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CLASS 5 - Notes Links

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15 views5 pages

CLASS 5 - Notes Links

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olasogba1
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FPD110 Production I - Class 5

WORKING WITH ACTORS

All actors have different ways of working. It is the director’s responsibility to figure
out how best to work with each actor individually. A good way to understand
actors is to take an acting class. It gives you insight on what it means to get and
give good or bad direction. It is important to know the basics of various acting
methods in order to speak the same language as some of your actors or to help
those who have less training.

STANISLAVSKY METHOD
He studied stage actors to find out what the truly compelling ones did differently.
He distilled the interviews down to the method, a series of exercises and
techniques which allow the actor to give a more committed and natural
performance by using themselves as a starting point. The camera doesn’t lie.

SENSE MEMORY AND EMOTIONAL MEMORY


Sensory input and memories are linked. Related personal experiences can be
stirring emotional triggers. Actions the actor has chosen as authentic to the
character release authentic emotions in the actor, every time. You can recall the
way you felt when something happened. Any natural, accompanying physical
action which is part of an actor’s business can awaken emotional memory.
You must use the sensory to access the emotional. Mental and emotional focus
lets you BE in the moment. A state of relaxation blocks your internal censor from
self-judgment. Interior monologue helps to keep focused and keep things fresh.

BUILDING TRUST
The film actor’s only audience is the director. You need to establish your
credibility.

• Know the script and characters thoroughly and be able to articulate all
your impressions.
• Be accessible, don’t retreat behind the technical. You must be there for
them.
• Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Help them to discover
things themselves. Don’t give instructions.
• Don’t waste their time by being late or unprepared.
• They will test you so be ready for challenge and resistance especially if
changing their performance. They will catch things you missed too.

Give feedback privately. Try to split your time evenly. Don’t show favouritism. Try
to ask for changes in a positive not critical way. Try not to ramble and
intellectualize. Give short, practical, actable directions. Don’t ask them to feel
feelings or produce particular effects. Mostly they need help to remove the
obstacles of self-consciousness and insecurity to simply BE. Sometimes there
needs to be an adjustment of a line or blocking.

While watching their performance, notice if something doesn’t feel right,


authentic, natural and make a note of it. You will have an intuitive reaction when it
feels right or wrong. If they are anticipating or not adapting, refocus them on their
objectives and to listen to the other actors. Your characters must know what they
want, from whom they want it and whether they succeed of not. Build urgency
into their intentions. Help them raise the stakes. What do they have to gain or
lose?

Bad acting comes from enacting an idea of one’s part rather than doing the work
to imagine one’s way into your character’s consciousness.

DO’S AND DON’TS


Set limited positive goals
Direct the actor’s attention to a particular kind of action.
Suggest a different subtext.
Remind them where their character has just come from.
Remind them no one is present.
Never demonstrate how you would like something played.
Never give line readings.
Never ask them to just be yourself.
Never ask for something smaller.

The MAGIC WHAT-IF


Gets the imagination going, stay natural and alert, maintain their character’s
mental focus. If an actor can do all this, the audience will believe they are really
watching a person undergo something in the moment. They will believe the
illusion. The interior monologue will help an actor stay in the moment during
many takes or setups.

LOSING AND REGAINING FOCUS


Actors lose focus if they stop thinking their character’s thoughts and stop seeing
things through their eyes. The camera will pick up on even a millisecond of lost
focus. There are any number of things that can set it off: a line that doesn’t feel
right, some action that feels false, a misplaced prop, a wrong line by another
actor, something in their eye line distracting them.

A trained actor will know how to find their way back from the impending self-
consciousness and regain focus. Just by looking at something in the character’s
world, the texture of a carpet or her sleeve will bring her back to the character’s
world.
The director’s job is to help the actor find their focus before the camera even
rolls. A good actor will not do anything that doesn’t feel authentic, they must
believe any line or action.
If they tell you a line or movement bothers them, you should listen and respond
accordingly.

IMAGINATION, INTERIOR LIFE AND ACTIONS


Using the imagination to create another person’s reality. Characters become
truthful and believable when actors maintain an interior life authentic to their
character.

An actor acts with other actors, they don’t work in isolation. They respond to each
other in the moment. Watching and listening, allowing themselves to be acted
upon.

JUSTIFYING AND THE GIVENS


While preparing a part, every action, every line should be justified according to
the givens, all the information implied or given in a script. Including each
character’s background, backstory, recent experience, life needs, plot goals and
thought processes in relation to the other characters.

OBJECTIVES AND THE ACTIVE VOICE


Characters become dramatic and interesting when they pursue a series of
needs, each one demanding to be satisfied. Even a passive central character
pursues goals. Experienced actors learn their character’s objectives and stay
physically and mentally busy in character. This helps them continuously develop
in the here and now whatever their character is trying to get, do or accomplish.

A character’s objectives are always discussed as TRANSITIVE VERBS, doing


words that each denote an action meant to affect someone. “I’ll scream until dad
stops the car”. In life we do this unconsciously but an actor has to construct these
for his character. Each acting objective is formed in the ACTIVE voice, never the
passive. A well-described objective has an action, an objective and an outcome.

An Active Verb – I will charm…persuade….convince…..

Someone or something that you act upon - …Marie, my brother’s aloof wife…

A desired and measurable outcome - …so she asks me to stay to dinner.

The actor begins to transform every aspect of their part into actable goals. You
can’t act “being angry” “being hurt” or being anything at all because it’s abstract,
unspecific and unplayable.

DEVELOPING THE CHARACTER’S INTERIOR LIFE


Actors continuously develop their character in relation to the text. From all the
clues there, she decides scene by scene what her character wants, notices,
remembers and imagines. Nothing is done “in general” but is always specific to
that character. The actors help each other by giving them real things to play off
of. Humans are complex and contradictory.

BUSINESS AND PERSONALIZING


During rehearsal, each actor develops the physical actions that accompany all of
his character’s aims and objectives.

BUSINESS – is all the small activities that help the actor involve the body and
reveal the character’s inner reality. Watching someone to do a simple action can
be fascinating if it reflects the emotional tone of the moment. Regular people
rarely do nothing at all.

Acting is about doing so business is described in those “doing” words such as


lowering the eyes, glancing out the window.

Interior actions are as important, an actor PERSONALIZES by discussing their


character’s character states in the first person. No separation from the character
and themselves.

THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION


No inner state exists without creating outward evidence in a person’s face or
body. Good actors remain alive and interesting even in reaction shots because
they have a continuous interior life. Poor actors rely on lines and actions to
express themselves.

INDICATING – trying to physically and intellectually signal thought and feeling


rather than experiencing it.

ACTING IN ISOLATION
No longer listening or reacting to others in the scene.

COMMUNION – inter-character communication


Every actor is in the moment responding to subtle changes and nuances in each
other performances. This adds life to the scenes.

ACTIONS AND VERBAL ACTIONS


Doing things are actions but so can be lines of dialogue. You can do something
to someone through the way you deliver a line. Acting on someone to gain or
change something.

SUBTEXT
Actors decide their character’s subtexts (to line or actions) by starting from an
overall understanding of what their character and other characters are trying to
achieve and then deciding how their character handles each particular while
pursing the overall objective. (for example, almost every scene in The Social
Network contains subtext that leads us to understand that Zuckerberg’s empire-
building is not about making money but about the revenge of a socially unskilled
on those who are socially gifted and entitled.

SCREEN:

KATE WINSLET - ACTING ADVICE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWJaRlnsNAo&t=1s

MICHAEL CAINE - ACTING FOR FILM (screen first 7 mins)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZPLVDwEr7Y

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