COURAGE AND CONFIDENCE

At TIFF 2022

The Toronto Film Festival is one of the top film festivals in the world. TIFF is committed to talent development and I am proud to have been either a Governor (one of four industry leaders who guide the emerging directors and actors through four days of workshops and career development) or to have presented a seminar there for the past 5 years.

Last year, of course the TIFF Talent Development was via Zoom. So this year it was thrilling to be able to fly to Toronto and work in the room, in three-dimensons with 22 emerging global directors and the Rising Stars, new creators who have films in the festival and whose careers are taking off.

Wonderful talents that have emerged from recent TIFF workshops include Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (ECHO and RESERVATION DOGS), Ellen Wong (SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD and GLOW) and Theodore Pellerin (NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS). I have been so proud to see New Zealanders there including Vinnie Bennett (HUMAN TRACES) and Dimitrius Schuster Koloamatangi (PANTHERS).

This year one of the directors was Miki Magasiva who was part of the portmanteau team for WE ARE STILL HERE and was the lead director of the TV series PANTHERS, screened in last year's selection. It was a joy to have him in the room and he generously opend the workshop with a blessing in the Samoan language and a karakia in the Māori language. In doing this, Miki grounded us and started us off in the right way.

The photographs from my workshop are agreat record of the work we did together. So this Substack is a visual one, a series of photographs with a caption below each one explaining what we are up to.

All photographs courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival

I began by talking about Entry and Exit codes for actors and for directors. We played with some exercises to help build personal courage and confidence so that directors and actors can begin work robustly.

Here I am showing the group a quick, easy exercise I learnt from Ita O'Brien, the first instigator of Intimacy Coordination — running cold water over your wrists to refresh and re-set. This is a tiny, easy re-set gesture. Taken further along the spectrum you might have a cold shower, making sure you keep on breathing regularly through that experience. The ultimate would be to ocean-swim in really cold water. Here's some science about this exercise that can help you to lift your mood and feel prepared to do your best work.

Our next step in the search for the confidence and courage to step into a rehearsal was to try Amy Cuddy's Power Pose.

You can watch her TED Talk here.

Amy's study has found that the use of physical poses that indicate power and confidence help you in turn to feel powerful and confident. Power-posers "experienced elevations in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and increased feelings of power and tolerance for risk."

Through the progression of these photos, you can see development in the participants in terms of their joy, relaxation and capacity to create relationships. Check out these next photos!

To cross "Le Va" as Miki would call it in Samoan (the space-between) and to create complicite and connection, we played several games (or Les Jeux, as they are called in French). This one is called SPINNING FINGERS and you can see how to do it here. In these photos above, you can see directors Zhannat Alshanova, Carol Nguyen, Araya Mengesha, Gavin Seal and Caleb Ryan developing connectivity and relaxation as they play. You can read more about Le Va in my Substack article WHITE SPACE.

If you have ever worked with me, you will have played this game DOUBLE DOUBLE THIS THIS.

In this photo here you see two of the TIFF Rising Stars, Carmen Madonia and Natalia Aranguren playing it. What is the purpose? To warm the space, to create relationship, to think about your partner rather than yourself, to relax the text and to create a unique personal connection for the camera to read.

My purpose in this workshop was to move this group of creatives along from nervousness and caution to fellow-feeling and freedom in order that they could all maximise the experiences they were about to have over the next few days. In the world of gardening, you would call this preparing the ground.

To do this I wanted to connect them up to each other in a number of different pairs and groups, playing a number of different game-forms. Here in these photos above, you can see the group attaining a high level of freedom-in-space and relaxation, playing the game PIF PAF POF.

And in the two photos here you can see us finally beginning to approach text, using two very simple ways of running a scene using touch and low volume.

In the first photo Carmel and I are demonstrating the very simple exercise Holding Hands. With eyes closed, we whisper the words of the scene to each other while holding hands. In doing this we understand somatically (in the body) that the scene is not about the words — instead it is about our relationship to each other whether in conflict or connection. The words are important of course, but they are not the most important component of the scene.

In the second-to-last photo you can see Carmel and Natalia stepping-up this exercise to one I call Heart to Heart. In this exercise they first ask each other's permission to place the palm of their hand on the other's upper sternum, place their own hand over the other's hand and then close their eyes and run the lines of the scene in a whisper.

Of course in doing this they have to know their lines deeply. This is an important part of these exercises, you can't have your script in hand. To my mind, by the time you get to set the actors should not need their script in hand!

These actors have to step slightly in towards each other to be able to reach each other's sternum comfortably. This is also an important part of the exercise. They are slightly closer to each other than they would normally be. In this way they are fast-tracking their intimacy, but in a safe way.

And the whisper is important too. A whisper takes out the performative element. It reduces the focus on the text. It frees the actors from learnt rhythms. And it makes you have to listen more.

And there you have it!

Our final action in this workshop was to gather together in a group and sign-out using DOUBLE DOUBLE THIS THIS in a big circle.

Here you can see us doing exactly that. Look at these faces. Can you see that in one hour the participants have achieved the great quality of unselfconsciousness — because they are now thinking about the others rather than thinking about themselves.

They have reversed the flow.