Recently, I was speaking to a group of actors about a movie I’ll be directing next summer, and they asked about my casting process. I told them all directors are looking for the same thing in any actor: Does the actor speak our cinematic language?
Actors would do well to remember that directors want to direct movies for one reason and one reason only: They love movies. They grew up devouring a steady diet of movies and they want to make movies that are inspired by the movies and directors who came before them. Those directors were also inspired by the directors who came before them and so on back to D.W. Griffith and his contemporaries who first began developing cinematic language over a hundred years ago. All movies ever since have been inspired by that cinematic language, and that cinematic language has continued to be developed by each successive generation of directors, and in turn handed down to the generation of directors who followed, and so on.
Just as actors have a common language they share through the traditional actor’s process and have handed down to successive generations of actors for over a hundred years, so have filmmakers developed their own common language which they have handed down to
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