So we ended August with a bang. Class was a whirlwind of activity, and it ended way too soon for my tastes...
We started with the Ceremonial Reading of the Coach's Notes, which included a reference to the upcoming Agent Showcase (date to be determined), and what you can do to prepare for it, should you wish to try catching San Diego representation.
Remember: Sign up on the sign-up sheet posted next to the coach's office!
You will ideally perform a comedic 2-person scene. Find a 3-minute scene and a partner to work with. If comedy isn't your thing, go for a 2-person dramatic scene instead. I have tons of scenes and screenplays in my archives - if you need suggestions, let me know! If you're a lone wolf, and would rather go at it alone, then a monologue of up to 90 seconds is allowed as well. Between now and the showcase, we will be allocating class time to work on these scenes.
This Was Us
After this, we queued up our This Is Us scenes and watched them. I loved this! You guys were awesome. As we watched each scene, we heaped on the praise and the constructive criticisms, and generally enjoyed the review time. So much fun - I wish we could film like this every week. But focusing on technique and craft study is important as well, so everything in balance and in its place.
If you'd like to watch the scenes again, scroll down to the next post (dated 8/22), and you'll find them there.
The YOU Chart
After reviewing the This Is Us scenes, I passed out a "You Chart" that I whipped up for you all, which I will post here for reference (click to enlarge):
As you can see, across the top is a continuum, asking a question: How much YOU should you put into your performance? I also listed every acting technique I've been researching, and tried to summarize and encapsulate the boiled-down core philosophy of each - TO THE BEST OF MY CURRENT UNDERSTANDING - and placed them on the page underneath the appropriate region of the You Continuum.
For example: Method Acting is very highly focused on YOU and what is going on inside you as you perform, whereas Adler and Mamet, etc, don't think YOU should be in the work at all. To them, you are a tool, used to make the audience feel something, without reference to what you may or may not be feeling. Again, I stress these summaries are based on my own research and understanding - I say that to avoid arguments with die-hard advocates of certain techniques, who may feel I misrepresented them in some way.
All methods have pluses and minuses - I highly recommend playing with them all, and pulling tools from each for your own tool bag. Some roles may be best served by you being your own unchanged day-to-day self! If so, don't change a thing, just be you! Other roles may require you to be a stylized, modified version of you (while staying alive and YOU underneath it all). And still other roles may require crafting a complete, separate character, with YOU buried way down underneath.
You should train yourself to recognize which approach to take, and have tools to help you. That's another (intended) benefit of the You Chart above - so as you grow and pursue training elsewhere, you'll know which classes to look into taking. It's similar to picking a church (if that's your thing). You could pick a church at random, thinking "Well, church is church, right?" Or you could look into what different churches espouse and make an educated choice. You could pick an acting class at random (I've done that myself before), thinking "Well, acting is acting, right?" Or you could do a little research.
Side Note: You'll notice Stanislavsky is conspicuous in his absence on my chart. Being a great experimenter in his approach, he dabbled in techniques and approaches and mindsets over his lifetime that would place him all over that continuum. Literally, every person named on that chart traces his/her lineage back to Stanislavsky, during one era of his career or another.
12 Angry Men
After discussing the You Chart for a brief time, we passed out a scene from 12 Angry Men(1957 dir. S. Lumet), and the accompanying character notes. You each picked sides at random, and then were told to take the character notes and infuse them into YOU for the scene work. After giving you some time to get familiar with the sides, we threw caution to the wind and started filming.
I brought my trusty Lumix, LED lights and my little H1 field recorder and we fired it all up and began. Honestly, I had a blast. But before I knew it, Jonny noted that the class was basically over - and we'd only gotten a page or so of the 5 page scene in the can! All due respect to Karen Carpenter, but we'd only just begun! I had to pull the plug on the shoot, but I'll cut together what we did film, and salvage what I can. Perhaps some day we can fire it up again and re-shoot it, with more time. I would say pick up where we left off, but the odds that the same group of students would be there again are super-slim. We'd have to recast and shoot the whole thing in one night, probably from the outset of class.
Either way, it was a fun exercise, and you all seemed to be into it, so I hope you don't feel that our failure to cross the finish line made the time wasted. I'm glad we gave it a shot.
