Looking at MoviesFourth Edition

Richard Barsam Dave Monahan

CHAPTER SEVEN

Acting

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What Is Acting?

• An art in which an actor uses imagination, intelligence, psychology, memory, vocal technique, facial expressions, body language, and an overall knowledge of the filmmaking process to realize, under the director’s guidance, the character created by the screenwriter

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The Performance and Effect

• Initial interest – Our interest in a movie is almost always sparked by the actors featured in it

• A movie’s financial success – The power of some actors (Angelina Jolie or George Clooney, for example) to draw to draw an audience is frequently more important than any other factor.

• Essential relationship – Screen actors know that the essential relationship is between them and the camera

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Stage versus Screen Acting

• Stage actors play to the audience / Screen actors play to the camera

• Stage actors must project vocally and physically / Small gestures are fundamental tools for the screen actor

• Stage actors memorize their lines and then speak and act them in the story order / Screen actors learn only the lines need for the moment and act out of sequence

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Movie Actors – Four Main Types

• Personality actors – actors who take their personae from role to role

• Actors who deliberately play against our expectations of their personae

• Chameleon actors – actors who seem to be different in every role

• Nonprofessional actors, cast to bring verisimilitude to a part

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Early Screen-Acting Styles

• The first people onscreen were not actors but ordinary people playing themselves

• The first actors adopted the acting style favored in the nineteenth-century theater

• Exaggerated facial expressions, strained gestures, bombastic mouthing of words

• Société Film d’Art (1908) – Its glory was the Comédie-Française, the French National Theater

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D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish

• Lillian Gish invented the art of screen acting under Griffith’s guidance

• Lillian Gish established a viable and successful style of screen acting

• Lillian Gish as Lucy Burrows in Broken Blossoms (1919) was the first great screen performance

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Influence of Sound

• Monumental conversion with awkward transitions• Allowed more human expression and complex

narratives• More screenplays with dialogue, need for dialogue

coaches and more rehearsals• Use of more technology to record sound and mix sound

tracks

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Acting in the Classical Studio Era

• Golden age of Hollywood, 1930s–1950s• Standard seven-year option contracts• Movie stars as a product of the studio• Four classes of performers: supporting players, stock

players, featured players, movie stars

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Method Acting

• Based on the theory and practice of Konstantin Stanislavsky, founder of the Moscow Art Theater

• Actors bring their own past experiences and emotions to the role in an attempt to become a realistic character

• Encourages actors to speak, move, and gesture not in a traditional stage manner but just as they would in their own lives

• Led to new levels of realism and subtlety

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Screen Acting Today

• Actors and directors synthesize various movie-acting approaches

• Transition from studio production to independent production

• Greater box-office power equals greater star power• Freedom to choose roles and negotiate earnings• Typecasting

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Technology and Acting

• For every advance in the world of special effects, the narrative and the acting that propels it lose some of their importance

• The future of acting is at stake as more and more performances in narrative films are the product of computer-generated imagery (CGI)

• May enrich the illusions that movies create at the expense of film artists themselves, including actors

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Casting Actors

• Casting – the process of choosing and hiring actors for a movie

• Casting directors – Casting Society of America (CSA) maintains files of actors’ résumés and photographs

• Screen tests – may be done alone or with other actors• Other organizations: Screen Actors Guild, American

Federation of Television and Radio Artists

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Factors Involved in Casting

• Budget and expected revenues• Gender• Race • Ethnicity • Age

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Aspects of Performance:Types of Roles

• Major roles versus minor roles• Stand-ins and stuntpersons• Character roles• Bit players and extras• Cameos and walk-ons• Animal performers

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Aspects of Performance: Preparing for Roles

• Different types of roles and their different demands• Naturalistic and nonnaturalistic styles• Improvisational acting• Directors and actors

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Preparing for Roles

• Synthesis of basic sources: the script, their own experiences and observations, influences of other actors

• Collaboration with the director• Different roles have different demands• All actors have their own approaches

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Naturalistic Styles

• Actors re-create recognizable or plausible human behavior for the camera

• Actors look like the characters should (costume, makeup, hairstyle)

• Actors think, speak, and move the way people would offscreen

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Nonnaturalistic Styles

• Seem excessive, exaggerated, even overacted• May employ strange or outlandish costumes, makeup,

hairstyles• Might aim for effects beyond the normal range of

human experience• Often intend to distance or estrange audiences from

characters• Often found in horror, fantasy, and action films

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Improvisational Acting

• Extemporizing or playing through a moment• Often involves collaboration between actors and

directors in creating stories, characters, and dialogue• Improvisations often involve actors and directors

creating stories and dialogue that may be incorporated into the script.

