The Other Boleyn Girl

Casting Directors

Notwithstanding the 1,001 historical inaccuracies, I love the film “The Other Boleyn Girl” (American version). It spoke to me: the actors; the characterizations; the director’s work; as well as the music score written for each character. It all came together. I am always impressed by the film industry’s efforts that you and I become part of, and understand, the events and characterizations we see on screen. The film industry spoon-feeds information to us, as we, the audience, allot them fewer than ten seconds to tell us who, what, when, where and why.

The profession I most admire in film is the role of the casting director. Many times I feel he should receive an additional bonus. [History Channels’ casting director for “Battles BC” should get a very, very, very special big bonus.] He requires a sensitivity special to his job; narrowing the field to the select few to be chosen who best represent the script’s character. He must comprehend the requirements of a wide international audience. It is crucial that he assist us, the audience, to know which character is which; in other words, to tell the characters apart. The casting director can handicap a viewer if he lacks the awareness of inherent visual similarities found in both cultural and familial resemblances. His is a complex responsibility. In reality, cultures and families resemble each other and to an outsider, like myself, watching a foreign film, at times it is hard to tell the father from the uncle, the uncle from the cousin, the aunt from the mother, and the sister from sister without the fine distinction of physical nuance.

Thanks to the visual dissimilarities of Anne, Mary, their family, and yummy Henry VIII, I could tell the characters apart. [Based on Holbein’s portraits of Henry VIII, I never understood the seduction of a powerful king and the women who threw themselves at him. Or, did Henry fill his court with accommodating women?] I found the movie to be less about important historical figures than the dynamics of family and family ambitions. I am aware of two dissimilar sisters chasing the same boyfriend; sisters that, today, could live across from me.

While viewing families in movies, I ask myself, how would a portrait painter show the dynamics, similarities, and/or dissimilarities when, in truth, families look remarkably alike? Or put another way, how would a portrait painter show what’s going on.

Because a portrait painter tries to capture that same family dynamic that takes hundreds of personnel in the film industry. While the casting director works backward from what I do, our final results “must be the same.” He works from the script and the author’s and/or director’s ideas of a prescribed personality; whereas the portrait artist seeks out the personality in the existing image. The casting director picks an image from thousands of choices, whereas the portrait painter captures a thousand nuances in one image.

Double that dilemma by two. How would a portrait artist reveal the dynamics between two sisters knowing there are years of hidden emotions? I can’t just put them side by side and hope for the best. Who is dominant? What if one sister is a gray little mouse and the other sister a pit bull? Placement, alone, never offers a solution.

Also, much like the film industry, the portraitist must keep more than one or two people happy. We must consider all the other relatives who will view the finished portrait: aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and in-laws. At times a client doesn’t know how he or she feels about a portrait until someone says, “that’s really nice!”

In addition, the portraitist will want to consider the hundred years of past history and his/her place in it. The method of application, colors used, brush strokes, paint, pastel, watercolor, charcoal, pencil, and/or clay, all determine the era, and the artist’s perceptions within that era, in which the portrait was created.

A popular misconception is to assume a portrait captures what a camera captures; i.e., that one second in time. When, in fact, what a finished portrait accomplishes is similar to what the film industry accomplishes (and what the movie audience experiences); that is, the disclosure of personality that stands up to re-reviewing over time and future generations. Our photographs live their life in a drawer somewhere within our house, but an oil portrait lives its life somewhere on a wall.

Additionally, film industry advantages to illustrate one personality are: staff to bring the project to completion, moving time to reveal a character’s growth or change, each character’s music to describe that character’s inner-self, a longer period to complete a movie (possibly a year or two), and a captive audience. Whereas, the portraitist has the quiet slow-moving brush, pencil, or clay and only a few weeks to interpret an individual’s character, and the desire that such effort will be successful.

How would I paint a portrait of Anne or Mary Boleyn? I could consider giving each sister her own canvas; but that, in a way, is to cheat. The casting director knows both sisters will be on the screen at the same time, we see the similarity/dissimilarity in both, and I must do no less.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk

www.portraits-oils.com