I will post the results at the end of this post, once I finish cutting it. I will also post a monologue I shot with Julian a couple weeks back, which I've been working on, to show you what each of you could possibly do in the future - a more cinematic, crafted approach to filming a monologue, beyond the traditional "one long take" single camera approach. Super fun, and the possibilities are limited only by our imaginations!
Next week, Yolanda Franklin will be taking over the class - I'm sure you'll love what she has to offer. I'll still be around and accessible.
Find your scenes and partners for the Agent Showcase! Let's show them how it's done!
So we did it! We filmed our This Is Us scenes. We started an hour earlier than usual, and finished a little later than normal, but we got all six scenes in the can. I'm super proud of each of you. The performances ranged from super-solid to downright awesome. There wasn't a sub-par performance in the bunch.
I brought in a ringer - my friend Travis the Wonder-DP, and together we ran a 2-camera set-up, putting our monopods to full use. We used supplemental LED lighting as needed, but had to use in-camera audio, since my sound guy was unable to join us with his field audio gear.
Now all that remains is the cutting. We'll need a few days to put the scenes together - I hope to have them finished and added to the end of this blog post within a week. When we meet on the 29th, we'll hopefully be able to review the footage together in class, and see how we did, what worked, and what didn't quite work. That's what this is all about - learning the craft, putting it into action, watching the results, and learning what to tweak as we move forward.
With these scenes, most of you had up to 3 weeks time to prepare, which made a big difference. All of the scenes were robust and emotional. Honorable mention to Kent, who finished his scene with Alexandra (great work, by the way), then stepped in to take on an additional scene when we had a no-show for class. In short order, he absorbed a brand new (to him) scene and nailed it.
Travis the Wonder-DP had nothing but positive things to say about the whole experience. He was likewise impressed with the way you all carried yourselves throughout the evening, both on and off camera. I had a blast as well, though I admit to being quite exhausted by the end of the evening. But I wouldn't trade it for anything!
The Verdict Is In!
Next class, we'll be filming again, but taking the opposite approach. I pulled a 5-page scene from the film "12 Angry Men (1957 dir. S. Lumet). The 12 roles will be given out randomly - and I'll give you all the better part of the first hour to prepare. Then the second two hours of class, we'll film it together, similar to the "Group Therapy" sequence we filmed a few weeks back. I'll then take the footage home and cut it together for our edification and amusement.
We'll also be joined on the 29th by the Illustrious Yolanda Franklin, who will be grabbing the Advanced Reins, moving into September and beyond. She is an accomplished, award-winning actress and director, and she has a lot to share with you all. She will also be preparing you for the upcoming Agent Showcase! More details on that event to come soon.
My Time: A Review
I've had a remarkably good time these past four months in the Advanced Class. It's been a grand experiment, and I've learned a lot, not just from the weekly research and preparation, but also from each of you. Many of you have made strong impressions upon me, and as I move forward and new projects surface, you'll be hearing from me, with audition opportunities.
I won't be disappearing, though. You'll be in great hands with Yolanda, but I will still be associated strongly with AWS, in various capacities, including this blog, which I will continue to update frequently. They won't be "Class Recap" posts, per se, but there's plenty more I have to share with you, on craft techniques, on individual actors/actresses, on memorable movie scenes and roles, on great moments in Hollywood history, and Q&A posts with local industry figures on both sides of the camera, who will share their accumulated wisdom with you all, for your continued benefit.
And more!
So come next class ready to tackle 12 Angry Men, and we'll make it happen. And look for the This Is Us scenes here soon.
Great days ahead!
David Wagner
AWS Staff
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Here is the first of 6 scenes, this one features Mike and Brice. Good work gents. Sorry about the sound. I wanted to link to the same scene from the show, but THIS IS THE BEST I can find at the moment. I'll keep digging.
Here is clip #2, with Kent and Alexandra. Again, the sound is uneven. But the performances are solid! HERE IS THE SAME SCENE from the actual show.
Here is clip #3, with Grant and Christina and Gilson. I experimented with adding music, but it made it sound melodramatic, so I pulled it out. I can't find the scene from the actual show yet, but I'm still looking.
