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ELA 4: Directors Make Choices 3 Views
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Description:
Directors make direct decisions that have direct effects on the stories they direct. Now, kindly direct yourself to that play button to learn more.
Transcript
- 00:04
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:13
Let's say one day you had a craving for cheesecake, but you were way too lazy to make the cake [Girl searches for cheesecake recipe online]
- 00:18
yourself.
- 00:19
So you wrote down all of the steps and collected all of the ingredients…. [Girl walks away with a list of ingredients]
- 00:21
…and then you gave it all to your little brother.
Full Transcript
- 00:24
Sure, you gave him all the tools he needed to make that cake… but are you gonna end
- 00:27
up with your idea of the perfect cheesecake?
- 00:29
Well, no… you'll probably end up with your younger brother's interpretation of a cheesecake. [Girl thinking of her little brothers cheesecake]
- 00:33
Which might not be quite as rad.
- 00:35
…and might also be on fire….yikes. [Boy walks into room with cheesecake on fire]
- 00:37
Anyway, this same principle can be applied to plays.
- 00:40
When you hand off your completed play to a director, there's no guarantee that it'll [Woman hands director a copy of her play]
- 00:45
turn out exactly the way you wrote it.
- 00:47
Sometimes, the director will decide to add, change, or remove things from the play to
- 00:50
change how their audience will view the performance.
- 00:53
This could mean adding a new character, changing a specific line of dialogue, moving a scene [Coop discussing director's edits]
- 00:57
to a new setting, adding a new action for a character, or adding any number of special
- 01:02
lighting and sound effects to draw attention to something.
- 01:04
Really, the director could do anything.
- 01:06
They could add a lion in there if they wanted to. [A director in a graveyard and a lion appears]
- 01:08
Which…would make sense in The Lion King.
- 01:10
Maybe not so much in Hamlet.
- 01:11
This is why so many directors are able to direct classic plays like Shakespeare and
- 01:15
have it feel completely fresh and original each time. [People walking outside a theater]
- 01:18
Take Romeo and Juliet.
- 01:19
One director might do a traditional performance.
- 01:22
Another might choose to set the play in modern New York.
- 01:24
While another might turn it into a swingin' musical. [Man in modern New York and a disco ball appears]
- 01:27
Or even a contemporary mime performance.
- 01:29
Directors can take great liberties in turning scripts into a performance they can call their
- 01:33
own, which is one of the great strengths of theater that makes it so exciting. [Mime waving in the crowd]
- 01:37
And if there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that playwrights can’t be control
- 01:41
freaks.
- 01:42
Because no matter what happens, they might just end up with a lion. [Mime on stage and lion appears]
- 01:44
And if we said we weren't going to end this video with a stupid pun….guess what?
- 01:48
We'd be lion. [People run away and Mime sitting in the audience]
- 01:50
Ehehehehehe.
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