J Aaron Anderson

4/2/2017
Acting must begin from feelings on the inside, not from behaviors on the outside. But, there are many different thoughts about how to do this. In my review, we’re gonna look at the four main schools of thought when it comes to acting. The first is called Classical Acting, this tends to focus more on examining the script, but also on physicality and controlling the body. From my experience, classical acting is more commonly seen in British actors. It’s also more common in theater, as it tends to focus more on physical movement. Another school of thought that gets a lot of publicity, is that of Method Acting.

Method Acting is the idea that actors must try to become the character as much as possible. This is clearly seen in the dramatic weight loss Christian Bale endured for his role in The Machinist. Method actors are known for staying in character during the entire production, even when cameras aren’t rolling, which can, you know, sometimes frustrate other cast and crew. Classical Acting and Method Acting are best contrasted in the roles of the classically trained, Laurence Olivier, and the Method acting of Dustin Hoffman, in the film, Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman, as a method actor, would actually run for a long time before shooting takes where he was supposed to be winded from jogging.

Rumor has it that Laurence Olivier was surprised at this, and suggested that Dustin Hoffman try acting instead. Whether the story is true or not, it still demonstrates the differences in these two schools of thought. Stanislavski is both a person, and an approach to acting that he created. With the Stanislavski method, actors try to recall similar experiences from their own lives. So, if I were following the Stanislavski method, and I had to be really sad, then I would try to think of an experience in my own life that made me really sad, so I could bring those feelings to the surface. I love the physical violence derived by the physical toll of desperation that Auteur Director Darren Aronofsky infuses in his work of whom I did a capstone paper on in my undergrad.

The final acting method is called Meisner, also known for an influential acting teacher. The Meisner method has actors focus on their scene partner, first and foremost. If your scene partner starts being a little more aggressive than usual, you respond to that, rather than whatever might have been rehearsed. Personally, I’m a Meisner guy myself. The other schools of acting just don’t resonate with me for whatever reason. When I try to recall experiences from my past, like in the Stanislavski’s method, my brain can’t stay focused on the scene at hand. It goes wandering, thinking about my past and that experience.

Classical acting feels too emotionally detached for me. But, Method acting feels too hard core in the opposite direction. So, personally, Meisner feels like that Goldilocks sweet spot right in the middle. It also gives me more of a sense of intimacy with my scene partner, because I’m so engaged with what they’re bringing to the table. And that experience of connecting with another actor during a scene is one of the reasons I love acting. Now, this idea of choosing an acting system to follow is tough, because a lot of acting teachers, and authors, act like their way is the way.

And when acting, it does feel like you kinda need a system for how to approach playing a character. But, in all honesty, each of these schools of thought has produced phenomenal actors. Actors need to choose which of these approaches works best for them, knowing that it’s totally fine if they’re the only actor on set that works this way. It’s important that directors understand that not all actors have the same process, and to be sensitive to, and supportive of, each actors own preference for how they approach a role.

4/9/2017
All of the choices actors make are based on what is in the script. Writers, actors, and directors all understand that what we see on the page is really just a small fraction of these character’s lives. So, actors usually benefit from putting those pieces in the script together, and then filling in the holes in order to get a more complete idea of who a character is. So, how do you do that? Everyone has a different approach to breaking down a script. For me, as an actor, I like to read the entire script a few times, start to finish. My comprehension isn’t as good as most people’s, so I like to make sure that I understand the overall big picture and how my character fits into the story.

I also have learned great tricks from my field experience. When I worked on my first short film that won tribeca ifilm festival in 2006 (and earlier in 1999-2001 at Paradigm Communication Group), I realized how to approach roles. I look for the big overall objective of the character, what you might call the spine of the character. And that one thing leavens the entire performance. For example, in the movie Whiplash, J.K. Simmons‘ character Fletcher was driven by the need for excellence; preoccupied with this obsession above all else.

Maybe at other points in his life he wasn’t driven by that, but for this story, that was his spine, and it affected everything he did and said. After figuring out the character’s spine, I go through each of my lines and my actions and figure out why my character would say or do that. I’ll also write action verbs in the margins of the script that correspond to what my character is trying to accomplish. “TONE” evaluation … I’ll talk more about such action verbs in future posts perhaps but the point is I know you get what Im saying that I’m trying to use the script to help me figure out the motivation behind every action or piece of dialogue.

