Transcript Acting - Jadwin

Acting
Is the category of cinematic
form that most of us
know the most about.
What is acting?
Impersonation - pretense
 Embodiment (including voice)
 “the aspect of filmmaking over which
directors have the least control” (196)
 Seemingly intuitive or natural, but actually
calculated and contrived
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How do we distinguish
between the actor
and the acting?
Four key types of actors:
Actors who maintain a single persona from
role to role (personality or type actors)
 Actors who deliberately thwart
expectations (actors cast against type)
 Actors who are different in every role
(chameleon actors)
 Cameo actors – those from other
professions who add verisimilitude

The more famous or
‘exposed’ an actor is,
the harder the actor
must work to be seen as
anything but a
personality actor.
In Courage Under Fire, casting
helped shape the audience’s
expectations. How would you
categorize these actors in the film?
Denzel Washington
 Meg Ryan
 Lou Diamond Phillips
 Matt Damon
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A personality actor. . .
Harrison Ford
 “Everyman”
 Embattled hero
 Tough loner
 Action hero
manqué
Personality actors are often boxoffice favorites, but not wellregarded for their acting ability.
Clint Eastwood
 Tom Cruise
 Angelina Jolie
 Jennifer Aniston
 Keira Knightley
 Jack Nicholson
 Seth Rogen
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An actor cast against type
Charlize Theron
 Usually cast as a
glamorous blonde
beauty
 In Monster (dir. Patty
Jenkins, 2003) she
was cast as an
unattractive, streetwalking prostitute and
serial murderer
Chameleons are considered the
most accomplished actors because
their work requires craft. They are
often ordinary-looking.
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Robert de Niro
Gene Hackman
Philip Michael Hoffman
Laura Linney
Edward Norton
Nicole Kidman
William H. Macy
A chameleon actor. . .
Johnny Depp
 Pirate
 Historical figure
 Fantasy figure
 Action hero
 Mentally unbalanced
brother
 Drug kingpin
A cameo actor. . .
This shot from Forrest Gump includes John F. Kennedy,
who died three decades before the movie was made.
 Sometimes a living person
 Sometimes appears as self – or as someone else
 May or may not be credited
 Sometimes a historical figure (with special effects)
Sometimes chameleon actors are
so effective that they become
full-time – successful - actors.
Mark Wahlberg
started as pop star,
boy-toy, and
underwear model
“Marky Mark.”
 Has now made a
serious career as
actor “Mark
Wahlberg.”
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Later, with Jennifer Aniston in the film “Rock Star.”
Dr. Jadwin’s Film Rule #36: Taking off your clothes
generally does not get you nominated for an Oscar™,
but putting more clothes on might.
Screen acting has
changed over time.
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The first film actors
used stage
techniques, which
were often broader
and more exaggerated
than we accept today
(“canned theatre”;
Sarah Bernhardt at
right).
Watch a short video of
“The Great Sarah” as
Queen Elizabeth I
Acting gradually became more
naturalistic as films evolved.

Acting became more
naturalistic during the
silent-film period
(Lillian Gish at right;
video from Broken
Blossoms)
The development of sound had a
profound effect on film acting.

