Working With Directors: What Happens Between Takes.
Updated: Oct 19
On translating direction, maintaining continuity, and building a screen performance collaboratively.
On screen, a scene appears to unfold without interruption. On set, it is assembled in fragments: separate angles, repeated actions, technical adjustments, pauses, and new takes that may be filmed hours apart.
Part of an actor’s work is to preserve the inner movement of the scene while remaining responsive to everything changing around it. That includes the camera, the rhythm of the production, another actor’s choices, and the director’s evolving view of the material.
Some of the most consequential work therefore happens when no one is filming.
Turning Direction Into Action
Direction can arrive as a practical adjustment, a question, an image, or a change in emphasis. Whatever form it takes, the actor has to translate it into something playable.
An instruction about tone is rarely useful if it remains an adjective. “Colder,” “lighter,” or “more emotional” has to become a change in intention, attention, or behavior. Perhaps the character is concealing more. Perhaps she needs something different from the person opposite her. Perhaps the scene is moving toward a conclusion faster than she realizes.
The conversation between actor and director is where that translation happens. It need not be lengthy. A precise observation between takes can alter the direction of an entire scene.
Continuity in a Fragmented Process
Film acting requires a peculiar form of continuity. The actor may have to return to the same emotional point after a lighting adjustment, a lens change, or a break while the set is reset. The close-up might be filmed before the wide shot. A reaction may be recorded long after the line that prompted it.
The challenge is not to preserve one “perfect” version of the performance. It is to retain the logic of the character while allowing each take to remain alive.
That distinction matters. Repetition can make a performance mechanical if the actor begins reproducing gestures and inflections. But abandoning continuity altogether creates a different problem for the edit. The work lies somewhere between consistency and genuine response.
Trust Without Passivity
Trust between an actor and director does not mean unquestioning agreement, nor does it mean being left entirely alone. It means both people can pursue the same scene without protecting themselves from every suggestion or experiment.
On independent productions including Born Evil and A Universe Apart, I have valued directors who made room for exploration while remaining clear about the film they were making. That balance allows an actor to take risks without losing the structure of the scene.
It also makes correction easier. When the working relationship is sound, an adjustment does not feel like a verdict on the previous take. It is simply new information.
A Character Is Built in Company
Actors often speak about creating a character as though it were a private construction completed before filming begins. Preparation matters, but a screen character also emerges through contact—with the script, the director, the other performers, the physical location, and the practical demands of the production.
A room changes how someone moves. A camera position changes what can be withheld. Another actor may place unexpected weight on a line that has become familiar in rehearsal. Each element gives the character a more particular life.
The result belongs to no single person. It is shaped through a succession of choices, many of them made in conversations that will never appear in the finished film.
That invisible exchange is one of the reasons I remain drawn to screen acting. The audience sees the scene. The actor remembers everything that made the scene possible.
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