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Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.

Stanislavski

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ZINfxVkic

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zYVncw9Hs4

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Character Bio
Mark Maddon was born in Glasgow, Scotland 02/11/95, he attended his local primary school until his parents moved down to Manchester where he went to High School. During his school years he was not very academic and was usually at the lower level of the classes. He was quite quiet in nature and just kept himself to himself but would sometimes say something without realising he said it. He spent majority of his free time gaming and watching tv and not aspiring to much or have any ambition in life to become something. He his still living with his parents and they are now forcing Mark to get a job or they threatened to kick him out of the house. So as much as he doesn't want to go to the interview he really wants this job so he is not kicked out. This brings us to why he is at the interview. He tends to stay quiet and is nervous but wants to impress the Interviewer but doesn't put on a face and stays himself throughout. He doesn't have much confidence himself and isn't even sure what job he is applying for.

Mark is a simple happy go lucky sort of person. He does not know what he wants in life or what to do and is forced by his parents to attend this interview. However he is passionate about the interview and really wants the job. He can be clumsy and get easily confused or lost in thought almost like a doper character from Snow White and just goes with the flow. That being said though he has a very caring nature and always means well.

Beliefs- He was brought up a roman catholic by his mum and dad and goes to church with them on the weekends and where he feels comfortable and at ease but where part of his loving nature comes from as well.

Hobbies- Playing video games and watching tv. His favourite show is The Simpsons and loves watching Football and supports Celtic and Manchester City.

Relationships- He has a good relationship with his parents and often helps his mum bake, but can be very lazy and not clean up as much as he should and still expects his parents to run around for him and take care of him.

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Pre- Production
My character for this film was Mark Maddon. During Pre-production week my biggest task was developing the character so that he would come across genuine on screen. The first thing I did was speak with the director and discuss our vision of Mark and how we see him portrayed in the film.  Fortunately for me we shared the same vision and idea of Mark which meant I was able to carry out my preparation with creative freedom. I based my character off Charlie Day’s character Dale Arbus from “Horrible Bosses”.

Because the comedy comes a lot from the visuals and body language, I had to make sure my character displayed who he is physically, and I took a lot of inspiration from Mr. Bean. My character is quite socially awkward and is a very quirky person. He is almost like a child in a man’s body and as the script stated he was a school drop out still living at home with his parents it allowed me to play him this way almost like he hasn’t grown up because he hasn’t needed to.

Costume wise I had quite a big input into what he would wear and decided that instead of wearing baggy clothes almost like he is borrowing his dads I wanted his clothes to be tight and look small to give the idea that he hasn’t bought or wore a suit since he was at school. So, this is something I worked with myself and resourced my own shoes, shirt and trousers and the costume helped find my blazer.

In terms of rehearsals we ran through the script very regularly to see what works and what doesn’t in terms of comedy what actions and what word placement worked best. This was important as the director gave us freedom to ad lib at certain places and improvise if we there was a moment that could be played with. We also choreographed the activity parts of the film that take place during the characters interviews. We worked out where the camera would be and how much room we had and who would be in shot at what time.

My last preparations were actioning the script breaking down every scene to what my characters relationship is to everybody else, the environment that I’m in, the situation at hand and what my character wants and the how he plans to achieve that and what is preventing him to do so.

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Production Week 1
The first day of production I felt ready and believed my character was fully developed and was excited to start shooting. We started filming with the activities during the interview, these scenes required no dialogue from me, so I had to show the character through my physicalization. This was the same as the second day where we spent the filming day finishing the activities. The hardest part of these 2 days was the scene where my character is responding to music and becomes upset. However, the direction given was for my character to cry and I found this challenging as crying is something that I really have to focus on and think about and thus took me away from the character as I was more focused on trying to get the tears to come. I tried to use Stanislavski’s method of emotional memory and this helped to some extent but couldn’t fully produce.

The third day of filming was the waiting room scene, so this was my first day of filming with dialogue. I felt fully prepared and ready for this scene. I enjoyed doing this scene and felt I gave good performances for every take. The problem I had was having to get every take right from the start which can been quite pressuring as we had very little time in the space to film as well as being disturbed quite frequently which meant a lot of the filming time got eaten away so we had to make sure every take we did was not just usable but was the best performance I can do. I felt in character throughout and my performance had the elements of comedy that the film requires throughout.

On the Thursday (the 4th day of filming) we had to do pickups from the first 2 days as some of the shots weren’t great and the director wanted extra footage for cover as well. This was quite easy for me as I simply repeated the same performance I gave on the first 2 days for those scenes.

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Production week 3
On the first day (Monday) of the second week we were back in the main space (Downstairs of SU) where we were finishing off the last of the interview activities. In this scene the characters are asked to organize themselves in a line in accordance to the statements given. I.e. Oldest to youngest and Tallest to shortest. The issue I encountered in this scene was that this was not choreographed in pre-production and the characters did not have official placements in the line when carrying out the statements. This meant that when it came to film the actors were a little confused as to how we should go about it and, in the end, improvised and went with what our characters would think. I believe that by doing this we found moments of comedy that perhaps weren’t there before but also believe that it can come across as quite a messy scene. I believe my performance was good and I stayed in character throughout and just accepted whatever happens and react as my character would.

The following day I filmed my interview which is when the interviewer and Mark speak about his future job. I found this scene the most challenging to do as it had a lot of comedic moments in it and this meant breaking out of character and laughing which myself and everyone filming did. I believe this is a natural thing however and would happen on professional sets where a funny scene is being filmed and the actors or crew break into laughter. I think once we did a few takes we were able to control ourselves better and I was able to stay composed in order to get good takes. I believe that as the crew were laughing at my performance that I achieved what I wanted as an actor within that scene.

On the Wednesday we filmed the picnic scene which was in the Botanist in Media City. This scene was challenging in the sense we were in an uncontrolled location as there were workers going about their day in the restaurant. This meant we had to make sure when we had the chance to film each take was of good performance and of good quality. There wasn’t a lot of dialogue for my character in this scene and felt that the scene required more comedy than it was given. So, I decided to take a risk and improvise within the scenes. Initially the crew were not expecting anything from me so when I did improvise, they began to laugh and liked my ideas which was to interact with the other characters without them knowing as well as using a piece of cheese string and turning into a moustache and interacting with it in as many weird possible ways as I could. The director liked what I offered and so those improvisations then led to it being a permanent part of the scene. This helped me realize as an actor it’s okay to take risks and try ideas because they can work and add to the scene or the worst is, they say no to that idea.

Later that day we filmed the bedroom scene where Mark is woken up by his mother as he is running late for the interview. This scene was originally scripted but when we got on set, I came up with ideas that I believed would enhance the movie. I felt my character would have done something very literal such as his mum saying the night before to get ready for tomorrow, Mark would have literally got ready and went to sleep in his interview clothes which is the idea that I came up with. During the scene Mark is in bed wearing a onesie and his mother wakes him up and says he needs to get ready and Mark responds saying he is ready and proceeds to show he is wearing his clothes underneath his onesie. I believe at the time this idea worked well and once again added to the scene but will only be able to truly tell once we see the audience’s reaction.