The Uses of Bad Acting
I remember when I was in grad school and I was struggling — felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with my technique, and my teachers agreed. And I don’t remember why, but Dale Rose, who was and still is head of the the performing faculty at UMKC’s Professional Actor Training Program, suggested that I needed to come out more, physically. I told him that I was afraid I’d start indicating. Now Indicating might as well be called the “I” word for trained actors, right? The last thing any of us want — especially when we’re using the style of realism — is to indicate, to overact, to mug, ham-it-up, you name it. Indicating can be as obnoxious and embarrassing to watch as about anything there is. But it can also be pretty subtle. I’ve seen actors that we all consider to be really good and SOME of what they’re good at is just making their indication really subtle and fine.
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John Keating!
Right on — we had a second holiday visitor in two nights at ATS — this time John Keating sat in for awhile. John’s been in LA since the end of July and has done exactly what he planned to do — found a place to train, found a place to make income, found representation and found a few auditions. Now John plans to find a lot MORE auditions before it’s all said and done — and to get plenty of work from those auditions — but that’s the job to GET the job.
Anyway, it was good to have John back within the four walls of ATS — until he WALKED OUT ON ALL OF US (
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Story, Objectives, Listening and Needing More
In addition to Farrah’s visit, we continued our exploration of story and acting “without a net” through our wide-open scene work.
Two actors check each other out. They both have four lines drawn from a box and a story they’ve decided on and plugged into — complete with choices on a relationship, circumstances and objective. Some actors are also coming in with tactics for getting that objective and a nice internal conflict built into their set-up. And they tune into each other, not knowing the other’s story. At that point, everything that happens to them, happens to them through the filter of their story. The partner says something unexpected and they deal with it. Sometimes the lines sound like they were written by one writer, sometimes they come across as non-sequitors. They have to go all the way in two different directions, seemingly — they have to fully play their story and objective and they also have to respond to what they get from their partner.
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Farrah McGuire Sits In
In the Monday night Process class last night we had a nice surprise — Farrah McGuire showed up to sit in after having been in Los Angeles for the past four months or so. Farrah’s working at Central Casting now as a casting assistant and so we took the opportunity to pick her brain about what background work is all about, how take advantage of doing background work and when to avoid doing more of it. I was telling the class how when Farrah first came and visited with me about taking acting classes — about a year and a half ago — she knew then that she wanted to work in casting and that THAT was why she wanted to study acting. Now Farrah will tell you she’s still got a long way to go with her career goals — she doesn’t just want to work as an assistant at Central! — it’s really gratifying to see someone target what they want and find a way to get started on the path to getting it. I hope classes at ATS played some small role in helping Farrah do just that.
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Survey Says, then October
Spent the day putting the final touches on another ATS Movie of the Month, “Survey Says,” (starring Brenda Harvey and Nellie Yangmi — shot by Ty Jones, lit by Larry Levenson. Jauqui Craig and Arthur Saldanha PA’d) that we shot in September. I’d thought I would be starting to capture the next movie — working title, “October” — but kept seeing things I could do to make “Survey Says” just a little better, even though I’ve screened it at the studio through two or three previous edits. I’m at the point where I really like the pacing of it and how it works with the music. We had some sound issues with this one. Note to self: if you attenuate your microphone for the outdoors, don’t forget to “un-attenuate” it for the interiors! Some of the sound is really low, so getting it heard means raising the level of hiss, too. Lesson learned, ya just gotta hope.
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On-Camera Class, 12/18
In tonight’s On-Camera class we worked really hard on getting actors to choose specifics with their commercial audition copy. One thing I have them do is to identify the power words and impact words in the copy. Often those words are adjectives or will “add up” to a feel, or tone for the spot. Unfortunately, if an actor tries to play an adjective, feel or tone, they’ll be giving work that’s very general and doesn’t really tap into their unique personality. Actors tonight were able to overcome this by translating adjectives, feelings and tone into playable verbs.
For instance in an Alka-Seltzer commercial, the line is “Does your mom’s magic meatloaf hit you like a ton of bricks?” The actor’s first read was a default read — very general — wanted to show how nice he could be. Who cares??! But when I asked him what bricks do, he said they fall — then I asked him what they sound like and he said they “clunk.” I asked him to CLUNK the first part of the copy, then to BUBBLE or SPARKLE the next part. This particular actor has sparkle in his hip pocket, so he was able to play to a strength. A very specific strength. It was fun. I had another actor NIBBLE copy for the nerdy guy that needs weightlifting, then DEVOUR the “after” part where he needed to be all macho and stuff.
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The Bentleys
OK, so not to brag too much, but ATS had a nice representation at the Bentley’s — the 8mm film festival of theIndependent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City. No, we didn’t make a Bentley, but there were a TON of ATS actors in filmmaker’s projects. Jennifer Nichol (who’s also an IFC board member) actually got recognized at the festival for being in the most movies! Other actors from the studio — Arthur Saldanha, Helen Asbury, Emily Pounds, all in Kit Shea’s ambitious “Ingenue.” I know I’m forgetting someone, so if you read this and I’ve forgotten you or another ATS actor you know was involved in a Bentley, post a comment! Congrats to all ATS actors getting out there and doing it!
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VO Demo
Another ATS student — Licia Watson — went to record a voiceover demo yesterday with Don Martin at Evolution Audio. Don’s the only person I’ve had do my own demos and I think he’s just amazing about helping actors catch impulses and play them fully. He has his hi-tech stuff down and can piece together the best takes and pieces of takes you give, for a demo that really makes you sound fabulous.
Thanks, Don at Evolution! Continue reading
Wide Open Scenes
One of the most popular things among actors that we do at ATS is the open scene. For some time, this meant actors doing “A-B” dialogues, usually written by me. I had developed somewhere around 40 variations of scenes that were quite open to interpretation – in terms of relationship, circumstances, objectives, obstacles and actions (either Interior Action or exterior action — blocking). It’s a nice combination of having to be alive while using written lines and the freedom improv can provide.
Actors get repetitions in making the strongest, most exciting choices they can — with a lot of encouragement and pushing from me, of course. I’m always asking the actor to make specific choices that MEAN something to them — choices that are strong enough to have power over the actor.
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Exit Interview
Good news from ATS friend and FlyOver partner Anna Hadzi. Her movie, “Exit Interview,” won her a scholarship at the Colorado Film School , where Anna’s currently a student. “Exit Interview,” written by me, has been filmed twice as an ATS Movie of the Month and I was really happy Anna chose to use the script as her final project of the semester. I haven’t even seen her movie yet, but having talked to Anna, it sounds like it was a very exciting process and she obviously did a beautiful job — she was competing against everyone else at the school, including students in their 3rd and 4th terms (Anna’s in her 2nd). Continue reading
