this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
91 points (91.7% liked)

movies

1775 readers
217 users here now

Warning: If the community is empty, make sure you have "English" selected in your languages in your account settings.

🔎 Find discussion threads

A community focused on discussions on movies. Besides usual movie news, the following threads are welcome

Related communities:

Show communities:

Discussion communities:

RULES

Spoilers are strictly forbidden in post titles.

Posts soliciting spoilers (endings, plot elements, twists, etc.) should contain [spoilers] in their title. Comments in these posts do not need to be hidden in spoiler MarkDown if they pertain to the title’s subject matter.

Otherwise, spoilers but must be contained in MarkDown.

2024 discussion threads

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm primarily an actor in LA, but recently went behind the camera to make my first short film "Kodar: The Primordial God of Light and Ether", starring Maddie Ziegler. Ask me anything!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hi Will!

Now that you've tried out directing as well as acting, which side of the camera do you prefer?

Are there any things you've learned from the experience of directing that you think will help in future acting roles? Additionally, is there anything you would do differently about directing Kodar if you got to start over from scratch today?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't think I necessarily prefer one to the other, my ideal world would be directing and acting in the film a la Ben Affleck. I think it's much harder to get a movie off the ground and make something as opposed to just be a hired gun as an actor, so it's hard to compare. It's definitely an adrenaline rush when your'e directing a whole crew and cast and responsible for the whole day as opposed to just your scenes.

To help future acting roles I'd probably say learning to not take a director's notes as a sign that you're necessarily doing something "wrong" and rather they just want a different option in the editing room for flexibility. For instance Peter Farrelly would have you do a line like 20 different ways all in a row, but that wasn't because I was doing the line bad, he just wants the flexibility to have it different ways in the editing room to match thew tone of whatever the final edit ends up being. So basically as an actor, go easy on yourself.

If I could do it all over, I would work on the transition between Maddie finding out she has cancer into the cosplay with Kodar. That has been our main note, is that some people don't buy that this girl who just found out such devastating news would then be so flippant about playing into the cosplay with Kodar. I imagined it that she needed to do it as a way of coping with the bad news, but maybe it doesn't read clearly. So probably would go back into the script and figure out how to land that smoother.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I understand that note and really disagree with it. Brains do weird protective shit in those moments, and being able to retreat to a place of comfort.... Yeah, that fast escape is real

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Well thank you! That’s where my mind was when I made it, and I think I still believe that to be authentic. It’s just hard when you get the same note a bunch of times you start to think it’s correct

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

True, but it's really hard to properly translate the 'emotional logic' of it.

To me It's kinda like 2d vs 3d - there are tricks you can do to add some of the 3d information to your 2d space, but at the end of the day it's still 'flat'.