Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Random thought for the day

Actors do read throughs of the script before a scene is ever filmed.  Every so often a behind the scenes thing will show them doing it.  It's just a bunch of actors sitting around reading the script, working out how they want to say given lines, getting a feel for each other, and the dynamics that they might not have had a sense of from the words on the page.

And it has a certain magic to it, there's not sets, no effects, nothing but actors and a script, it feels almost like watching a play your imagination has to fill in the details.

And sometimes I think I'd like to be able to see the whole movie in read through form.  I've already seen the movie by this point, but there's something completely different, and not necessarily worse, about seeing it when it's just the actors and the script.  The actors do it anyway, it must be filmed at least somewhat, otherwise you'd never see the clips.  So it seems like it should be possible to see the same thing.

In watching a thing on the making of Avatar, and seeing the Avatar/Na'vi actors acting their scenes (and they were acting, pretty damn well) without effects my sister commented that she wanted to watch the whole movie like that.  No effects, just the acting.

Even in CGI things that don't use the actor's movements and gestures and facial expressions, but just their voices, seem to always have the actors providing the voices acting as their voice is recorded, and it can be fun to watch.  I might be interested in seeing the non-CGI version of a CGI movie created just by collecting all the video of the actors providing the voices and putting it together in order.

It seems like doing something like this would cost the movie makers almost nothing, but potentially generate additional revenue.

They should do it.

3 comments:

  1. Have you seen the trailer on Les Miserables where the whole thing is being sung as the actors move through the sets? They use a hidden headphone/mic and get the music piped in while they sing it. Supposedly its never been done that way.

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  2. I'd watch a non-CGI read through version of just about any CGI movie I've seen.

    cjmr

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  3. I'm enjoying the reinvention of the radio play in new forms that's come along with podcasting - for example, the yog-sothoth.com role-playing game recordings, or 19 Nocturne Boulevard's dramatisations of classic stories. As someone said years ago, "the pictures are better on the radio".

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