Note From Tongal: “How to Direct Improv on Camera" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
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As audiences have gotten savvier, it has become increasingly common for people to speculate on the amount of improvisation in everything they watch. While Christopher Guest movies are known for being entirely improvised based off an outline, directors like Paul Feig are known for shooting their fully scripted projects with a certain looseness that enables performers like Melissa McCarthy to bolster the writing once cameras start rolling.
After spending six years performing and/or watching improv and sketch comedy every night in Chicago, I knew I wanted to adopt a similar approach when making SCRAPS, my feature debut as a writer/director.
We’ll give away a free download of this movie to the first person who can identify the one improvised line in this trailer.
Send guesses to scrapsmovieofficial@gmail.com.
I worked very hard on the screenplay for this movie and felt good about it before we started shooting, but the final product is so much stronger than what I wrote thanks to the flourishes the cast provided when tasked with improvising on camera.
For instance, our final scene was scripted to be just two lines long, but those two lines have since been removed entirely, and the now 2-minute closing scene is 100% improvised and 1,000% better than the ending I’d written. I’m therefore a huge advocate of letting your cast improvise on screen. With all that in mind, here are my five main takeaways and pieces of advice for anyone interested in doing this:
1. Encourage your cast to try any change they want, as long as it doesn’t involve the plot.
Whenever we had time to spare in our limited shooting schedule (we only had 112 production hours over the course of three weeks), I’d have the cast do a “fun-run,” or a take where they were encouraged to hit all the key story beats of a scene while improvising their dialogue and exploring new bits. This might seem like common sense, but any improv that deviated significantly from the film’s narrative turned out to be nearly impossible to include in the edit. While such moments were surprising and therefore hilarious to the cast and crew, they were ultimately unusable because they didn’t make sense alongside the other scenes we’d shot.
2. Trust that your actors have likely surpassed you in terms of knowing their characters.
Over the course of shooting, the actors will probably develop a more specific grasp on their characters than you ever had as the writer/director. While you’re busy trying to keep track of every single piece of the puzzle, they’re hyper-focused on their role. So, as long as you don’t shackle them to your original vision, they’ll think of things you never would have with your divided attention and preconceived notions. Stay open to and embrace the fact that, if you let them, other people can help tell this story so much better than you ever could on your own.
3. Feel free to chime in when necessary.
Don’t be afraid to serve as the bumper for this proverbial bowling lane; use your vantage point to guide your cast back towards picking up a strike. If your actors improvise something usable except for the fact that someone laughed/broke character (which tends to happen when new ideas get introduced after a series of scripted takes), don’t be afraid to interrupt and ask that they repeat themselves so you can get it recorded without any disruptions. Same goes for stopping to make any kind of technical adjustment. I promise it won’t ruin the fun, and you’ll be glad you have a clean take of this other option when you get to post. You should also feel free to chime in with any fresh ideas for jokes or moments the improvisation may have sparked in your own mind. Just do your best to wait for a good time to speak up so that you don’t kill the momentum of something that might be barreling toward greatness.
4. If you know your actors’ strengths as improvisers, cater to them.
For the final hour of our last night of production, I wrote 20 prompts for the cast to improvise their way through. I did my best to gear each of these prompts to the specific sensibilities of these actors, and many of the hardest laughs of the whole shoot ended up coming from this block of dedicated fun-runs. While only one of these improvised scenes ended up making it into the film (as the scene playing alongside the credits), we ultimately ended up with four extra bits that we’re very excited to eventually dole out for promotional purposes.
5. If nothing else, improvised takes can be great for morale.
Regardless of whether or not you think you’ll use any improvised moments for a given scene, if you have time to get some, do so. Even if your actors riff a bunch of plot twists you can’t include, doing a more playful take where your actors feel encouraged to go rogue will, at the very least, re-energize the cast. It’s also a great reminder that making your film should be one big collaboration where everyone’s ideas are valuable and have the potential to end up on screen.
