A Quote by Katie Wech
I always have to start with a character that I can really hook into, and then build from there. I have writer friends who start from a world, an object or some kind of concept that they then hone and widdle into a story. But, for me, it has to be a character that I can really sink my teeth into and live with, for months and months.
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Usually I start with a concept, which I then sketch out so that I can get a feel for the character. The character doesn't really become real to me until I draw them.
The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.
I don't do all the background and the worldbuilding before I start the story. What I do is I work out the bare minimum I need to start the story, and often that really is a bare minimum - it's a character in a situation, and I know nothing about the character, I know nothing about the situation, and then I think about it for a long time, and make notes about where I think the story is going to go and so on, but I don't really make notes to do with the background or the magic system or the world.
I feel really good, then I start to practice, and then I think maybe in a couple of months I can come back and I really believe it. Then I do a bit too much and wake up one morning not feeling well again.
I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.
I feel like Hendrick just plays games in a way with NASCAR. I feel like they always start the year off kind of bad to like show NASCAR that they're being nice and cooperating and following the rules and stuff, and then it gets a couple of months in, and then they start cheating and finding some speed.
And so not only do you have to make that work, you can't really start putting the thing together in any form because some of the shots are very short and obviously many of them take so long, you're waiting months and months and months before you can see if it's going to be working emotionally.
The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character. I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.
I just didn't want to get bored playing a character, and that's kind of the benefit of doing films; you've lived with a character for four or five months and that's it, and you walk away from that character and you feel like you told a story.
You're in everyone's homes every week as this character, and they feel like they know you, and then they start to really define you as this character that you portray.
It's going to sound like the easy answer, but I love them both. I do! I really don't prefer one over the other. With movies, you really dive into a character for two to three months, but then it's gone. With a TV series, you have a constant location you're living in, and you're always working on the same character along with people who are like your own family. I'm lucky to have done both.
When I start thinking about a role, I read the script a few times and then let it sink in - and then take some time to develop how that character is going to play out and what he's going to do.
It's interesting because the way J.J. cuts - we're very close with our editors as well, so it's kind of the first cut and then he went back and started tightening things up, etc, then loosing things when it was too tight. Then you start watching it and you start figuring out performance - not performance, character-wise I should say, who you're really able to follow, whose journey is harder to follow, and you make all that work.
The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me.
It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is.
I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.