Early cameras were
noisy and had to be
encased in bulky
soundproof “blimps”
(see box around
camera at right)
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This restricted the area
within which actors
were able to move
Singin’ in the Rain dramatizes the
transition from silent films to talkies
– and the casualties.
It celebrates a median point in film – between b/w
silent films, the technicolor revolution/studio
system, and present-day naturalistic films.
To get a sense of what silent movies are
like, you can watch an early silent movie
that is now in the public domain.
Charlie Chaplin in
“The Gold Rush”
Barsam argues that in the film Applause,
(1929, dir. Rouben Mamoulian),
“we can almost feel the limited-range
microphone boom hovering over the actors, one
step beyond the use of flowerpots” (205).
Check out this 29-sec. video.
Do you agree?
In the classical studio era,
movie stars became prominent
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The movie star embodied
– A studio-created image, because the actor
was “owned” by the studio who had them
under contract
– The social and cultural assumptions of the
period
– A paradoxical combination of ordinariness and
god-like fame and power
The studio/star system
(1930s-1960s)
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Gave studios complete
control over actors, the
power to rename, to
define “type,” to
determine roles, and to
refuse parts.
Dominated the movie
industry until it collapsed
in the 1960s, when movie
stars became “free
agents” with more
independence, but less
job security
Studio acting was succeeded by
method acting in the 1960s.
Developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky (director
of Moscow Art Theatre, 1890s onwards)
 Influenced the silent directors of the 1920s in
Russia and US
 Pudovkin’s book Film Acting (1935) codified
Stanislavsky’s ideas.
 Method acting was later taught by Stella Adler, a
famous acting teacher at NYC’s Actor’s Studio.
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Method acting emphasizes
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Natural-seeming – lifelike - acting
– Method actors learn to identify with their characters
and to develop “back story” and “motivation” ideas
– Method actors often study real-life people to get a
better sense of how to portray characters
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Collaboration between actors and directors
(rather than directors calling all the shots)
 Improvisation to enrich the film – deviating from
the script when appropriate
 The use of expressive objects to indicate
character and convey emotion
Method acting is still practiced, but
is often combined with other styles
of acting.
Some directors counsel actors to “think,
don’t feel”
 Other directors encourage actors to feel
and encourage spontaneity
 Some actors are encouraged to invite the
audience’s participation by restraining
their emotions.
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Issues in casting
Casting decisions traditionally reflect
culturally widespread prejudices about
subordinate groups – everybody but ablebodied white men.
 Race
 Gender
 Age
 Ability
An expressive object we’ll see later
in the course is the sled “Rosebud”
in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.
Another famous expressive object
from Citizen Kane is a snow globe.
How casting works
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Casting professionals or agencies are hired to find
appropriate actors
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Actors are usually represented by agents and belong to a
union that ensures they are paid fairly (SAG, the Screen
Actors’ Guild.)
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Well-known actors read scripts and negotiate with
directors and producers to determine whether they are
interested in a film.
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Less-well-known actors take screen tests. Here is an
early, hilarious screen test of actors James Dean and
Paul Newman.
Types of roles include
Major roles – hero, heroine, villain
 Minor roles (in descending importance)
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– Character actor
– Walk-on or bit player
– Cameos
– Animal and infant players
– Extras
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Stand-ins and stunt-workers, wranglers
and handlers, and body-doubles
Styles of acting
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Naturalistic (method). Think of Johnny
Depp as J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan,
in the historical film Neverland.
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Non-naturalistic (expressionist) – involving
the alienation effect. Think of Johnny
Depp in Edward Scissorhands.
Improvisatory acting
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Can occur spontaneously, or be decided on as a
strategy by director and actors. Or both!
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Barsam cites the “You talkin’ to me?” segment
from Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1973) as an
example. There was no scripted
dialogue/monologue for this scene; De Niro –
who is a famous proponent of method acting improvised.
Framing, composition, lighting,
and the long take all affect the
audience’s perception of an
actor’s performance.
Framing and composition can
separate actors or keep them
together in a shot.
Here the actors are separated in the frame
(in depth and in length from each other).
Closeups can be very important.
Note how, in this
video clip, the
filmmaker Carl
Theodor Dreyer
intercalates
closeups of Joan
of Arc and her
interrogators
(Barsam
dicusses this
sequence on
227).
Lighting actors in particular ways
helps create meaning.
What are the
kinds of lighting
used in this shot
of Marlene
Dietrich in the film
Morocco?
What mood is created
by the
actor/lighting
combination?
The long take (an exceptionally
long single shot) encourages us to
focus deeply.
In this video, actors and
director from Children of
Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón,
2006) discuss why the
movie enlists long takes.
(The clip is from the
“Making of” featurette on
the DVD release of the
film.)
Barsam suggests we use the following
criteria to evaluate an actor’s performance:
Appropriateness; naturalness
 Inherent thoughtfulness, emotionality
 Expressive coherence
 Wholeness, unity
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Screening checklist: ACTING
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Why was this actor chosen and not another?
Does the performance create a coherent, unified character?
Does the actor look appropriate for the part?
Does the actor’s performance convey actions, thoughts, and
complexities in a way that is appropriate to the film?
What elements are most distinctive about the actor’s performance?
What special qualities has the actor brought to the performance?
How is the actor’s performance interwoven with the filmmaker’s
overall vision?
Is the actor’s performance logical?
To what extent do we get tricked into thinking we’re watching real
life?
(Barsam 235)