Improvise Like James Cameron
guest column from John McInnes
Today is a guest column from John McInnes. If you want to pitch a guest column, send me a few sentences of what you’d write about and what improv teaching/performing credits you have at will@wgimprovschool.com.
John is an Scottish improviser who helps run the Glasgow Improv Theatre and performs with their house team Couch. He ran Kitchen Rules Theatre in Bristol and studied at UCBTLA. He also learned from UCB teachers visiting London back in 2016, before it was "hip".
If Hegel was correct to describe Napoleon as “world history on horseback”, then James Francis Cameron is undoubtedly “film history on submarine”’. He’s one of the most successful and influential filmmakers of all time, we’re lucky to be around while he works!
But filmmaking is not improv and Cameron does not improvise on his productions. So why am I writing about James Cameron in this improv blog? Let me highlight three transferable principals in James Cameron’s creative process that we, as improvisers, should apply to our scenework:
Meet expectations, unexpectedly
Use your imagination
Illustrate via contrast
Meet expectations, unexpectedly
James Cameron is the king of sequels. The guy knows how to heighten and explore a film concept. I’m not the first to point out the fact that this is a great skill to use in 2nd beats! For a comedy show, the audience’s expectation is to laugh, so how do we meet expectations in a surprising way? Follow a justification!
Here’s a recent example scene; a roommate was bored by his job as an MI5 spy. To meet minimum expectations we can place this character in action movie inspired base realities and have them act disinterested. They can roll their eyes and sigh when their partner reveals they’re a mole, they can check their watch when someone says “moon laser omega is active”.
These game moves follow a pattern but patterns are inherently not “surprising”, they’re defined by structure, they should be predictable. A simple justification like “I find sports more enjoyable than violence” can unlock more unexpected expressions of the game, we’re not limited to “spy stuff” base realities, we now have another axis of “sports stuff” base realities to play the game.
Aliens met our expectations; Ripley was still attacked by a xenomorph, but turns out there’s a queen Alien this time. T2 still had killer robots, but turns out Arnie’s a good robot this time. Avatar 2 The Way Of Water still had blue cat aliens, but turns out whale aliens are also here this time. Follow the pattern, unexpectedly.
Use your imagination
Improvisers, particularly the ones who read improv blogs, can fall into the trap of doing “safe” moves. These are scenic choices improv audiences have seen hundreds of times before, archetypical moves that are almost in-jokes with the audience. In general, I suspect the world has seen enough scenes featuring bad dates, weird doctors or silly accents.
James Cameron does not make safe choices in his film making. He makes films literally inspired by bizarre dreams he’s had. Terminator came from a fever dream in which he was attacked by a metallic skeleton. Avatar was inspired by dreams he had as a teenager of cat-aliens. Cameron has said he made Titanic, one of the highest grossing films of all time, “not because I particularly wanted to make the movie, I wanted to dive to the shipwreck.” He followed his dreams.
I don’t think improvisers, in their true hearts, really want to perform as “annoying coworkers” or “pushy waiters” any more than audiences want to watch that. To paraphrase a Chuck Klosterman quote; there’s universality in specificity. And following that logic, there’s no audience for non-specific, hyper-general base realities. In improv, particularly in organic initiations, you should follow your heart and start somewhere new that you’d love to do a scene.
I rarely see a scene fail when the performer chooses a base reality they care about and feel scared to try. They’re more present, they’re listening harder, they’re slightly nervous in a way that feels more truthful. It also gives the audience a new kind of scene they haven’t seen before, it’s not just the “police interview” or “support group” scene they’ve seen a million times before.
Bring your own experiences, interests and imagination into your organic initiations. If the word is “plane” maybe I’ll initiate a scene in the NTSB offices recovering a black box recording, rather than yet another scene set on a plane. Even if your idea is somewhat niche, you’ll be surprised how far “yes-and” will carry a good scene partner.
Illustrate via contrast
Cameron’s career started with a very straightforward formula; to make the audience care about the humans, put them beside something that isn’t human. This is pretty easy to apply to sci-fi movies. He demonstrated humanity, by putting humans beside things that are not human.
With comedy you don’t always need the audience to “care” about a character, but contrasting a character immediately adds a specificity that can simplify the scene. If someone’s angry, consider playing an extremely chill person. If someone is a real fancy pants, consider playing a crass low-class person. This doesn’t really determine the game of the scene, but it will make the game easier to identify and play given we have clear expectations from each character.
Illustration via contrast is also achieved by providing scenes with a voice of reason and an unusual perspective. Those particular roles do not have to be fixed, but when someone is expressing something unusual, we can help illustrate that viewpoint by contrasting it.
If you’re overly analytical, simple contrasting choices can stop you overthinking an offer. For example; imagine your scene partner walked out and said “Baby wants a lollipop!” and folded their arms. This is a shiny specific with a vaguely defined base reality that you could easily overthink. Try simplifying it; if they’re a big baby, you be mature. You could still be a literal baby, just a more mature and articulate baby, maybe you want a coffee rather than a lollipop. Focus on the contrast and treat each line as it comes.
One last question…is my final James Cameron quote in this article real? Or is it another Hegel quote? Well, I think it met the expectations created by the first two real quotes, in a surprising way. It was undoubtedly fun for me personally to write “Hegel” three times in an improv blog and perhaps the contrast illustrates something about these very principles. They apply quite generally, to lots of artistic endeavours! Not just to film, not just improv but even to writing articles about improv! Or maybe it just illustrates that the author is a silly billy and wanted to shoe-horn something in. Either way, it was fun!
Thank you for writing that, John!
Subscribe!
Paid subscribers to this Substack get their own Q&A columns where they can ask questions. Start a paid subscription to get access to these Q&As.
Everything else is free for everyone. Thank you for reading!
I was like "wtf? that's dialectics?" reading that third quote.
That third point is a great expansion on the idea of the voice of reason. Like Will argued recently, you don't always need the VoR, especially a bad one.
But some contrast makes the idea pop more. Like, in a peas-in-a-pod scene you can communicate that the world in not fond of your shared behavior/opinion, thus providing contrast without a direct pushback.
I'm gonna definitely use this concept. Great essay, John.