Arts & Entertainment

Selecting a Performance Case Study: Jack O’Connell in Money Monster

Lesson time 05:18 min

Using Jack O’Connell’s performance in Money Monster, Jodie shows you what she considers when selecting a performance from multiple takes. Learn how to review dailies to make choices for your own film.

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Topics include: Selecting a Performance Case Study: Jack O’Connell in Money Monster

Jodie Foster

Teaches Filmmaking

In her first-ever online class, Jodie Foster teaches you how to bring stories from page to screen with emotion and confidence.

Preview

Well, we've seen how it works when you have one perfect take. And you're able to build on that. Sometimes, you have to do a lot of takes. And as an actor, that can be a painful process, because you have to be able to find spontaneity, you have to make it feel real. You have to discover it in that moment as if it was just happening to you. You may have to do that 20, 30, 40, sometimes a hundred times, David Fincher. And that, say-- it's an interesting skill. You know? How do you bring that up again? You can't manufacture it. Sometimes, that means that the takes will change over time. The takes that you did in the beginning are just never going to be the same as the ones you did in the end. And maybe those last takes are better, because you're exhausted, because you're sweaty, because it doesn't have the same spin that it might have had. Or maybe like a ball that's moving, you have a momentum of emotion, that by the time that you get to take 20 or 25, your character is just sort of giving everything that he has. In this case, Jack O'Connell is finally, at the end of the movie, after having lived for the entire movie, trying to get somebody to acknowledge his pain. Not even to give him his money back, not even to give him his wife back, not even to give him his life back. He knows if he's caught, if he ends this day, he'll end up going to prison probably for the rest of his life. He just wants to hear something that acknowledges what he's suffered and that says that he matters. We'll get to see my poor torturing of Jack and making him do take after take after take. I think that the takes were wonderful. I think that there were some technical things that I was trying to accomplish as well. Don't forget that he's going to have to give this emotional performance, but he's also going to have to make sure that he doesn't hide his face with his hand, that his hand is always in frame, that when he turns to his left shoulder, that he doesn't block the other actor, so that the camera can see past, that he remains in focus. There's any number of different technicals, constraints that an actor has to simultaneously help with and collaborate with and participate with. He's going to have to give this performance on one hand, but he's going to have to also accommodate the camera so that what we're hoping for will end up on screen. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. That's all I wanted to hear, man. That's all I wanted to hear, man. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. - That's all I wanted to hear, man. - Wonderful thing about Jack O'Connell is that he loves a kind of primitive language. And sometimes, he speaks a different vocabulary than I do. And so both of us have to translate. He just wants me to talk to him in terms of character. So he doesn't want me to talk about filmmaking. He doesn't respond as m...

About the Instructor

Go behind the scenes with two-time Oscar-winner Jodie Foster, star of Silence of the Lambs and director of Little Man Tate. In her first online film class, she’ll teach you how to bring your vision to life. Jodie discusses her experience on both sides of the camera to guide you through every step of the filmmaking process, from storyboarding to casting and camera coverage. Everyone has a story. Learn how to tell yours.

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Jodie Foster

In her first-ever online class, Jodie Foster teaches you how to bring stories from page to screen with emotion and confidence.

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