FREE Film School – Assignment 4: Two Person Conversation
Last week, your job was to shoot and edit a documentary illustrating an activity. For example, a delivery driver delivering packages to houses. This week’s assignment is another shooting and editing task, this time a fictional scene.
For this task you will need 2 actors (or people prepared to say lines in front of a camera). Plus you will need a scene to film. This can either be a scene from an existing film, play or book or you can write your own. I suggest the scene is no longer than 2 pages long (movie script format).
A two person conversation is one of the most common scenes in a narrative movie. Depending how you set it up, they can be more simple to film than other scenes. This is in fact one reason they appear so often and fill much of the time of lower budget films.
Therefore, this is an especially useful exercise for anyone intending to shoot their own short or full length film, funding it themselves. Filming dialogue is as a rule cheaper than other types of scene. Here are some of the advantages:
Why Dialogue is Cheap to Film
Here are some of the pros and cons of filming a two person conversation:
Pros
- can be in a static, self-contained location.
- actors basically just have to learn their lines rather than complex actions.
- complex action takes time to choreograph and is trickier to film and edit
- filming can be quick and simple, using over the shoulder shots
- once you are set up you can just plough through a whole scene
Cons
- getting good audio is vital
- can be visually limiting
Tips for filming a two-person dialogue scene
If you’re intending to one day make a dialogue-driven film, then this is a great opportunity to learn. And it’s better to learn now than when you are starting your first feature film. But here are some basic tips to think about before trying a two person conversation.
- Find a quiet location that you can use for the whole day/night without being disturbed
- Get someone to record good sound and use the best mics you can get hold of
- Keep it simple, shot-wise
Like I say, if you intend on shooting your own movie at some point which has a lot of dialogue, on-set audio is extremely important. If you shoot a 20 minute film which is 80% dialogue and the audio turns out to be unusable, that’s a bit of a nightmare. It’s one thing dubbing the occasional line of dialogue, but doing the same for long dialogue passages isn’t fun.
So, use the over the shoulder shot and reverse shot. The reverse shot is simply the opposite angle, on the 2nd actor. Also, bear in mind the 180 degree rule.
For lighting, you can always simply set the actors next to a window (side on). This way both actors get a nice side light with equal shadow.
Here’s the twist
I have an exercise for you which will stretch your filmmaking skills further. Most times film schools set this assignment they’re expecting just a simple dialogue shooting and editing task. But I’m going to ask you to do something different.
When you edit this scene I want you to produce 2 versions. The first version you can edit in the way you think works best. But for the second version, edit the scene so that you only show the reactions of the actors. In other words, in this version you will never see an actor speaking, only reacting to what the other actor is saying.
Why do this? You will learn a huge amount about working with actors and what really counts. When you start to edit the scene this way, it will give you a very different perspective and the scene will have a totally different feel.
Also, if you know when filming you need to create this second edit, hopefully your mind will be focused on how the actors react too.
Acting is reacting
Most inexperienced actors, writers and filmmakers focus totally on the dialogue, not just in a two person conversation. This happens when writing, when filming and when actors prepare. You’ll find everyone is worrying about the lines and not about what happens in between.
If you ever watch student films and wonder what’s missing that you can’t quite put your finger on, often it’s this. The actors and the camera focus on what is being said and outside of that everyone (including actors) switches off. But by focusing on what happens between the lines, you improve everything in the scene, especially the performances.
Of course, you can overdo this. Because we still hope it will come out looking natural. So it shouldn’t just be a reaction for the sake of it, but reactions that make sense in the scene. A non-reaction might be more appropriate.
For example, a woman is trying to ignore her mother who is scolding her for some reason. But how she ignores her still tells the story. Is she just sitting looking blankly at the wall? Or is she deliberately scrolling through her phone? Is there some pain in her face as her mother’s words hit home? Or is she beyond caring at this stage (but really she does care underneath).
Do you see how an actor reacts can completely change the context of the story? And this is often missing in films made by people who only just started making them. Like I say, everyone focuses on what is being said. Yet it’s what is unsaid which is often the most powerful part of the scene.
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