One of the surprises for me was the way that page views leapt and plummeted throughout the series. The post I wrote on the young Greta Scacchi's sexual charisma and meteoric rise to fame (Too Beautiful For Words: 12 July) sparked no great interest. But, my post on her precipitous fall (Wasted: 26 July) received over three times as many page views. Make of that what you will! However, the post that received by far the most attention was my piece On Casting (21 June), which just goes to show that, if there is one thing that interests actors above all else, it is any clue they can come across on how to get their next job. The tale of my encounter with the legendary Pat Phoenix (Star Turn: 1 March) has been included in the Manchester Metropolitan University on-going project, A History of Granadaland, thanks to Professor Stephen Kelly.
Writing these posts on a weekly basis has prompted me to reflect on the process of directing actors for the screen. When I started in TV I asked around as to whether there were any good books on the subject and was told No. Surprisingly I find that is still the case today. What books there are out there are either very basic, concentrating on technicalities, or quite misleading, being based on theatrical rehearsal techniques developed some fifty years ago. Working for screen performance today actors, on all but rare occasions, have little or no rehearsal, sometimes have to work against a green screen or banks of lights in an empty studio (as with Gravity), fulfil a detailed storyboard that has already been drawn (as with Sin City), or complex blocking that has been mapped out by the crew working with stand-ins (as with Birdman). And, certainly, a director cannot just let a process run but must be very concerned with results. All that and more suggests to me that there is a book that needs to be written — perhaps, called The Inner Movie — but, at the moment, that is just a maybe at the end of a long term To Do list.
An extra special thanks to all who have left comments, both on the blog itself and via social media and email direct to me. These have sometimes been challenging, sometimes revealing, sometimes just a welcome thumbs up. I would, of course, love to receive any further comments you may have, either on individual posts or on the series as a whole.