Again, the script is just the tip of the iceberg in this person’s life. So, I’m trying to figure out what each word and sentence indicates about who my character really is. Some actors will also go through the script identifying emotional beats, or in other words, the different emotions and emotional changes in each scene. Like many things in cinema, there aren’t really any hard and fast rules for breaking down a script, but these are the methods that have worked best for me.

4/11/2017
In this realization, I wanna explore the mechanics of how to act. They say that the body is the instrument that actors play. So before acting, it’s important to be warmed up. When you’re acting, your body needs to be responsive and alert. And warming up is a necessary step to getting there. To me, warm-ups for actors are really in two categories, warming up the body and warming up the voice. Warming up the body usually just consists of standard stretches, like if you were warming up the body for any type of physical activity. You’re just telling your body, “Hey, we’re about to do stuff here, “so be ready for it.” The other type of warming up consists of warming up the voice.

This is important because we usually talk much lazier than we realize. In everyday conversation, you know, we slur words together and we mumble more than we like to admit, so before acting, or even before recording this training, I do tongue twisters to invigorate the muscles of the mouth. I like the old classics, like, you know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York. Or, she sells seashells down by the seashore. Can’t believe I did those well. These are great for improving diction and clarity of speech. Sometimes I’ll also warm up my voice itself by doing singing exercises, or while in my car driving to the location, when no one can hear me, I’ll tighten my abs and just let out a really strong, loud note.

(loud note) It’s totally embarrassing, but it helps my voice to project and it helps me to feel strength and confidence in my voice. Even if you’re playing a character that acts or speaks in a lazy way, I’d still recommend warming up. With a warmed-up body and voice, you have much more control over your performance.

– In conjunction with warming up the body, actors often do exercises to prepare them for acting with a scene partner. These are usually done in acting classes rather than on set, but I could also see how these could be helpful in rehearsals, especially with actors that are maybe skittish or less experienced. Essentially, these exercises get two people to work together, to both respond and listen for a response. Aaralyn and I shared our favorites for this training. Aaralyn’s exercise was a mirror exercise where we put up our hands together. She would move her hands and I would follow.

Then I took a turn leading while she followed. Then it gets interesting. With our hands up, our goal is to still mirror one another, but no one is the leader. We both try to move like we’re one person. My exercise looked different, but felt similar. One person is blindfolded and the other person kind of introduces them to the world. The person being the guide might get them to feel textures or sit down or move around the room. These are great exercises because you practice leading, following, and being in sync with your acting partner.

Now, although it doesn’t really look like acting, it feels like acting should feel. As actors fall back into bad habits and plan exactly how they’re going to say a line, these exercises remind them to be more fluid and responsive to their scene partners.

4/13/2017

One common acting technique is to choose an action verb to set “TONE” . An action verb allows the actor to be more specific about how they got about achieving their scene objective. So, if you had the line, hey, get out of here, you could use the action verb, to demand, hey, get out of here. Or if you use the action verb, to tease, hey, get out of here. Or, with the action verb, to plead, hey, get out of here. Same words, different action verb. Using action verbs is a blast because you can always play a scene in a different way using a different verb. And if scene partners are listening to each other, they’ll have to respond with a different action verb.

So, this helps actors stay engaged and deliver organic performances. Consider how Jimmy Stewart changed action verbs in that scene in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Let’s look at another example. This is one of my all time favorite scenes. It’s from the movie, Phoebe in Wonderland. Here, Felicity Huffman’s character is a mother to a daughter with some behavioral challenges. She perfectly illustrates the contradictions of parenthood, but how she oscillates between viewpoints. Each change in thought creates a change in the action verb. – I’m mad that I’m not writing, and I’m mad that some day I will be 70 and going on about my kids, because I won’t have anything else, because I didn’t do anything important.

(sighs) And I’m mad that, sometimes, I’m not scared of that at all. Because my children make me live, they make me live. – On the assurance I didn’t direct using action verbs. At the time it was a technique I’d read about, but I’d never put into practice. And this is one of my regrets, as we’ll see later in this course when we look at directing actors.

But, although I didn’t get it then, I get it now. I love using this action verb approach. It can also help transform less experienced actors into much better actors. But, like every other acting technique out there, it might not be for everybody.