Here is clip #4, with Julian and Kent. I tried adding some background music to this one, to help off-set the buzz in the room tone, to mixed results. HERE IS THE SCENE from the actual show, if you'd like to watch it.
Here is clip #5, with Moises and myself.
One more scene to come - the Big One!
OK, here is the final scene, with Sarah, Jonny, Arianna and Gilson. Took me a while to cut it. Great work, all. I look forward to discussing it in class. HERE IS THE LINK to the scene from the show itself, if you're interested.
We covered a lot of ground on the 15th, as we did our final in-class prep work for the This Is Us shoot on the 22nd.
We began with the Coach's Notes, and segue'd quickly into our second Actor Spotlight: the stunningly impressive Meryl Streep.
One of you wrote on The List of Awesome Performances that we should look at Streep and her work in The Devil Wears Prada(2006 dir. D, Frankel), so with that as my starting point, I gathered info on her prep work for the role of Miranda Priestly, and reviewed interviews, documentaries, DVD commentary tracks, articles and anything else I could find, and then transitioned into general career and craft info and other stand-out roles. Trying to decide what to talk about was a challenge, with so much incredible ground to cover. Streep is peerless, and covering her career would have taken all night. 21 Oscar nominations (3 victories), 33 Golden Globe noms (8 victories). No one else even comes close.
Her thoughts on portraying Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada surprised me somewhat, initially. She didn't really enjoy the character, on many levels...
Even though she says she has no classically-defined "technique" that she espouses (i.e. Method or Meisner, etc.), she says "empathy" is the key to her craft approach. She needs to connect to her characters and their pain. This meant, at least with Miranda, that to pull the character off properly, she needed to stay in that place - that mindset, the isolation, the "me against the world" attitude that you need to soak in if you're to operate in that type of business (the high-fashion world) at that level. So she said she couldn't partake in the part of filmmaking that she loves the most - light-hearted interacting with her co-actors on set between takes. She stayed separated and in character because to break character, to pal around with her co-stars, and then try to reengage the character for filming stripped away the edge that was needed for the scenes to come off properly. It undermined the undercurrent, if you will. So it was a lonely time on set for her.
We talked more about her approach to the craft, including her idea that she is a conduit for her characters to live through - that she has to find them and connect with them, and then allow them to use her voice to express themselves, in a way they would never otherwise be able to. The characters aren't merely variations of herself (as we saw with the Tom Hanks work in the previous Spotlight), but she makes herself available to these characters.
"I don't feel like I exist until I'm with someone else. Listening is everything. It's where you learn everything. When I was applying to law school, and thinking that acting was a stupid way to make a living, and that it doesn't contribute anything to the world, I think it does. I think there's a great worth in it, and the worth is in listening to people who maybe don't even exist, or who are voices in your past, and through you come through the work and you give them to other people. And I think that giving voice to characters that have no other voice... that's the great worth of what we do. Because so much of acting is vanity, but the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I've said something for a soul, I've presented a soul." - Meryl Streep on Inside the Actor's Studio
We watched a clip from The Devil Wears Prada - the "Pile of Stuff" monologue...
And then we compared it to her stellar work in Doubt (2008 dir. JP Shanley), by watching a scene with her and Viola Davis - two masters crossing (s)words on screen, in a magnificent 7 minute clip...
Viola Davis (like everyone else that has worked with Streep, that I could find) had nothing but high praise for Streep, as a person and as a professional.
“But ultimately she [Streep] is the best acting partner to have, because she is for you a hundred percent. She’s gonna give a hundred percent, so it’s not like you’re going to have to overcompensate in the scenes for what you’re not getting—because sometimes you do have to do that with certain actors you work with, because they are not giving you anything—they’re too concerned with looking at themselves, you know?” - Viola Davis, on working with Meryl Streep in "Doubt"
We talked about the idea of being a giving scene partner - giving your all in your work, each take, even when the camera is not on you, but on your partner. There's no time when you should say, "Well, the camera isn't on me right now, so I can kick back and ease up." We also talked about how Davis had filmed the above sequence, went home, and then a couple months later had to go back and re-shoot the entire sequence, because the undercurrent of the first take wasn't right. Apparently, in the initial cut, it seemed as though Davis' character was guilty of something and wanting to get away from Streep, rather than what they'd hoped, which was that they stroll and talk, more as peers, rather than a superior and a frightened inferior. It worked - the above sequence earned Davis an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So be ready for reshoots! They may need to happen, even to the pro's!
