with our eyes and expression” all of which can reveal a character’s true feelings or intentions to the audience (Weston, 2003, p. 88). Weston then goes on to talk about some of the more specific kinds of subtext. For example, she identifies two different types of subtext in a movie/show: character subtext and story subtext. Character subtext is information about the character that is not explicitly stated to the audience and may not even be known by the character. Story subtext is the real story that you’re telling (Weston, 2003). The real story could be the underlying themes and messages of a script that are not explicitly written.
Before reading the chapter, my group and I were focused on the characters’ actions and how their actions could convey their emotions and motivations that weren’t explicitly stated in the dialogue, especially with Kathryn. After reading the chapter, I was even more aware of the story subtext of our pilot. Even though it is a comedy, our project also explores the real issue of misogyny in the workplace and the idea of not being respected in the workplace. Weston’s chapter gave me ideas about how to communicate with Zoe, the actress playing Kathryn, about conveying Kathryn’s frustration and emphasizing the subtext of the story. One way my team and I did this was by talking with Zoe more about parts of the story that weren’t written in the script, such as the character’s background and qualifications. From there we were able to come up with ideas together about what actions Zoe could do or what kinds of facial expressions she could make to convey her character’s frustration. For example, we came up with the idea of Zoe briefly pausing to glance at Keith’s pile of towels as she walks out of the room during the laundry room scene. She looks his pile up and down with a proud look on her face. In the script, it was originally written as Kathryn looking at her own pile of towels and then leaving. However, having Kathryn look at Keith’s pile of towels instead was a funny detail that reiterated the competitive subtext of the scene. It was collaborative talking through the story with Zoe in between scenes like that, and it overall felt very fulfilling to be able to collaborate with an actress like that after spending so much time this semester working on revising the script.
My biggest recommendation for future makers is to make sure you know your story really well beyond what is written about the script so that you feel comfortable talking through the story with the actors.
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References:
Weston, J. (2003).The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques. (pp. 85-100). Michael Wiese Productions.
Image credit:
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko, courtesy of Pexels