4/14/2017

– I’ve mentioned here and there about actors listening to each other. What does that mean? Well, sometimes actors practice and rehearse so much while they’re learning their lines that they know ahead of time how they’re going to say each line. No matter how their scene partner changes their action verb, they’re set in their ways. Now, this results in stiff performances that feel artificial. In order for there to be true emotion, actors must engage with and respond to the other actors in the scene. When I acted in our film “Any Last Words”, by Matt Keim, he mentioned in between takes of our scenes that maybe one of our actors wasn’t listening.

That comment made me realize that I wasn’t listening 100% either, nor even like at all. (laugh parenthetical here) Once we listened to each other, we stopped being two actors exchanging monologues and became two actors that had genuine responses to each other because we were listening. When I directed the first scene on the first big day of another movie, I noticed that something wasn’t working, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, until I reviewed the footage later. I realized that the actors were still warming up and weren’t listening to each other yet. The performances in those early shots don’t feel as believable as shots later in the day because the actors were still in their own little bubbles and not listening as well.

4/15/2017

Now, I beat myself up for not catching this on set, but it is really a subtle thing. I mean, how do you know someone is listening to you in real life? I suppose it’s a combination of body language, eye contact, and maybe just intuition. In acting, sometimes the lack of space between responses can be an indicator that actors aren’t listening. People, they need time to process what people say to them before responding. But really, listening is something that needs to be sensed. But if you know to look for it, with a little practice, you’ll be able to tell whether actors are just waiting their turn or if they’re listening to each other and genuinely reacting to their scene partner.

Planning now for AppareosOne, If you do decide to hold rehearsals, I really recommend creating an atmosphere where mistakes are allowed. This is one of the few things I think I did well when it came to the acting when I hope to host reads at my fhome for our film famliy / cast of characters “circus”. Generally, during reads, Ive micromanaged too much. I didn’t give the cast or the crew enough freedom to take ownership in this project. But during the rehearsals, I didn’t make any corrections. I just kind of let things evolve organically. I think that was the right call. For this particular project, I felt it was important to stick to the script, generally.

So when the actors said something incorrectly, my initial gut reaction was to correct it but thankfully, I held my tongue. This allowed the actors to feel out the characters, and to feel out the other actors. One of the biggest emotional reactions in the version of the film that we shot was when a character, repeats a stressing line, “What do you see?” – What do you see? – Uh, the … – MIRROR – What do you see? – Earlier in the rehearsal, I wanted to see more dynamics between the first recitation of the line and the second.

– What do you see? What do you see? – I think a smack went a little too intense on the second line during rehearsals but pushing too hard allowed us to get it just right on set. But, you know, maybe I would have preferred that more intense version. I mean, who would I know unless we tried. And this is the point of rehearsals. To try things out and experiment in a low pressure environment. So, explore. Improvise, test, and in those moments, don’t be afraid of imperfection.

For my experience, it’s often in those playful experiments that the best ideas are found.

4/17/2017

– As we’ve talked about repeatedly in this collection of thoughts, acting is all about generating real emotion. So, it’s a good idea, even during rehearsals, to recreate the scene as much as it’s possible. Now, obviously, you don’t want to go too overboard with this because one of the benefits of rehearsals is to go through the material without all the stresses of production. But the more you can help the actors feel like they’ll actually feel on set, the more you’ll help them generate real emotion during rehearsals. I love working with Aaralyn with all of her experience already. At one point, she insisted that her and support cast recreate a scene completely as much as they could in the “blocking” rehearsal.

So, they got off their nice squishy chairs and got on the cold hard floor. Aaralyn even suggested that they use actual pencil and paper for the rehearsal because that’s kind of like what they’ll be doing on set. And all of this so that they didn’t have to mime or pretend. They wanted to feel what the actions would feel like as much as they could. So, maybe if your characters are drinking something, then bring cups of water to rehearsal. If your characters are talking while tossing a baseball back and forth, bring a baseball. Aaralyn at the age of 3 even dropped a flower by its stem and the ceramic pot cracked open and it was the shot the editor used ! It’s not only great for the actors to practice living that moment, but it’s also great for directors to spot any technical challenges that might be there.

4/18/2017

Maybe one of the actors has a tough time acting and catching the ball at the same time or whatever. One director’s suggestion to stop miming helped all of us. As they blocked the scene of a villain storming into a bruce wayne manor fundraiser, I was able to think about framing the shot and what focal length I would want to use. I love the way this scene turned out. I bet its exactly what the director wanted. I think Fletcher’s recreation of the scene during rehearsal was a big reason things worked so well on set for all the extras reacting to gunfire and catching it all on our faces!