We talked briefly about Sophie's Choice - a staggeringly-emotional movie and performance - one which earned Streep a Best Actress Oscar, and a film which I have a hard time watching, especially the "Choice" scene itself, which always reduces me to a broken, quivering mess. The performance is incredibly well-crafted and multi-layered. I don't know who else could have pulled it off like Meryl did. It's fascinating to hear her talk about preparing and filming that role, but I won't go into it here.
If you haven't seen it, here's The Choice scene. Watch at your own emotional risk... the entire movie is on Amazon Prime at the moment, if you have an account and are a glutton for emotional punishment.
I could have spent the whole class reviewing her career and the wide variety of characters she's crafted, but we moved on...
The Improv Scenes
We queued up the improvised scenes we filmed last week and watched them, stopping after each one to discuss them. They were great fun to edit and to watch in class, and a lot of good feedback was given. I also passed out the formatted transcripts of each scene, so you could look at your own work, in script form. You're all screenwriters now! In improvising those scenes, you effectively wrote them! The idea being that your scene work should look like these improvised scenes. Here they are again, in case you want to see them again.
"The best acting looks improvised. The best improv looks scripted."
I don't recall where I first heard that quote - probably in the Spolin classes I took up in LA back in the day, with the Great Rob Adler. There was a third part to the quote - something about "The best writing is ____" but I don't recall the rest of the quote, and it isn't in my notes from back then...
I was tempted to have you use the scene transcripts as in-class scene-work, and have you re-memorize them and perform them again, but I didn't want to cloud your minds. I know you're all working on your This Is Us scenes for next week - I'd rather you keep your minds there, as far as memorization and preparation. Still, the idea is a sound one. Comparing the results of the improvised versions of the scenes with the prepared/rehearsed versions. Or to re-cast the scenes with other students, and act out each other's scenes.
Maybe someday.
Moises Monologue
We then had Moises perform a monologue for us in Spanish, and the rest of us non-Spanish-speaking students tried to see what we could deduce about the content based upon the tone and delivery, the body language, the energy level. This tied into our discussions on undercurrent - the facet of the story that can be told to strengthen what the words are accomplishing, without merely being redundant. Really, it's a variation of the Spolin "Gibberish" exercise, only with actual languages instead of fabricated ones. The focus is to effectively communicate what you need to without using words.
There's a craft phrase that goes like this: "Don't put vanilla on vanilla." That means, in essence, that if the words themselves are accomplishing something, as far as the story-telling, don't use physical actions or tone/delivery to accomplish the same thing. Use the opportunity to tell additional layers of story with your tone and actions.
An example: Don't tickle someone while also saying, "I'm trying to make you laugh! Come on, laugh!" Do one or the other. Don't shout "I'm mad at you!" at your co-actor, when the very act of yelling conveys your anger. Saying "You never listen to me!" in an angry tone conveys both concepts at the same time...
So Moises performed his monologue, and discussion ensued, as we detailed what we could, based on what we saw and heard, without reference to the actual words (which ended up being the "game of inches" speech from the film Any Given Sunday).
We also discovered that many of you can speak more than one language! I think we should have a night of non-English monologues. We can film them and cut them together for your reels, showcasing your ability to act in multiple languages.
Bad Movies
At some point during Hour 2, we discussed Bad Movies, and your thoughts on whether you should avoid them or embrace the badness, because hey, a paying gig is a paying gig, right!? I talked about how I'd recently sat through a SyFy original film called "Megalodon" starring Michael Madsen, which was abysmal on every level (in my opinion!), making me wonder how on earth such a script could ever be green-lit and produced. But there's a big market for really bad movies! There are tons of articles and video essays online, trying to figure out why a substantial percentage of movie-goers actually really enjoy bad movies.
