A Quote by Meagan Tandy

When I was a kid, I'd create my own movies at home. I'd record myself doing a scene, then stop the camera, change my clothes, and do a scene as another character. It sounds silly, but I just loved to tell stories.
I know it sounds silly, but in auditions for film or TV, the words aren't as important - you need to get into the character and have the gist of the scene. But in theater, if you don't do it word for word, then you throw off your scene partner.
I'm a visual filmmaker so the camera is a big part of my storytelling tool and it's something that I really rely on to tell a scene or create the suspense that I need and create the emotion of a scene or a sequence.
[While voicing] you have to create a feeling for what happened before a scene, what's going to happen after a scene, and what you are doing in a scene. You need to use your imagination even more and once your emotions are up, then your voice and expressions will go accordingly.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
I look at it scene-by-scene. Whether it's a historical character or not, whatever, on the page is one thing and delving into the history or somebody is one thing, but making something work for an audience in front of a camera is another exercise and you bring whatever authenticity you can to it.
have a much harder time writing stories than novels. I need the expansiveness of a novel and the propulsive energy it provides. When I think about scene - and when I teach scene writing - I'm thinking about questions. What questions are raised by a scene? What questions are answered? What questions persist from scene to scene to scene?
All directors on all sets behave slightly differently depending on what the scene is. For example, if you are doing a love scene, which is intimate then the director is likely to be intimate. If you are doing a scene where everyone is mucking around and laughing then the director is likely to start with that. If you are playing a scene which us incredibly heavy and everyone getting killed then there are probably not many laughs on the set.
My editor and I remain very disciplined. It's just sometimes when you're making a film, you get into the cutting room and you see a scene that's slowing you down in a certain section, but if you remove that scene then, emotionally or story-wise, another scene a half-hour later won't have the same impact. You just get stuck with it.
When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play.
It's always different for whatever the scene asks for but usually, I listen to music before the scene just to get into the mood, mellow myself out and really put myself into the character's shoes. I zone out from everything going on around me and just focus on what I have to do. From there, I just let it happen.
What I would do is I would just remember the scene and I'd go home and I'd write out the scene from memory. And anything I didn't remember I would just fill in the blanks myself and then go and give it to a classmate and then we'd do it.
In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.
When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'
I actually went to see 'Rushmore,' and I came late, and I missed myself. It was great, that scene. I caught that scene the other day on TV, funny enough, the first scene that you see with Jason Schwartzman and myself, where we talk about his grades. That's a brilliant scene, and I have to say, we play it brilliantly.
Improv is more than just spitting out a bunch of funny stuff that's unrelated to the material. You have to stay in character, you have to react and respond as the character you're trying to play. You have to service the story, and I think improv training has helped with my listening, responding, and my audition technique. It's sounds so silly, but it's true. Because not only do you improvise during the audition, but once you get the part, they'll say, "Throw away everything. Just improv this scene. Do whatever you want." Someone could panic if they're not used to doing something like that.
There are certainly stories that I used to tell myself as a kid that did influence 'The Cabinet of Wonders.' There's a scene in the novel where there's a flood that bursts through the castle, and one of my favorite things to do when I was a kid at school was imagine what school would be like if there was a sudden flood.
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