Acting for Film (Second Edition)

Cathy Haase

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781621536659
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

"It will not disappoint..." —Ian McKellen, from the Foreword An Authoritative Training Manual for Film Actors and Teachers "In today's entertainment industry of buff bodies and beautiful faces, it's easy to think that a couple of sit-ups and high cheek bones can create a movie legend, " writes film veteran Cathy Haase. However, she adds, what the actor really must have are "technique, craft, and a depth of self-knowledge." In Acting for Film, Second Edition, Haase shows actors how to develop all of these, sharing her secrets (developed through years of on-camera work) for creating characters who come alive and who touch the souls of the audience. Readers will learn how to apply theatrical training to film acting and hone a personal approach to rendering a character. Acting for Film, Second Edition, is an essential guide for aspiring performers, acting teachers, and anyone interested in gaining a greater understanding of the craft. This new edition includes:

• Advice on dealing with new technology including CGI and motion capture
• Concentration and relaxation exercises that will enhance facial expressiveness
• Exploration of sense memory techniques for on-camera work
• Animal exercises and their usages
• Tips for maintaining proper eye focus in front of the camera and conveying the "beats" of a scene, even in the shortest takes

For any performer who intends to make a living in front of the camera, Acting for Film, Second Edition, is the most authoritative resource! With Haase's experience and advice in their pocket, readers will be prepared to land the film role they've been dreaming of.

PART ONE

THE ACTOR

CHAPTER 1

Relaxation and the
Art of the Face

Close your eyes and allow the movie in your mind to travel through the land of your favorite film images. Don’t try to remember a title or a specific movie and then search for the image. Allow your mind’s eye a free hand, and sit back and enjoy the show. Films from childhood, cartoons, adventures, love scenes, swells of music, and magnificent landscapes will dance in your imagination, but more than anything, there will be faces. Faces looking out at you telling you their stories through their expressions. Faces of famous actors, and faces of unknowns. Faces in the crowd. Faces of children, of old people, of nymphs and heroes. Whatever they look like, whoever they are, they will all have one thing in common. They will all be beautiful. They are beautiful because they have touched you in a special way that has become part of the fabric of your identity. This relationship you have with the movie images in your mind is a very intimate one. It is, in fact, a love relationship, and being such, it is a very complex and volatile affair. It’s best to embrace this relationship right at the beginning, as you begin to think about yourself within those movie images and see your own face among them.

One’s relationship to one’s own face is something that most people have thought about to varying degrees. It comes in the guise of how you feel about your looks, whether you think you are attractive or ugly or sexy or whatever. Some people think about it a lot, others hardly at all, but most people do not occupy themselves with their relationship to their faces in the manner or form of a movie actor. The face and how it functions for the individual is paramount to the film actor. It goes way beyond the realm of looks. This is a relationship as passionate as any love affair, as spiritual as god, and as lasting as a mother to her child. When people speak of the vanity and introspection of actors, they have no idea how meager this terminology is.

That being said, you must not look at this relationship as a negative one. You must see it as a tool of the craft that you would like to pursue. The way you look, and beyond that the quality you project on screen, determines the parts that you play. It’s as simple as that. There is room for everyone on the screen, as your own favorite reel of movie memories will tell you. Not everyone is a bathing beauty. Some of the more indelible types have been profoundly strange-looking, sad, or old. Wherever you fit into this wide spectrum of human looks, if you want to be a film actor, you must learn to accept yourself (or the struggle that you face in attempting to do that) and freely interact with yourself through your feelings. This interaction is seen, through relaxation, on the expression it releases in the muscles of your face. The work the actor puts into trying to perfect this interaction, which begins with the self and then extends to the character, the script, the other actor, etc., begins with the Mental Relaxation exercises. They seem very simple, and they are. It is here, with these simple structures, that one can begin building the “muscles” that, like an athlete, you will need to be a film actor.