We also discussed "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau, and the film "TheDisaster Artist" by James Franco and his friends, which tells of the making of The Room. The phenomenon of "So Bad It's Good" is worth thinking about as a professional actor... let's say you get the audition notice for "Six-Headed Shark Attack"... do you audition for it, or not? Are you embarrassed to be in a relentlessly cheesy movie, or do you take the work wherever you can find it?
This Is Us
After a short break, we divided up into our scene pairs/groups and began run-throughs of our This Is Us scenes. We discussed the blocking, walked through the scenes, then performed them with the dialog, making comments and notes, and plans for the shoot next week. It will be a night of film making - so I'm staggering your arrival times. We'll have 4 hours to get all the scenes shot, and then I'll cut them together during the week. We'll watch them in class on the 29th.
Interesting class on the 8th! We covered a lot of ground.
We began with the Coach's Notes, as per usual, and then segued into our first Character Spotlight: a focus on Tom Hanks and his preparation for the role of Forrest Gump(1994 dir. R. Zemekis). This film was midway through one of Hanks' amazing success runs, which went from 1993 to 1995.
Sleepless in Seattle(1993 dir. N. Ephron)
Philadelphia (1993 dir. J. Demme) won Oscar for Best Actor
Forrest Gump(1994 dir. R. Zemekis) won Oscar for Best Actor
Apollo 13(1995 dir. R. Howard)
Toy Story(1995 dir. J. Lasseter)
Hanks has won 2 Best Actor Oscars (back to back), and had 3 other Best Actors noms (for Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away). The only other actor to win back-to-back Best Actor nods was Spencer Tracy. (Side Note: Two women have won back-to-back Best Actress awards - Luise Rainer and Katharine Hepburn.)
Hanks was drawn to the script of Forrest Gump because of the purity of the character:
"He lives an amazing life and sees amazing things, but the purity of how he sees the world was what I thought was amazing about the screenplay, and what he goes through to get to the point that we’re all at. All the great stories are about our battle against loneliness: Hamlet is about that; so is The Importance of Being Earnest. That’s what I always end up being drawn toward."
The initial screen tests show that he didn't arrive at the external character work straight away, but started with internalizing the character first, until he could get his feet under him.
As you can see, nothing like the final character we know. As he began absorbing and understanding the character, his external work began to evolve. He hit a break-through when he made a decision on how to approach developing the (now recognizable) voice for Forrest... [start at 0:50 mark]
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The voice, combined with the haircut and general humble and straight-forward demeanor, led to the creation of an iconic film character, and an(other) Oscar for Hanks.
Here's my favorite scene from the film, where Forrest finds out he's a daddy. Look at the way Hanks receives and responds to the information. Watch his body language - it adds so much to the simple dialog.
Tom Hanks has an amazing ability to communicate volumes with his eyes, his expressions, his ability to slow down, receive information, listen, and process it before responding. He lets the camera (and by extension, the audience) watch him think. We see the wheels turning. It's shows us that he is alive inside the character - he isn't just waiting for his chance to say his memorized dialog. We see the whole process, and understand why he's saying what he's saying.
Watch this clip from The Road to Perdition(2002 dir. S. Mendes). Watch a master at work. Tom's pacing, his delivery, the whole story going on behind his eyes as he carefully navigates the conversation with his son. Watch his face! [jump to 2:32 mark to start scene]
I wish I could find this scene higher resolution. The more clearly you can see Hanks' face, the more effective the work is. It's an aspect of the acting craft which I sincerely hope to clearly point out to you all, with the hopes that it will surface in your work as well. It will set you apart from the crowd, I guarantee it.
It's a beautifully-shot film, if you haven't seen it. The script is the weakest link, but the performances are solid, and it has an iconic moment with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman playing a little duet on a piano at a wake, which I feel is one of the great moments in cinema history.
Hanks' role as a strong, silent killer is a bit of a departure from his usual likable "every man" type of character work. I certainly admire the choice, as far as trying to stretch a bit. To me, it's not quite a perfect fit, but it still rings true with his prior quote, about being drawn to roles that deal with our "battle against loneliness." Seems to be a theme in Hanks' personal life.
