Practical advice on keeping actors happy on your next film set.
The Vikings are understandably upset: they don’t want to fight all the time, but they’re not allowed to do anything else. One day one of them can’t take it any more, and decides to learn acting.
He starts with the basics: “I am an angry man,” he says. “You are giving money to the church.” No good. The other Vikings laugh at him. Maybe he needs a moustache. He tries again: “How dare you give money to the church?” Still no good, though he’s getting a little better at shouting. Finally he decides to improvise: “You! You you you you church money!” A little more natural, but it’s still not working at all.
It turns out that acting is hard, and this particular Viking is not a very good actor. But eventually he gets better, until finally one day he shouts “How dare you give money to the church?” and it actually works! The guy who was giving money to the church is so shocked that he stops right away!
The other Vikings are impressed, and decide they want to learn too. But now it’s harder for our actor Viking, because there are new people
We recently put on a large-scale commercial film set, involving a large number of extras, some of whom were playing Vikings. Our production designer wanted the Viking extras to appear to be drinking mead, but we couldn’t find any mead producers in the area who were able to donate enough mead for the shoot.
We needed roughly a cup per extra per day: in total, two gallons.
As it turned out, I had to bring the mead in myself–from over three hundred miles away! The logistics made it necessary for us to pick up the mead on location from where it was brewed. We picked up two gallons of mead and brought it back to set.
SOME HELPFUL ADVICE TO THE ASPIRING FILMMAKER
This is a blog about keeping actors happy. It’s a blog I wish someone had written for me when I was starting out, and I hope it’s useful to you.
The first rule of working with professional actors is that they are not your friends. They are your employees. Some of them may become your friends, but if so it will take some time and you can’t expect it to happen by default. If you want to treat them like friends, you’ll either hire your friends (which is fine) or end up with badly behaved actors that you don’t want to work with again (which isn’t). The second rule is that they are not performers at your disposal; they are people who know how to do a job, and you have to give them the tools and information they need in order to do it well.
It starts with a good script, one with plenty of action and character moments. It helps if the director can convey the right tone. And you should keep the actors happy and engaged. Don’t work them too hard during the day; don’t keep them waiting around for hours. And make sure there’s plenty of food on set.
In their downtime entertain the actors with funny stories and jokes, but don’t take it too far. If you’re going to tell a joke about Vikings, for example, make sure it’s not embarrassing or mean-spirited. Try to avoid pranks that will make people feel self-conscious or uncomfortable.
In general you want to be particularly careful when you’re working around people who have recently been in fights to the death. They tend to have short fuses, so it would be best not to push them too hard after they’ve been filming all day long in heavy armor wielding massive weapons in the hot sun.