• An extension of Stanislavski’s emphasis on naturalistic performance

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Director and Actor Collaborations• Collaboration depends on individuals sharing in the

creative process. Each brings their own individual work and aesthetic, and the collaborated results are a part of a shared creative responsibility.

• Some notable collaborators are: – Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro – Tim Burton and Johnny Depp – Spike Lee and Denzel Washington

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How Filmmaking Affects Acting

• Little time for (acting) rehearsals• Movies are shot out of sequence and fragmented• The character you are acting with may not be there• Actors must repeat the same action/line/emotion

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Framing, Composition, and Physical Relationships

• Framing and composition – brings actors together or keeps them apart

• Physical relationship – physical relationships of the actors to each other and to the overall frame can significantly affect how we see and interpret a shot

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Long Takes and Ensemble Acting

• Long-take and deep-focus cinematography – provide the opportunity to create scenes of greater-than-usual length and broader, deeper fields of composition

• Ensemble acting: Long takes – these takes encourage actors to work together continuously in a single shot

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The Camera and the Close-up

• Creates a greater naturalism and intimacy between actors and audience

• True close-ups isolate an actor, concentrating on the face

• Active (commenting or reminding us) or passive (revealing an actor’s beauty)

• Reveals both the process of thinking and the thoughts at its end

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Acting and Editing

• Editors have considerable power in shaping screen actors’ performances

• Selects, arranges, and juxtaposes shots to cover errors• Controls the duration of an actor’s onscreen appearance

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Looking at Acting • We identify with:

– the characters and the actors who inhabit those characters

– characters who pursue a goal– characters because of our own behavior as people– behaviors consistent with our general state of mind;

we are engaged in role-playing

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Looking at Acting: Criteria for Analysis

• Appropriateness / Transparency• Inherent thoughtfulness or emotionality• Expressive coherence• Wholeness and unity

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Looking at Acting: Barbara Stanwyck in King Vidor’s Stella Dallas

• Stanwyck’s performance transcends the story’s melodrama

• Balances character’s nonnaturalistic and naturalistic qualities

• Natural appearance, movements, gestures• Expressive coherence and emotional consistency

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Looking at Acting: Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine

• A two-person story with the characters developing from teenagers to disillusioned parents

• She uses intelligence and insight to create character• Her physical appearance, facial expressions, speech,

movement and gesture are truthful, and she can make us understand her feelings from vulnerability to strength

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Review

1. The people appearing in the earliest films were

a. amateurs eager to break into the new industry.

b. rejects of the stage.

c. real people playing themselves.

d. stage actors disdainful of the new medium.

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Review

2. Who is credited with inventing screen acting?

a. Lillian Gish

b. Lionel Barrymore

c. Mary Pickford

d. Dorothy Gish

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Review

3. To suppress the distracting sounds made by early sound cameras, filmmakers used what device?

a. case

b. blimp

c. wrap

d. soundproof booth

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Review

4. Which of these is generally NOT a major factor in casting?

a. gender

b. race

c. height

d. expected revenue

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Review

5. Screen acting appears “naturalistic” when an actor

a. aims for effects beyond the normal range of human experience.

b. re-creates recognizable or plausible human behavior for the camera.

c. creates a highly stylized character who inhabits an entirely artificial world.

d. Strives to make his or her face into a tabula rasa

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Review

6. Framing, composition, and the long take can

a. define relationships among characters.

b. require actors to work closely together.

c. encourage the audience to interpret characters.

d. All of the above.

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Review

7. Which of the following is NOT necessarily considered in analyzing acting?

a. Unity

b. Expressive coherence

c. Preparation

d. Appropriateness