"The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even though you are. You can go in a lonely human being and you can see something that for two hours, and however long the afterglow lasts, can make you feel as though you actually belong to something really good." - Tom Hanks
We discussed in class other facts and trivia surrounding Forrest Gump specifically, and then segued into a clip of Hanks in the final scene in Captain Phillips(2015 dir. P. Greengrass), which was fascinating on many levels...
The scene was a last-minute addition - it wasn't in the script. The original ending scene didn't carry the emotional punch that Greengrass was looking for, so he talked to Frank Castellano (the actual captain of the Bainbridge, from the real life events), and asked him more about what happened once Captain Phillips was rescued in real life. He said he didn't talk to him until after he got back from the infirmary. This was news to Greengrass, so he grabbed Hanks, his cinematographer and a light or two, and went down to the infirmary on the ship. The very surprised medical staff were informed that they would be in a movie!
Initially, it was going to be some quick footage to help transition between the rescue and the planned ending, but after the first attempt at a take (which had to be halted, to calm down the understandably-nervous medical corpsmen) Greengrass realized they were on to something. After instructing the medical staff to forget they were dealing with an actor, and just treat Hanks as they would any patient entering the infirmary, they shot a second take - which made it into the final film as above. The whole scene was improvised - keep that in mind. If they'd had to script it, cast the medical staff through auditions, rehearse, etc, this scene would have taken forever to get. But it was a spontaneous idea, and a moment of serendipity, which Hanks and the staff parleyed into a magical moment.
The lessons, of course, should be obvious, but among them, the willingness to just go for it. As an actor, this type of scenario might pop up for you. If it does, remember Mr. Hanks, and dive in.
It also tied into our Meisner work for the evening. It showcases being fiercely present, right now, with your co-actors. They each played off of each other beautifully. The medical staff relied on their real-world training, and rolled with Hanks beautifully, and Hanks, in turn, fed off of her dialog and her touch. And being at the end of a long physical shoot, he didn't need to reach very far for the sense of overwhelm and shock that fed his internal work.
There's so much more to talk about with Hanks - perhaps I will do so at some point in the future.
Meisner Exercises
But for our class, we began a Meisner-based exercise, which involved a a pair of you coming up front, sitting down at the folding table with a deck of cards (a 'simple activity'), and having a one-minute improvised conversation on the topic of your choice. I set up two cameras to capture it (which I am editing as we speak - check back soon), and turned you loose, with the instruction to "be you, as much as possible." No acting, just talk, as though the cameras and the rest of your classmates didn't exist, and it was just you two, talking somewhere private.
The results were interesting. Some of you couldn't shake the desire to act, and put on a show for us. You had a hard time just being yourself. Others were far more comfortable being themselves. Most of you did the exercise twice - and in every case, the second attempts were far superior to the initial attempts. I will cut them all together, and you can see for yourselves.
We will review the clips in class next Wednesday night, and compare them to the scenes we've filmed recently (the Boardwalk Empire scenes, and the Breaking Bad scenes).
The main purpose of the exercise is to get you to feel comfortable being yourself on camera. When your guard is down, and you're just being you, your faces are so alive with thought and nuance (like Hanks), and we can see you talking, listening, processing, smiling, frowning, responding. It is captivating. Alternatively, when you're aware you're being watched, that all disappears, and your face and mannerisms get stiff and dull. If you get to be comfortable being your alive and vivacious selves on camera, saying your own words, the next step is to try to retain that level of comfort and life, while saying someone else's words (from a script). Be "you" while simultaneously being someone else.
When you can effectively "be you" while saying someone else's words, the next step is starting to modify "you" until it matches what the director/script is calling for. "You" morph to fit the role - but the whole time, your performance retains the life and nuance that it has when you're just being you. No more stiff, shallow, self-aware (and mediocre) acting.
Breaking down the This Is Us scenes
After taking a break, we got out our scenes from This Is Us, and reviewed how to break down a scene/script. I brought you all fresh copies of your scenes and gave you pencils, and had you mark them pages all up, noting such things as: Tone, Conflict, Objective, Obstacles, Relationship, Point of view, Character Traits, Subtext, etc. I also had you "score" your scenes, marking the beat/unit changes. This is how the pros do it - so we're trying it out as well!