MENTAL RELAXATION

Sit in a chair. An ordinary metal folding chair is good or any sturdy, straight-backed chair with no arms and no cushions. Have a clock nearby, so you can time yourself. In the beginning, give yourself twenty minutes. At first, just try and breathe calmly and fully with closed eyes. Try and take the pressure off. Unlike yoga or meditation, where you are told to always go back to the mantra and remain calm, these exercises are geared to bring you more in touch with how you feel and what’s going on with you at that very moment. You must try and remain present. You must try not to retreat into a dreamlike state or shut down completely and feel nothing. As human beings, we are living and feeling all the time. Actors are professional feelers. The trick is to learn how to feel many complex things and to remain relaxed. This is true of all acting, but it is particularly true of film acting, where the camera reads everything and the actor is often confined to little or no movement.

It is too late to start getting used to being relaxed, but alive in front of the camera when you have a job or are at an audition. The work toward Mental Relaxation should be part of a daily practice, like exercise or the scales of a musician. Actors work simply and diligently against their mortal enemy, tension. Certainly, there’s plenty of tension on a movie set, and the actor’s face in varying degrees of close-up is often the target of everyone’s attention. Therefore, the actor must be prepared to face the cameras for long periods of time, often being asked to do the same things over and over again, without becoming tense and tired. The muscles of the face must be trained to withstand this marathon of expression. They must be trained before you get to the set.

Mental Relaxation Exercise #1

1. Sit in a chair, keeping your back straight, your head balancing straight on the top of the spine, feet flat on the floor, arms either on top of your lap with palms down or hanging at your sides, and your eyes closed.

2. Just breathe, letting the air come high into the chest, so that the rib cage and breastbone move with each inhalation and exhalation. Don’t let the air fall into the stomach area. Keep it in the upper chest.

3. Open your mouth slightly, so that the teeth are not touching. This is actually releasing the jaw.

4. Sigh three of four times without moving the head around or fidgeting. Just sit and breathe, and sigh without moving.

5. Concentrate on your eyes. Imagine that the eyes are two soft pools of clear, calm water. Check for twitching or furrowing of the brow. If you find tension around the eyes, release it with a sigh or a deep breath. Make sure that no other part of your body is moving, that your jaw is released, and your breath is high in the chest and steady. Throughout the Mental Relaxation exercises, keep checking for ways that the tension escapes to other parts of the body, like feet that curl around the legs of the chair, or hands that suddenly grab the seat, or eyelids that uncontrollably flutter. Keep checking for tension, and release it, while concentrating on the eyeballs themselves.

6. Now, lift the eyeballs up as high as you can, while keeping the lids closed. You should feel the stretch of the tendons around the eyes. Do not lift the head up or bend it downwards, but try and keep it straight and easy as you keep the eyes lifted. Keep breathing and sighing, and hold for twenty seconds. Don’t lock the jaw. Then, release the eyes to their normal position.

7. Stretch the eyes to the left and hold them there for ten seconds. Release them to their normal position. Repeat to the right. Stretch them down toward the tip of the nose. Hold for ten seconds and release.

8. At this point, check for signs of rising tension anywhere in the body, particularly in the face, head, neck, and shoulder region. The eyelids remain closed, but an inner eye is vigilantly at work keeping all the instructions in order. A small, quiet invisible director inside the mind’s eye is investigating.

9. Now, rotate the eyes to all extreme positions. Up, right, down, left, up, right, down, left, etc. Try to breathe normally, keeping the jaw released and the head still, as you stretch the eyes as far as you can in each position, rotating to the next. Do about five rotations.

10. Now, rotate the eyes in the opposite direction, up, left, down, right, etc., and repeat about five rotations.

Whenever you are repeating something in the opposite direction, on the other side, or just repeating a series, approach it as if it were the first time you had ever done it. Approach it as if it were a new adventure of discovery and avoid feeling secure and familiar. This is a very important aspect of the work. It is training the muscles to always find new things, to be in a perpetual state of discovery, even though an action has been repeated many times.

Note about the Exercises

All of the following exercises will follow the same format as I described above. The sitting position in the chair, the posture, and the investigation of random movement and tension should all be maintained while doing the specific movements. The general motto is: “Don’t get bored, don’t get stiff, just keep investigating.”

Mental Relaxation Exercise #2

1. Concentrate on your eyebrows. Raise them up and bring them down. Move up and down as quickly as you can. Repeat this motion in rapid succession for about ten seconds and then stop to rest. Then, repeat it again.

2. Try to do the same movement with the eyebrows, only this time incorporate the entire skin of the scalp, so that it too moves back and forth. Repeat a series, rest, and do it again.

