What happens to a person's behavior when you put a camera in front of them? It seems that as soon as someone becomes aware of being filmed or watched, their behavior is altered slightly. This makes it almost impossible to capture truly candid and "real" shots. Even the best actors in the world go through intense training just to appear as if they are behaving in a natural and realistic way.
I my work I want to explore this delicate change in behavior that the camera can cause. A camera brings not just a single gaze, but the gaze of many who will watch the film and alter the reality of the subject. I want to explore a hyperrealism in narrative film making, mixing scripted scenes with candidly documented ones and discover when real behavior become constructed acting.
At what point, in the course of committing a person's action on film, does the reality become constructed by the hand of the director, the editor? We see this commonly in reality TV shows. Where even in the events may have happened, they have been heavily edited to portray a particular narrative. Nonetheless, these scenarios are presented as examples of real life behavior. So, at what point does "reality" film making become scripted narrative?
As an actor I have trained for many years to commit to a style which appears as natural as possible. This training has in many ways forced me to blur the lines between the constructed space of a scene and my actual emotional state. As both and actor and a filmmaker, I am inspired to push these limits and to a new window of realism in art.
