With acting classes and workshops charging outlandish fees, aspiring actors are finding cheaper and more effective means of learning their craft. One prominent method is viewing and analyzing video performances by highly acclaimed and award-winning actors. Today these performances are cataloged online and readily available at rental sites such as Netflix and Blockbuster. At about $8 per month, these DVDs provide teaching moments that go far beyond the catch as catch can approach of scene study workshops. What's more, they are economical alternative to paying the $350 to $600 per month charged by workshop instructors.
Why does this method work? First, you are totally focused on learning a specific technique. You have isolate a specific behavior and drawn to what needs to be assimilated. In a workshop setting students are overwhelmed by numerous acting choices and in trying to mastering many, they master none. In addition, the instructor can only comment on a limited number of elements. Overlooked flaws are thus left unattended and become part of the students skill set. Such scene workshops can often perpetrate more faults than fixes. In addition, instructors concentrate on limited aspects of acting and rarely address those outside their comfort zone. As a result, students have gaps in their training.
With DVD's as your coach, when you see and hear it, you comprehend the technique and you know what to replicate. In addition, if you don't get it the first time, you can replay the scene repeatedly until you fully understand the technique and can effectively duplicate it. Such repetition makes an isolated aspect sink in and stay with you for your entire career. Likewise, you are actively involved in making a dramatic choice as you observe, comprehend and duplicate the various techniques. The important lesson is that you emulate the technique the actor is using, not the actor's performance.
Anyone who has watched movies or television is familiar with the great actors, especially those who have won nominations and awards. By observing these award-winning performances, one can learn many things. With the advent of videotape, digital cameras, and DVD players, more and more drama instructors are using this highly effective teaching tool. Great actors should be studied in the same manner as the great painters, composers, and dancers. Their work should be dissected, analyzed, emulated, and done so for the purpose of improving ones dramatic awareness and agility as well as expanding one's range.
Such an approach is often frown upon by most acting schools in the United States where individuality and do your on thing mentality are promoted over craft. In the rest of the world, great actors are celebrated for the artisans they are. They are revered far more for their skills and techniques than for their celebrity status. Their performances are an economical and effective method to learning the art and science of acting.
Much of acting has to do with producing human behavior in an articulate manner. If you are inundated with such behavior as performed by accomplished actors, you will eventually use the same traits, methods, and techniques to develop equally articulate characters. When we are moved by a performance, it has to do with the choices the actor is making. Moreover, when we dissect that performance, we find aspects of human behavior that apply to almost every situation. What are these aspects, and how are they codified. That answer is found in exploring and discovering what the award-winning actors do.
Let us begin with the non-verbal aspects of acting. Over half of what we communicate has nothing to do with what we say or how we say it. It has to do with the accompanying non-verbal behavior. It would seem, therefore, one's dramatic training should concentrate on those components, which convey the greatest amount of information.
Internalizations are one of the more difficult behaviors to portray. Yet it is the most important attribute in an accomplished actor. Internalizations have to do with the clarity of the character's thoughts and feelings. Acclaimed actors use eye movements to delineate and switch to inner thoughts and feelings. However, young actors rarely connect, as they have dialogue and blocking to memorize along with a multitude of other dramatic choices. Internalizations are seldom addressed and yet they tell us more about the character than any other aspect.
I'm using Paul Newman's film "Absence of Malice" to illustrate how eye behavior projects the character's inner thoughts and feelings. When the character disconnects from the person to whom they are talking and looks away, it is a signal for the audience to speculate what's going on inside. The character's eye behavior and focal areas are also factored into 138cash slot this speculation along with the accompanying facial expressions/emotions. This behavior is almost a language on to itself, as the audience comprehends these internalizations. When two characters are conversing, we hear their dialogue, however, look-aways help reveal the inner dialogue. Tracking times indicated in parenthesis show the location of the various examples.
"Absence of Malice" has to do with a FBI Task Force pressuring Mike Gallagher (Paul Newman) to reveal information about a mob hit. A newspaper article labels him being under investigation. Yet, he has an ironclad alibi, however revealing it exposes his fragile friend Teresa (Melinda Dillon) to public ridicule. In this first example, Teresa waits for Mike at his house (22:03). She is reading the defaming newspaper article and wants to know what she should do. It's a conflict, as she wants to help him yet wants to avoid the consequences of going public. Note how she uses focus zones (look-aways) to departmentalize the issues such as problems, recall, avoidance, and her connection to Mike.
When Mike coaches her how to answer the FBI's questions, he uses look-aways to summons up strategies and possible replies. He likewise uses look-aways to portray his concerns about where the investigation will lead.
The next example takes place in a park where Teresa meets newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) and attempts to clear Mike's name (49:35). Teresa does not reveal the facts behind her shameful secret until Megan starts to leave. She then confesses that Mike took her to Atlanta to have an abortion. Her reluctance is evident in her behavior as she again envisions the shame she might endure. Her internalizations focus on helping Mike while wanting to avoid public disclosure of her abortion. Her eye behavior coupled with her facial expressions/emotions clarifies these objectives.
The next morning, curled up on her front stoop (56:22), she waits for the newspaper delivery. She feels the shame as she reads the story, one that everybody will soon know. Her eye behavior foresees the unbearable humiliation to come. She rushes house-to-house picking up newspapers lying on the front yards.
The comeuppance scene near the end of the film (1:35:00) illustrates how internalizations add intrigue and energy to a scene. The Attorney General (Wilford Brimley) holds an inquiry regarding leaks about ongoing investigations. Note how the guilty participants handle being chastised and how they react to revelations convicting them. Mike sits quietly triumphant in setting up those who wronged him. Much is said in this non-verbal way and the scene demonstrates the power eye behavior has as an acting tool.
"Absence of Malice" won Oscar Nominations for Paul Newman and Melinda Dillon plus a Golden Globe Nomination for Sally Field.
Facial Expressions. The face is our identity, and the means by which we recognize one another. Each pattern of our facial features and changes is truly individual. Yet despite this uniqueness, there is an universality to emotional expressions uniting us all in a fundamental, non-verbal way. We might think of the face as the brain's theatre, for it is on this stage that our inner thoughts and emotions are displayed for the entire world to see, or disguised or withheld, as the situation dictates. By analyzing this aspect of acting, one will become aware of its potential and create expressions that resonate with the audience.
Gwyneth Paltrow's character, Viola, in "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) utilizes a wide range of expressions as she disguises herself as a young man in order to be cast in Shakespeare's play. Additional subterfuge is necessary as forbidden love kindles between her and young Shakespeare. Inhibited by cultural and nobility, she must wear many deceptive masks pursuing happiness. There is one crucial scene (29:34), a reversal, where she is first elated at being wooed by Shakespeare; then she finds out she has been betrothed by her father to the middle-aged dour Lord Wessex. It's a devastating moment and her restrained expressions tell a tragic story as her passions are smothered, smothered by the customs of the day.
Note also how she varies the dimensions of facial expressions, the speed, dynamics, duration, and integrity to satisfy the demands of the character. Her expressions have a forward motion. They are going somewhere, moving toward something, toward realizations, reflections, and expectations. Also, note the wide range of emotions and facial expressions she uses in this movie, from joy to grief, from desire to resentment, from intimidation to determination.
In the same movie, look at the award-winning performance by Judi Dench as the Queen. In Viola's audience with Queen (01:01:00), she is questioned about her involvement with theatre and its ability to express love. It's a battle of subtleties as each must be respectful of station, yet not loose face. Later in the same scene,