What do you think?
Rate this book
Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre: Foreword by Ang Lee
The second edition of this elegant and accessible primer offers a helpful reference and resource for directing actors in film, television, and theatre, useful to directors, actors, and writers. Combining underlying theory with dozens of exercises designed to reveal the actor's craft, Lenore DeKoven discusses constructing the throughline; analyzing the script; character needs; the casting and rehearsal processes; as well as the actor and the camera. Distilling difficult concepts to their simplest form, DeKoven explains how to accurately capture and portray human behavior on stage and screen, offering creative solutions to issues she has encountered or anticipated after decades of experience. Excerpts from interviews with acclaimed actors offer insight into their work with directors, what inspires them, and what they really want from the director. This second edition incorporates the film Moonlight (2016, Barry Jenkins) for analysis of the directing concepts discussed.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 21, 2013
Very practical and hands-on instructions. Useful to know even if you choose not to follow them - so that it would be a matter of choice.
March 2, 2018
A great book for an introduction to directing. She gives great exercises, and the lists are a great tool to print out and keep for reference. I really liked the quotes from other actors/directors as well. It's a great inside perspective into the world of directing.
March 5, 2017
Clear and concise. Not modern ideas, but practical.
February 26, 2015
This is a practical book. In fact, it's so practical that I could only get through a couple chapters before I started putting what DeKoven says into practice.
For me, the most helpful thing about the book was how much time DeKoven spent talking about preparation. Both cast and crew want a director who is prepared, in filmmaking and in theater. This means that the director needs to spend time thinking about the throughline, character bios, and structure of the script, in addition to planning the blocking (and camera). DeKoven also gives tons of practical advice on working with actors and with crewmembers. "To get what you want, don't say it that way, say it this way." "Respect the actors." "Keep everyone well fed."
DeKoven sometimes gets a little over-analytical with her methods. She is constantly referring to the actor's brain as the actor's "computer," and telling the director he or she only needs to know which buttons to push to get the desired result. Her writing style is also repetitive and flat, presumably because it's a compilation of roughly edited teaching notes.
Perhaps in years to come I'll come back to this book and find it less insightful than I thought, but for now, it met me exactly where I needed it to be.
For me, the most helpful thing about the book was how much time DeKoven spent talking about preparation. Both cast and crew want a director who is prepared, in filmmaking and in theater. This means that the director needs to spend time thinking about the throughline, character bios, and structure of the script, in addition to planning the blocking (and camera). DeKoven also gives tons of practical advice on working with actors and with crewmembers. "To get what you want, don't say it that way, say it this way." "Respect the actors." "Keep everyone well fed."
DeKoven sometimes gets a little over-analytical with her methods. She is constantly referring to the actor's brain as the actor's "computer," and telling the director he or she only needs to know which buttons to push to get the desired result. Her writing style is also repetitive and flat, presumably because it's a compilation of roughly edited teaching notes.
Perhaps in years to come I'll come back to this book and find it less insightful than I thought, but for now, it met me exactly where I needed it to be.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews