I'm not method or anything like that, but sometimes you get the scenes and you're like 'Really, Damon [Lindelof]? More of this? Can I have one scene where it's a walk in the park?' But he doesn't do that. He puts every character through their paces.
Sometimes a scene may be about one thing, and it may end up still being about that, but the emotionality of it comes from somewhere else, or the humor of it comes from somewhere else, and it gives it that real-life quality.
I don't really worry about the size of the part much any more. It's nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there's something playable there, and if it's interesting to do, then that's nice.
Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.
I love to do very long and complicated scenes.
I find that most of my scripts have a lot more scenes than most films, so the average movie might have 100 scenes, my average script has 300 scenes.
It's important to say that the more challenging a scene is, in a way, the more fun it is because the more of my job I get to do.
Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.
I think it's much harder to have a long dialogue scene than an action scene. An action scene is long, but it's not really hard. It's kind of boring, really. It looks good at the end, but to shoot it, it's not the most exciting thing.
The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.
From the director's point of view, it's infinitely easier to do violence than to do a good dramatic scene.
Some scenes take days and weeks, and some scenes take an hour.
I had one scene in 'Invisible' with 12 actors delivering dialog at the same time.
It's just about trying to find material where I'm doing more than just being a plot device. I want to actually get to do scenes that go to interesting places and are challenging to me.
It's a terrifying feeling when you have to do multiple takes of a tricky scene because the focus puller cant keep a sharp image.
I love to do very long and complicated scenes. I like to have this impression that we are all working together, where you can see all the technicians and everybody is really doing the same thing at the same time. With close-ups, of course you have the crew there, but most of them are just around and it doesn't involve that many people.
I was grateful to have two weeks to shoot this one scene in Harry Potter. It's a big, big scene, but they have to deliver. And they have high expectations.