I then paired you with your scene partners and turned you loose to begin discussions and dialog review. I also discussed with each group my initial thoughts on blocking. We will film on the 22nd of this month.
At some point during this stretch, we talked about "Death" as a theme, and how it can be found in each of the This Is Us scenes you're all working on. Not just a physical death, but the (possible) death of a relationship, an idea, a mindset...
In the final half hour of class, I showed two last clips, dealing with "Death". One scene from the movie Flight (2012 dir. R. Zemeckis) featuring Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly and the amazing James Badge Dale. All three characters are dealing with the theme of death, from three different angles...
What an incredible scene. The writing, the shot choices, the scene construction, and the performances. What a cameo by Mr. Dale.
We also watched the drowning scene from James Cameron's 1989 film The Abyss, which led to an interesting little discussion on the idea of characters who die and then come back to life for some reason - whether that robs the death scene of it's power or not.
So, yeah, a lot of ground was covered on the 8th. Next week, we'll review the Meisner improvised scenes (look for them here soon) and begin proper rehearsal on the This Is Us scenes, in the lead-up to our film day on the 22nd.
Until then, get out there and live! Every new thing you experience is something else to make you unique, and increase the value of what you bring to the table, as an actor.
Take care,
Dave Wagner
AWS Staff
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Here are the improvised scenes we recorded in class on the 8th . The goal was to have you be yourselves, act naturally, do a simple activity, and ignore the cameras. I will transcribe the scenes now, formatting them like legit script pages, and give them to you next Wednesday. If I had time, I'd have you memorize the lines now, rehearse, and perform them again! Then we'd film them and compare the results. How close could you get - having prepared - to how natural these scenes look when you improvised them?
[Sorry about the focus! It's off on camera 1...]
The banter, the thought, the overlapping dialog, the genuine laughter, the gestures and body language... the goal is to be able to create the same results with someone else's words coming from you...
Man, what a class on the first! We covered a lot of ground...
We started with our swift, thorough reading of the Coach's Notes, and moved right into our review of the Breaking Bad scenes we filmed last week. We discussed your impressions, surprises, continuity, and the benefits/drawbacks of coaching during filming (as opposed to after the fact). As seems to be the pattern, each clip had it's wonderful moments, as well as moments that served to inspire the participants to further modify your craft for future scenes. That's the hope, anyway... put the work in, come prepared, film it, cut it together and take a look... did you accomplish what you'd hoped to, with your preparation? Strengthen the things that worked, identify and work on the things that didn't, and try again!
I passed out sheets to y'all to gather suggestions for scenes/characters from TV and film that impacted you, and got a lot of suggestions (so thank you for that!). We'll pick one or two clips/characters per week and take a look at them in class, seeing what we can pull from them. We watched that clip from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in class, just to give everyone a gut kick... it's in the last blog post if you want to watch it again... scroll down!
We began to review Stanislavsky and Chekhov, but got diverted a bit, so I moved on to our Meisner intro, with the scene from Nightcrawler.
The Stanis./Chekhov technique review was focused on when to be yourself in a role, and when to be a variation of yourself. This seems to be a theme of mine. "Being yourself" vs "being a version of yourself" vs "being someone completely different altogether." We watched the first five minutes of a video essay on "Finding Your Voice", which dealt with a number of craft-related items, but, within the context of this theme, it covered actors such as John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart - who always seemed to play the same basic character in every film (as far as line delivery, mannerisms, undercurrent, vocal style), contrasted against the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman and Meryl Streep, who are chameleons, disappearing into radically different characters every time.
Again, there's is a time to craft a complete character, from the ground up. But there are more times when being yourself in a role not only works better for you, but for the project as well. Know when to be you, and when not to, and have the tools in your bag to do either, when needed.
Here is that video essay (It's actually 14 minutes long - we watched the first 5 minutes only in class)...
The essay also covers using your voice to command control of scenes/films. If we have time before the end of August, we'll spend a little time talking about Kristen Linklater's vocal training for actors. It's an important aspect of acting training that I feel is often overlooked/misunderstood.
Within this discussion, I read to you a quote from Harold Clurman (one of the founders of the Group Theater back in the 1930's). He was asked, "What ingredients does a person need to become a wonderful actor?"