3. Squinch the face together, as if you had an extreme lemon reaction, and hold for a few seconds, then release. Repeat five times.

4. Spread the mouth in a thin, wide, tense smile, then quickly draw the lips together in a tight, round kiss position. Go back and forth between the two positions.

5. Concentrate on the upper lip. Tap it with your fingers. Pinch it and pull it into different directions. Now, without using your hands, imagine that the upper lip is divided into two segments like the mouth of a bunny. See if you can move the two sides independent of one another. Try to do this and breathe at the same time.

6. Now, pull the lips over the teeth like you were pretending to be toothless. Open and close the mouth, while stretching the lips over the teeth and releasing.

7. Now, do a combination of all of the above movements and incorporate the eyes, moving freely from one type of movement to the other. Don’t forget to breathe!

At this point, let’s take stock of what’s happening while we’re doing the exercises. For each person, the experience will be different, but for everyone, as you move the muscles of the face, different thoughts and feelings will be unleashed. Our faces do a lot of work for us. They are our shields from the rest of the world, a thin dividing line between them and us. Our faces are riddled with defenses that protect us in our daily lives, usually concealing what we really feel. Now is the time to bring those defenses down and let the face and feelings interact freely, without regard for social protocol. Don’t judge yourself or get caught in trying to figure something out. Just keep moving. Keep moving forward.

It is important to “move forward” during these relaxation exercises in order to achieve a state of active relaxation. As one works, the meaning of the phrase “move forward” becomes clearer. This is a state in which you are always actively discovering and investigating something new. The word “relaxation,” especially when applied to a mental state, is often related to a feeling of repose, of calm, and of harmony. This is a different type of endeavor, very different from what the actor needs at this point in the work. Later on, when one is battling nerves, many of the same exercises can be used to achieve a state of calm; however, at this juncture, we are trying to create an atmosphere of productive conflict, rather than that of harmony and peace. It is safe to say that we are trying to achieve an active state of conflict between the inside (the feelings, thoughts, memories, etc.) and the outside (the expressions of the face, body movements, and the voice) of the actor. The first step in doing this is to incorporate the voice as part of the Mental Relaxation.

Talking and speech also take place on the face and cause a lot of problems in film acting. This isn’t the same problem of vocal projection that occurs on stage, but the problem of connection to the words. Film is very intimate; it’s public privacy with the audience as potential voyeurs sitting out there somewhere in the future. Speech must occur with subtle and full expression within the confines of the all-exposing close-up. Therefore, at this time, it is important to start incorporating the voice as a mechanism of releasing tension and deepening the relaxation process. If the vocal mechanism is not brought in as part of the relaxation at this very beginning point, I feel it always lags behind. An actor who neglects training the vocal aspects of the talent will always be able to emote more than he or she will be able to communicate through sound and language. This can be a disadvantage to an actor.

GIBBERISH

A speech teacher of mine once said that speaking is an ahhhh sound with the articulation of the mouth, tongue, and lips. I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s easy—I can do that, no problem.” I’m still trying to do it. What we’re going to try and do is not to speak, per se, but to make sounds by moving the mouth, tongue, and lips vigorously, while connecting to our thoughts. In other words, we’re going to speak Gibberish. Webster’s dictionary describes ­gibberish as rapid and inarticulate talk, unintelligible chatter, jargon, unmeaning, unintelligible, incoherent. All very comforting words for those about to let their defenses down and express their innermost thoughts. The idea is to connect to the mental impulse without thinking and express it directly through the sounds and movements of Gibberish. You should try and keep the head easy and free and the body still. The sounds, however, could be anything and vary in volume. Don’t try to make the sounds fit what you think you’re feeling, but rather, allow the sounds of Gibberish to inform and surprise you.

Mental Relaxation Exercise #3

Still sitting in the chair as before, do the facial acrobatics of exercises #1 and #2, while doing Gibberish. Make sure you inhale and exhale fully. The deeper you investigate the relaxation, the more air you need, so don’t forget to breathe. This exercise can be done with the eyes open; however, if it’s more difficult to concentrate, keep them closed for now.

Putting the movements of the eyes and face together with the Gibberish is a multitask action....