Articles
The following articles will give you an idea of the philosophy behind Drama By Design and its approach to acting for the screen.
Screen Acting
What are those elements that take good screen acting and make it great screen acting? Opinions will vary on what those elements are, and on who the great actors are. Indeed, each great actor will have a different combination of those special ingredients that will make his or her acting stand above the good actors. However, while some great actors will appeal to the majority of their audience, very few will appeal to all. Nonetheless, in order to appeal to some members of the audience, a great performance must contain something special. Those special elements are the intangible parts of a performance: the charisma, the depth, the mystery, the screen presence.
Actors can enter this intangible territory of performance, the zone of the great actor, only after they have first done what is required of all good actors – to have solid preparation of both the character and the scene, and to have a solid grasp of camera technique. Preparation enables them to let go of their brain and allow the subconscious of the character to take control of the character’s responses, and with the letting go comes a greater freedom to explore the intangible. Competence in front of a camera and on a film set will prevent technical requirements from interfering with the freedom a great performance demands.
Camera technique involves more than knowledge of where the camera and the microphone is, how many steps you must take to hit your mark, and how much freedom you have to move. Camera technique extends to cheating angles and eye-lines, to allowing for silent noises or non-present freezing conditions, to preserving continuity, to acting to the cut,
and knowing when you can and can’t talk over another actor’s dialogue. Camera technique is also about adjusting the size of your performance to the size of the shot, about revealing to the camera what you might not be revealing to the other actors. While usually it is better to think rather than to show, doing less does not always bring the best results.
Preparation goes beyond knowing what is happening in a scene on both conscious and sub-conscious levels. Preparation should include an understanding of each moment, so that one line can be played on its own with as much depth and naturalness as if it was said during a performance of the whole scene. Preparation should enable an actor to perform the whole scene without the other actors present.
In addition to learning how to prepare thoroughly and to developing a strong grounding in camera technique, an actor can further develop his or her craft by reading, observing human behaviour, trying new things – anything that feeds the imagination. Take classes, watch good acting and bad. Do theatre. (Despite what many people say, theatre and screen acting are not completely different beasts. Think of theatre as more like a very wide wide-shot.)
With the skills you develop as an actor, with thorough preparation of a character and the scenes in which that character appears, and with the comfort of knowing you can deal with the challenges a film set can throw at you, you are in a much better position to relax and be ‘in the moment’. You will also give yourself the freedom to move into the intangible territory of the great actor.
Feature Film Acting Preparation
How to prepare for feature films and long shoots.
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During Rehearsals and the Shoot
Reminders for a successful shoot.
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