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The age - AUSTRALIA

Gifted Film Coach Reels in Admirers
By Lawrie Zion

Los Angeles is awash with writing and directing coaches. But in just three years, Joan Scheckel has emerged to become one of the most popular craft instructors in town, especially with film makers on the independent circuit. Scheckel, an actor and veteran of the avantgarde performing arts scene in New York, integrates the crafts of writing, directing and acting to explore every aspect of film craft.

Last week Scheckel was a guest at the Australian Writers Guild and Screen Producers conferences in Sydney, and tomorrow she will hold a oneday workshop in Melbourne at the VCA.

Scheckel says her technique is to "take the film and begin by looking at what is it that you want to say with the piece as a whole and how can that be articulated through the performance".

Though primarily designed for writers and directors, the workshops are attended by people from all areas of the film industry. Scheckel says it is important to bring together the creative talent and craftspeople in any production, so that all can agree on what a given project is trying to say.

"Making a film is the ultimate collaborative act and there can be so much division and confusion, that it may not end up putting over the very thing that the film was conceived to deliver."

Part of her aim is to get those involved in making the film to work outside existing structures and conventions. "In music, we can be so creative in everything from pop songs to symphonies - but in terms of film structure we're not thinking that creatively. We're tyrannised by the whole thing of two shot and long shot and close up - and that's not the way we see things in the world, especially when there's a feeling involved."

Scheckel has worked with Australian director Christina Andreef on her debut feature, Soft Fruit. Andreef says the experience was one of the highlights of her professional career.

"I won a fellowship to go overseas and had heard about her from my friend Alison Maclean (with whom Scheckel also worked for her film Jesus' Son). She's got great underground buzz in Los Angeles, and I spent six weeks in a small workshop with six other directors. We took with us problem areas in our scripts and, at the time, I was having great problems with the three sisters (in the Soft Fruit script). And Joan cast them for the purposes of the sessions with three blonde actresses - that's all you can get in LA," says Andreef.

"What I learnt most from her was how to put your scenes up on the floor and walking them through with actors and then watching and identifying the problems in the writing." Problems would then be addressed through improvisational games, a tool that Andreef says Scheckel uses to great effect.

"One of the things about improvisation is that it is often used inappropriately as an icebreaker. What I learnt from Joan is how to devise improvisational games that are meaningful and get through problems. We did a lot of work on building characters and understanding who they were, taping scenes and watching them back. It was something we don't get to do in Australia. It was like having a test drive of the film, before going through all the expense and stress of doing the real thing," Andreef says.

"If you don't know what it is that she does, it can sound quite namby pamby - but it profoundly isn't. If you're a creative person and you're involved deeply in a project and you want a big juicy topup, she's the person to see."

So what can people expect tomorrow? Scheckel says the focus will be on looking at structure and the essential ingredients of any emotional journey. "We'll work through the key building blocks of telling a good story. I strive to teach people how to creatively use those tools - I don't teach a formula, I think formulas are ruinous. But if you can work with an artist to think more creatively about what it is that they're doing, then you can wake up an individual voice in an individual way."

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