Analeigh Tipton gives advice on artistic collaboration
Photo by Katherine Rountree
Analeigh Tipton, who starred alongside Miles Teller in “Two Night Stand,” which screened during the Savannah Film Festival, sat down with District to discuss strategies for successful collaboration, the cultivation of inspiration and other creative pursuits.
Do you have any advice for collaborating smoothly with other artists? What are the keys to working successfully with people who may have a different vision?
Collaboration is so vital if you want to create anything with interesting perspective, because the more perspectives you have, to an extent, the more realistic it can be. As far as clashing, I’ve worked on projects where I might have different ideas, but I’ve also been pretty stubborn in trusting the reason I was hired. I think something that has been empowering is my ability to voice my differences and flush them out, because if I’m clashing with a director, there’s a good reason. If I’m disagreeing on a way to say a line, or a wardrobe choice, I have to fully respect the reason why they’re hired, and then hopefully they hear me out on why I’d make this choice for this character. But I don’t do it unless I have a really have a good reason.
With writing and things like that, if you’re writing with people who have come and want to work with you, usually I don’t find a whole lot of clashing at the beginning, because you’re just trying to get everything out and you shouldn’t be clashing at the beginning, because you should just be getting everything out creatively that you possibly can. And then fitting in the details – that’s when more perspective helps. But, it’s artistic, and of course everybody’s going to be protective of their creative opinion.
Where do you go to find inspiration when you’re putting together a character?
It really depends on the character, and what I think they’re background would be. Music has always been something that gets me into a character. That’s really the beginning point. After I get the script, I’ll put together a playlist. Personally, music gets me into a different mindset, depending on what I’m listening to. Different literature, be it fiction or whatnot, will help with the character, and I’ll put together a background story of some sort. I’ve found that that can be very useful or almost pointless or more stressful than necessary. It’s almost more useful to work with the director to find out what their background story is, rather than coming up with something from scratch. I haven’t done a character that needs full historic research outside of auditions, but if I end up getting something like that, certainly I’d go into that whole entire process.
With everything that I’m working on, I research the director and the other actors I’m working with, and other projects that they’ve done and any future endeavors that they already have tied down.
Apart from acting, modeling and writing, are there any other artistic pursuits that you would like to explore?
I love photography right now. Also, writing and directing have always been kind of my plant in anything creative. And then music is kind of what I love. But that’s kind of calming, and I think if I ever tried to turn that into something that was more beneficial and outside of my own control, I think it would lose its appeal. But photography is something – I would hopefully like to document my days on the set and eventually put some books together.