Lets look at how to figure out who your characters are, and how to bring them to life on screen. A lot of times writers will create really involved backstories about the entire life of their characters so they can understand why they would make certain choices in the film. Directors or actors can use these backstories or create their own. This helps them feel connected to the character and to know them more intimately. It’s important though that the director and the actors discuss anything that affects their performance, just to make sure that everybody’s on the same page. For example we don’t learn anything about the parents of TORYN or SOMAC FARR. unless you know extended star wars folklore of CHANDRA / LANNAH their mother …

But Heather and I wrote a backstory about their mother and how she taught TORYN who she was and put TORYN in charge of training SOMAC and sending her on her mission. It was for us as writers so that we could know more about our story. I don’t even remember if we told this to Aaralyn or not. Now the idea of collaborating the create characters is kinda interesting to me, I still feel that I’m figuring out the best way to do this. When I’m writing I feel like it’s my job to iron out who these characters are, and that’s what I did on The Farr Extradition. So then when it was time to cast actors I felt like I had kinda already figured this stuff out.

But look at this shot. This is me explaining to Aaralyn during rehearsals how I saw the character of TORYN. Even without hearing the words coming out of my mouth you could tell by my arrogant, jerky body language, it seems to say I know this stuff already, let me tell you who TORYN is. And at the time, it seemed like a good thing, to be prepared, and to know this world and these characters. But after we begun filming The Farr Extradition, I realized that figuring out every nook and cranny and detail of who these characters were on my own would kind of rob the actors of their opportunity to participate in that process.

That would make the characters less powerful than they could have been and also made it so the actors felt less ownership in the roles they were playing. I’m still trying to figure this one out, honestly. I don’t like feeling unprepared, but actors of masters of character, can usually bring a lot of extra dimension to the roles they play if there’s room for their contribution. Actors want to explore, and create, and be involved in that process.

And I think The Farr Extradition will be a much better film if I am more malleable during rehearsals about who these characters were.

4/26/17

In this reflection Ill look at how to direct actors. But it’s impossible to talk about directing acting performances without mentioning how to be the type of person that can direct a set well, so that’s what we’re going to look at first in this tutorial. First, why do actors even need a director? What if they’re really good actors and totally know what they’re doing? They still need a director because in order for actors to deliver a powerful, genuine performance, they need to live as the character for those moments. If they have to mentally step out of that moment to evaluate their own performance, then they can’t completely commit to the scene.

Actors need to perform the scene and only perform the scene. Someone else needs to be brought in to evaluate that performance, so that what they are feeling is coming across in the way they intended, and so that the emotional levels are consistent from shot to shot within a scene. That evaluator, of course, is the director. Obviously, there are no set rules on how to direct well. As we’ll see in the next training series on directing, everyone has a different approach. But there are some general ideas to be aware of so that you can figure out where you stand.

Directors usually know the script better than anyone else on set and they probably should. It’s the basis for almost every single decision. So, if you’re a director, read the script over and over, and be intimately familiar with every location, shot, action, line of dialogue, scene, beat, everything. In the phenomenal book John Badham On Directing and this one, the author talks about first time director’s syndrome. This is a situation all too common on film sets where a director needs everyone to know that they’re in charge. So, they’re not open to feedback from their team or the actors.

As we’ll see in the directing course, being closed off to team input can cause distension in the ranks and sour the whole tone of the set. So, I recommend being open and listening to input from your team, especially the actors. Now, thouse of you that know me yes, I’m a softie. I don’t like yelling or pouting, I like communicating, keeping it real. So, that’s the way I direct. But I do have to say, it does seem that directors that are bullies and jerks do seem to get better responses from both cast and crew. But they also hurt relationships in the long term.

Whereas being kind and communicative does tend to build long term relationships. So, kind of a tossup. So, there are different directing styles, but I think it is important to pick one that is true to who you are. Few things are more jarring than working on a creative project with someone and they go from being sensitive to enraged at the drop of a hat. Now, you could prepare to work with a big ego or even a hot temper, but it’s nearly impossible to work with someone that is unpredictable. Next, we’ll look more at how to support your actors.

 

4/21/2017