In an interview with The New York Times, Gore Verbinski talked about his own fashion risk — instead of recording voice actors individually in a studio, he produced their dialogue by having them act out their scenes together. What he described as motivation by fear, I call really, REALLY, smart.
I guess fear, really. Fear of a microphone and a cold environment and nobody’s reacting to anybody. We didn’t want a performance that was too clean. If people are running, I want to hear them out of breath in the next line when they stop and talk.
For the actors, he described the approach as a shock initially, because of the speed (10 pages a day since no setup is required). They are used to doing movies where you do one line, you go back to your trailer for two hours, you come back out and you do another line. Verbinski’s approach ended up being “incredibly liberating.”
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I think this is brilliant! I used to keep the cameras rolling and do continuous takes. It loosened up the actors and enabled some really natural performances.