Secrets of Screen Acting

Patrick Tucker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317579649
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

When it was first published in 1993, Secrets of Screen Acting broke new ground in explaining how acting for the camera is different from acting on stage. Reaction time is altered, physical timing and placement are reconceived, and the proportions of the digital frame itself become the measure of all things, so the director must conceptualize each image in terms of this new rectangle and actors must 'fit' into the frame. Based on a revolutionary non-Method approach to acting, this book shows what actually works: how an actor, an announcer--anyone working in front of the cameras--gives excellent performances on screen.Instead of starting with what is real and trying to wrestle that onto the screen, Patrick Tucker explains how to workwith the realities of a shoot andworkfrom there towards the real. His step-by-step guide to the elements of effective screen acting is an extension and explanation of a lifetime ofwork in the field, containing over 50 actingexercises and the tried-and-tested Screen Acting Checklist.

As well as being completely updated to cover new techniques, film references and insights, this third edition now includes a set of Film Clip Time Codes for each film. These not only itemise the films discussed in each chapter, but also pinpoint the precise moments where each example can be found so that students, teachers, and professional actors can refer to them quickly and easily.

General Index

• 007 15, 76, 110
• 180 degree rule 189, 191, 211, 215

• About Acting 115, 231
• Academy Ratio vii, 23
• Acting 101 109–10
• Acting for the Edit 190
• action props 169, 211
• Actor Prepares, An 110
• Actors Studio 109
• AD (assistant director) 2, 212
• America (American) 15, 29, 34, 65, 85, 94, 96, 109–10, 189, 211–12, 220
• angle 2, 41, 48, 78, 97, 163, 187–8, 213–15
  • camera 144, 212–13
  • reverse 2, 47, 105, 180, 197, 220, 225, 228
• Antony and Cleopatra 109
• Ashley 135
• assistant director 46, 82, 174, 180, 202–3, 212, 218, 223
• Attias, Dan 2
• Audience of One 45, 50–1, 97, 162, 168, 179, 198
• Australia 105
• Austrian 92
• autocue 163, 212, 228
• avatar 113
• Avid 216

• back light 155, 212
• bat-and-ball 151
• BBC i, 26, 81, 92, 174
• Besson, Luc 118
• Bête, La 171
• big close-up (BCU) (tight ...