Date Completed: Spring 2011
Running Time: 4:39
Genre: Drama, Based on a True Story
This is my take on a scene from the movie Quiz Show (1994) in which a conflicted son breaks the news to his father that he is a fraud who cheated on a TV Quiz Show.
This project was an assignment for a Directing Workshop class at the University of Texas at Austin: Find a roughly five minute scene from a movie or play with two actors in one location and create your interpretation of it.
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I loved the class this project was for! Taking an existing scene and focusing on the actors, camera, set dressing, and blocking for a small scene was a fantastic exercise to hone my directing skills. I found a great scene, so I was already starting from a strong place, and I'm very happy with the finished result.
We got to pick our own scenes: roughly 5 mins, 2 actors, 1 location, from a movie or play. I decided on this scene from one of my favorite movies, Quiz Show, after pulling about 20 DVDs off the shelves and slowly narrowing it down. I hired actors via AustinActors.net, which I've used before, held auditions, did several rehearsals for our character interpretations and blocking, and analyzed the script. One class day my actors had to come in and perform the scene live for my professor and classmates, who then gave feedback in time for me to make adjustments if I wanted to before we actually shot the scene. A few days later we shot the scene.
We had to do two of these kind of projects for that class, and I thought it was funny how for the first project every single student directed a dramatic scene (myself included).
This was such a useful exercise for me that I probably will do this again sometime -- I do have a vast supply of great movies to choose from!
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