PART 2 of Responding To the Environment: A Reflection with Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell

Anthony Hopkins, Jordan Woods-Robinson, and Colin Farrell on the set of Solace

In my previous post, I explained part of my day on set sharing the screen with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell. If you haven't read it yet, check it out first to get caught up. (It's a quick read.)

This story will be focused more solely on Colin. What I learned from him both on and off camera.

I mentioned that we were filming a roughly 9-minute scene and the director was doing it in 1 continuous take. The scene spanned multiple rooms of the apartment, focusing on first my character, then Colin's character, then a reveal of Anthony's character, then a scene in which all 3 of us were present and the camera focused on different elements with each take.

This is not only a highly collaborative shot in which all of the storytellers need to be on the same page (director, actors, DP, camera person, focus puller, sound, lighting, set, you name it...) but it's also a highly technical shot.

Each moment has its place in the story. It's like watching dominoes fall, as we see one moment lead into the next. They can't fall at the same time or in the wrong direction or else the entire chain will be broken.

So how do we pull this off take after take without becoming robotic?

First, a side story before we talk about what Colin taught me.

My character was drinking from a champagne bottle as I walked through the apartment. And then, during the confrontation, I sit at a glass table. With no coasters. Glass champagne bottle + glass table = very loud noise in an echoey apartment.

Luckily, I had enough awareness to make sure I was gentle with my bottle placement and also try not to cover up the other actors' lines. Sound will need clean takes of the text in order to avoid ADR in the editing process.

So... glass bottle, glass table, Colin has dialogue. Now we're caught up.

As we get to that moment in each take, I keep being aware of the other actors' text so that I wouldn't get in their way. My bottle placement was contingent on their dialogue.

But then, on one particular take, I remember there being an ongoing SILENCE. As I kept inching my bottle down, waiting for the inevitable clink of glass on glass, I was filled with doubt that I'd somehow messed up or drawn attention to myself in the worst way.

Closer, closer... contact. A thunk echoes throughout the room.

Over my right shoulder, I hear Colin release a guttural noise that was somewhere between frustration and pleasure. I wasn't sure if it was an outward aggravation at me for taking so long or if it was a character-driven involuntary release of tension.

Either way, it was ALIVE and true and in direct relation to the information he has just received from the environment.

I realized right then that he had been taking ALL of his cues off the other moments in the room. He wasn't driving anything, he was simply another domino in the chain that couldn't do anything until the domino before it had fallen and shared its inertia with him.

And that next line of dialogue, for him, came after the bottle clink. So as I inched down, it was building tension for him. He was powerless, he was at the mercy of others in the room, he was forced to live in this ongoing purgatory until another force allowed him to escape.

He had been doing this all afternoon, and I had just become aware of it. I was aware of the dominoes, sure, but I was so focused on this one domino of setting the bottle down that I hadn't thought to zoom out at how this whole scene was a series of moment-to-moment dominoes, in which nothing can happen until the moment before it has happened.

And THAT is what keeps us from going robotic. We're no longer telling the same story each time. We are waiting for the impulse - which comes from OUTSIDE of us - to hit in order to move forward. And that impulse can and should hit differently each time, depending on how it was delivered.

I can relate this to Meisner's Pinch and Ouch or Viewpoints' Kinesthetic Response. Either offers understanding of this phenomenon and both are trainable.

But it's one thing to understand it theoretically and another to stare it in the face as it's delivered by a powerhouse actor who isn't afraid to embrace it fully.

Mr. Farrell allowed the environment and everything within it to be the vehicle for his performance that day... and that is something I'll never forget.