Casting Light on the Black Box: GDC 2024 Bibliography
On Monday 18 March 2024, Phillipe Bosher and Jolie Menzel gave a talk entitled Casting Light on the Black Box as part of the Narrative track at GDC 2024. You can watch the talk on the GDC Vault here for free, and find the slideshow here.
Below is a list of the media they referenced during their talk.
-
Slide 8: Sanford Meisner: On Acting | Amazon Link
-
Slide 8: Konstantin Stanislavksi, father of modern acting and 'the method' | 'Building a Character' Amazon Link
-
Slide 10: The Importance of Being Earnest | Project Gutenberg Link
-
Slide 15: David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing | Masterclass Link
-
Slide 23: Breaking Point: Q&A with Damian Chazelle | SFWeekly Link
-
Slide 25: The Importance of Being Earnest Sample Casting Call | Link
-
Slide 30: The Importance of Being Earnest Sample Casting Sheet | Link
-
Slide 33: Harold Guskin: How to Stop Acting | Amazon Link
-
Slide 34: recommended great audio performances: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series (BBC); Batman: The Animated Series; The Sandman (Audible); The Lord of the Rings (Dramatised) (BBC); Locke & Key (Audible); Neverwhere (BBC).
-
Slide 34: University of Rochester study on the brain's visual processing | Review Link
-
Slide 43: The Importance of Being Earnest Sample Scene Prep Sheet | Link
-
Slide 47: Spider-Man 2 | TikTok Video
-
Slide 51: The Greatest Night in Pop | Netflix Link 1:17.30
Supplemental Material
Bill Nighy talking about his acting process | VIDEO
Michael Shurtleff : Audition (Phillipe's favourite book on acting) | Amazon Link
Judith Weston: Directing Actors (an excellent book on directing) | Amazon Link
The Tools of Acting
The Five Senses: Sight, Sound, Touch, Hearing, Taste
The Three Questions: Who am I talking to and how do I feel about them? What has just happened? What do I want?
If you have any more questions about the talk, or would like to chat with Phillipe about anything, please email:
-----
Questions and Answers from post-GDC
How do you go about directing talent when they have lines in another language? I've run into an issue where some of them aren't quite used to speaking anything other than English when they're acting, even if they're fluent in the other language. Sometimes they'll perform the line like it's English--and it'd be a great take if the line was in English--but they end up lose the tonality of the other language. It's been tough to find the right way to direct them on those.
I think it bounces off from Jaclyn Seto and Christal Rose Hazelton's talk at GDC this year, actually. In the process, you will have had people who speak that language help shape the character and the writing - at least the writer of the foreign language will (hopefully) speak it. This is the space where I think line reads are invaluable - your writer might not be an actor, but having someone who speaks the language do their best shot at delivering the line will help your actor in two important ways: first, it'll help understand where the right places to stress are, and second it'll help with pronunciation of specific words. I'd probably ask for two reads from the native speaker: one with flat affect to help understand pronunciation, and the second as-best-acted-as-can-be to help understand where the stress is.
This is also a space where giving your actors the lines in advance really is necessary imo - at least the foreign-language ones. If you're being very rigid in only casting people from the same or similar backgrounds, there's a decent chance they have people in their social circles who can pronounce the lines for them (I've done this with my Mother, for example, with the occasional Russian language line). If not, they might be able to find someone who can - I've had friends ask me to ask my mum to read stuff for them, for auditions and things.
The other thing to ask the native speaker is which words tend to be stressed in a given language or accent. American speakers, for example, tend to stress personal pronouns in their dialect, and emphasis comes from elongating vowel sounds rather than hitting consonants harder (as English speakers tend to do). In Shakespeare, one is taught to emphasise verbs to carry meaning.
By giving the actors the lines early, as well as a full translation (I'd suggest a word by word translation, as well as the final line-to-be-recorded if the text isn't too long), you allow them to do the acting bit early - getting the meaning and intention into their bones, and then they can focus on the mechanical bits (i.e. stresses and tones and pronunciation) in the room. It's what people tend to do in early Shakespeare rehearsals, and I know the Royal Shakespeare Company does religiously - the first couple rehearsals are literally a line-by-line translation of the text into modern speech, to help the actor understand what on earth they're saying, before they work with a text coach who lets them know pronunciations and flows of lines etc.
And if you can: have someone in the room be a native speaker who can help!