E212 - The Art of Performance with Brian Gilbert - Part 2

The Directors’ Take Podcast

This is Episode 12 in the second season of The Directors Take Podcast.

In this week’s episode your hosts Marcus Anthony Thomas and Oz Arshad are joined by Brian Gilbert, a BAFTA and Oscar Nominated Director and one of the lead tutors at the National Film and Television School, who specialises in the art of performance and working with actors.

This is the second part in our conversation with Brian, as we break down the fundamentals of working with actors and how you shape their performances for screen.

PART 2 covers…

-How do you create motivated blocking in a scene?

-How should you use rehearsal time with actors?

-Having helped develop some of the best filmmaking talent in the UK, has he seen any similarities between them?

-Brian talks us through how he met Stanley Kubrick on the set of 2001.

Our wonderful sponsor for this episode is THE NATIONAL FILM and TELEVISION SCHOOL.

We’ve also partnered with SCRIPTATION to offer our listeners an EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT on their software, which you can find on the link below…

http://scriptation.com/thedirectorstake

Biography

Brian Gilbert started out his career as a child actor, appearing several times on Australian television before earning a scholarship to read English Literature at Oxford University, where he began directing plays. After this he travelled for a while as an actor, before being accepted into the National Film and Television School where his graduation film, THE DEVOTEE won several awards and got him industry attention. From here he went on to make several feature films such as Sharma and Beyond, The Frog Prince, Vice Versa, Not without my Daughter, Tom and Viv which starred Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson and picked up two Oscar and two BAFTA nominations before making WILDE. A Biopic on Oscar Wilde starring Stephen Fry and Jude Law amongst others.

In 2004 he began working at the National Film and Television School and became a key figure there as it went on to establish itself as one of the top 15 film schools in the world as said by The Hollywood Reporter. As a lead tutor he has overseen the development of some of the UKs most exciting filmmaking talent such as Nick Rowland, Mahalia Belo and Rose Glass, and he specialises in the art of performance on screen.

NUGGET

Marcus: A Quote from Stanley Kubrick taken from the book The Film Director as Superstar by Joseph Gelmis.

‘A director is a kind of idea and taste machine; a movie is a series of creative and technical decisions, and it’s the director’s job to make the right decisions as frequently as possible. Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. It is a noisy, physical apparatus; it is difficult to concentrate - and you have to do it from 8:30 to 6:30, five days a week. It’s not an environment an artist would ever choose to work in. The only advantage it has is that you must do it, and you can’t procrastinate’.

Oz: Shot Designer App

Brian: The Homecoming (theatre) directed by Matthew Dunster and starring Jared Harris, Joe Cole and Lisa Diveney.

Emily Dickinson Poem - The Brain - is wider than the Sky

Credits

Music by Oliver Wegmüller

Socials

The Directors' Take: Twitter (X) & Instagram

Marcus: Twitter (X) & Instagram

Oz: Twitter (X) & Instagram

If you have any questions relating to the episode or have topics you would like covering in future releases, reach out to us at [e-mail].