"First of all, you have to have a wonderfully trained voice so that when you open your mouth to speak, everyone sits bolt upright in their chairs to listen. Secondly, you have to have a very alive and expressive physical instrument that can convey every nuance of what you are feeling. Thirdly, you have to have a lot of temperament - which means you get upset easily, you laugh easily, you cry easily." -- Harold Clurman
So there's "finding your voice", as far as locating and being able to express your uniqueness in your work (part of "being you"), and also "finding your voice", in that you learn how to command a scene (on stage or film) with a strong voice - not a loud voice, mind you. It's not about volume. It's about vocal quality, confidence, presence. We do a disservice to ourselves and to our audience when we're vocally mousy and uncertain.
Again, you can whisper and be strong and in control. We watched a gut-wrenching scene from The Grey(2011 dir. J. Carnahan), featuring Liam Neeson in which he is very soft spoken, but you can't take your eyes off of him.
That is an incredibly powerful and effective scene. Kicks my butt every time I watch it. Incredibly courageous writing, and impeccably acted.
The actor playing the dying man in that scene is named James Badge Dale, and trust me, you've seen him in other roles. You just don't recognize him there, behind the facial hair and blood. He's one of those solid journeymen actors who routinely show up for a part, shine like the sun, and fade back into the woodwork. He made a name for himself in the TV show "24" with Kiefer Sutherland, playing the role of Chase Edmunds, but he blew me away with his scene-stealing turn in the film Flight (2012 dir. R. Zemeckis) with Denzel Washington. He played the cancer patient in the stairwell scene, and was absolutely fantastic. You'd have to be, to steal a scene from an actor of Denzel's caliber... I would embed the scene here, but I think I'll show it in class next week, when we talk about death, as a theme in film/TV and in "real life."
But, yeah, Dale's performance in that clip from The Grey (above) was absolutely top notch. I don't know who else could have pulled that off so effectively. I wish I knew how to contact him - I'd love to see if he could come to class and talk to us about his character work. Well, a man can dream, right?
So, yeah, back to the scene from Nightcrawler (2014 dir. D. Gilroy). I passed out one page, with some simple dialog, for you to familiarize yourselves with. Then I took you into the office one at a time, away from all eyes, just you and me and your cell phone camera, and we played the scene. The goal was to get a little Meisner with it, with selective repetition of certain lines, to keep you off-guard, and to keep you from thinking. One of the tenets of Meisner's training is that effective acting is impulsive, instinctual... act, don't think. If you think, you get into your head and you lose the connection to your co-actor. So I did everything I could think of to keep you from thinking - just roll with whatever I threw at you, even if it didn't make sense, or (especially) if it didn't seem to fit the way you felt the scene should be played. Would you try to shoe-horn your prepared choices into the scene and control it? Or could you just roll with it?
"The only thing you have to offer as an actor is your unique personality, that which is yours and yours alone."
"Who you really are is revealed by your spontaneous impulses."
"To be your true self, you have to act before you think."
"Actors think more with their hearts than with their heads."
Those quotes are from William Esper, in his book The Actor's Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique
The other purpose of the exercise was to see how close to "you" you could each play the scene. No acting, no choices... just be as authentically "you" as possible, and roll with it, listening, maintaining connection.
I recorded one pass on your phones, for you to review later, and then another pass without recording, to eliminate that last possible hurdle, so you could really focus on the task. You all did very well, and I hope you saw the benefit in the experiment.
After that, time was running short. I decided to show you the actual scene we just did, from Nightcrawler...
And then we broke out the scenes from "This Is Us." I want to film these scenes in class on 8/22/18, and I want you all to have plenty of time to not only get off book, but to really go deep on your prep work. Each of the scenes and parts has depth, and layers to explore. I want to spend time in class the next couple Wednesdays working on the scenes, experimenting, stretching our wings. On the 22nd, I'll hopefully have my DP and sound guys in to join us, so we can get high-end visuals and audio. Fingers crossed that they can join us.
That was only a fraction of what I'd hoped to cover on the first. Some of what we didn't get to, I'll add to next class.
