The Great Acting Blog: "Noirish Project Swings Into Action"

Rehearsals for Noirish Project have begun. The film itself is a slice neo-realism masquerading as a film noir: Billy robs some precious pearls from his own family, and gives them to local scheister, Jimmy, to off-load to the local fence. The trouble starts however, when it emerges that the pearls are fake and Jimmy barely escapes from the fence with his life, let alone the pearls. The film effectively functions as a road-movie, as the protagonists set about reclaiming the pearls from the fence, who has suddenly become very elusive. Filming begins next week, and I'm delighted to announce that the super-talented Rouzbeh Rashidi will shoot it for us, as he will be in town working on the next stage of his latest film, There Is No Escape From The Terrors Of The Mind. 

First rehearsals involved script analysis, a process I especially love, not because of any intellectual predilection, or wanting to know "what do oranges symbolise", but because it helps to give a wonderful clarity of thought, and enables me to state in simple, actable terms what is happening in the scene. This eliminates the weird, potentially neurotic elements which can arise, and serve as barriers to work, or excuses not to act - a state I'm sure all actors recognise, if not everyone in the world. Instead, a simple analysis of the scene helps to decide on a simple, concrete action, which I can commit to doing in the scene, freeing me up to create and go for it.  

It goes something like this....

1. What does the character literally do in the scene?

2. What am I going to do in the scene?

Note that what the character is doing in the scene, is not the same thing as what the actor who is playing the character is doing in the scene. That's because the actor can never believe the fiction of the scene, and so he needs take something into the scene which will ground him in truth and make him active: an action, in short. But the action the actor chooses for himself must be in line with the writer's intentions (or as the actor discerns his intentions, if the writer is not present at rehearsals).

Below is a very simple scene from Noirish Project: - 

BILLY

I’m sorry, Jimmy.

JIMMY What for?

BILLY Putting you in jeopardy like that.

JIMMY Don’t be silly.

BILLY I’ve really made a mess of this.

JIMMY Hey, never put yourself down in public.

BILLY

I’ve wasted your time.

JIMMY It happens.

BILLY I’m sorry.

JIMMY Don’t apologise.

BILLY I’m stupid and weak.

It is fairly obvious that what Billy is literally doing is apologising to Jimmy.

But an actor might choose the action; "to beg a friend's forgiveness", to do in the scene. This is do-able, in line with the writer's intentions, and would certainly get me up and working (note; the choice of action, and the wording of an action may vary from actor to actor - each actor needs to find an action which is exciting to himself). 

Rehearsals will continue for the rest of this week and the beginning of next week, then filming will start. I'll post regular updates here.

The Great Acting Blog: "Robert De Niro Notes"

 

De Niro offers practical advice here, which means alot coming from an actor of his stature, and especially him I suppose, because so much theoretical voodoo has grown up around his work, in order to explain away his performances - the truth is, acting requires skill and technique and a little bit of aptitude. For me, the central theme of De Niro's view, is that it's about getting the work done and getting on with doing it, aswell as respecting the scene at hand.  

 

 

• De Niro says acting is not about neuroses and playing on your neuroses, it's about doing the character - "the tasks of the character".
• He says don't go about it as though the character was you and how you would do it - it's about the character.
• Be faithful to the text/script. 
• Says it's about script analysis, seeing something for what it is, breaking the play down - not fictionalising but taking whatever you get from the analysis, and making your choices based on what you pick up from the analysis - "the talent is in the choices" - Stella Adler.
• "Earn the right to play the character" -  make it your own and feel comfortable in doing it by researching the character, try to be close to the character, so if you have to improv or ad lib, you have an idea about what the character would do in that situation.
• Acting is about having an action, like "to sell something."
• He says you've got to get up and do it - the sooner you get to knowing you've got to get up and do it, the sooner you'll do it.
• He says he had a problem when he was a young actor : he was afraid to make a move "I have to feel it, and I have to do this".- but says you've got to sometimes jump in - "if i jumped in I arrive at that place" (where he is playing the scene) - whereas before he thought he had to do all sorts of weird preparation before he could arrive at that point.
• Says, don't pamper yourself, you've got to get out there and do it, and if you make a mistake, you do it again.
• Never comment on the character, never put the character down.
• While working on Mean Streets with Scorsese, they improvised scenes, but it was set and structured by the time they did it in front of camera.
• For Godfather 2, he studied and studied Brando's performance to find the boundaries.
• Says he doesn't like to expend a lot of energy on the set: does the scene then goes back home and rests.
• Says the last thing he wants to do is worry about the scene, because then his action becomes "to worry!"
• Says Scorsese has great respect for actors, which is important to get the best out of them.
• Listening is essential in acting - says actors have problems just listening, trusting themselves, but if there's nothing to do don't do anything.
• Says the notion that if actors look at the dailies it creates a problem, is a myth. Doesn't subscribe to it.
• Says he and Scorsese understand each other, that's why they're able to work with each other so many times and have a good time.. Says they have the same sensibility, says you have to be very honest with each other, about how you feel about things.
• Says he always wanted to direct, that's why he made Bronx Tale.
• Says do authentic work, regardless of how you think people may react. That'll distinguish you from other people.

The Great Acting Blog: "Robert De Niro Notes"

 

De Niro offers practical advice here, which means alot coming from an actor of his stature, and especially him I suppose, because so much theoretical voodoo has grown up around his work, in order to explain away his performances - the truth is, acting requires skill and technique and a little bit of aptitude. For me, the central theme of De Niro's view, is that it's about getting the work done and getting on with doing it, aswell as respecting the scene at hand.  

 

• De Niro says acting is not about neuroses and playing on your neuroses, it's about doing the character - "the tasks of the character".
• He says don't go about it as though the character was you and how you would do it - it's about the character.
• Be faithful to the text/script. 
• Says it's about script analysis, seeing something for what it is, breaking the play down - not fictionalising but taking whatever you get from the analysis, and making your choices based on what you pick up from the analysis - "the talent is in the choices" - Stella Adler.
• "Earn the right to play the character" -  make it your own and feel comfortable in doing it by researching the character, try to be close to the character, so if you have to improv or ad lib, you have an idea about what the character would do in that situation.
• Acting is about having an action, like "to sell something."
• He says you've got to get up and do it - the sooner you get to knowing you've got to get up and do it, the sooner you'll do it.
• He says he had a problem when he was a young actor : he was afraid to make a move "I have to feel it, and I have to do this".- but says you've got to sometimes jump in - "if i jumped in I arrive at that place" (where he is playing the scene) - whereas before he thought he had to do all sorts of weird preparation before he could arrive at that point.
• Says, don't pamper yourself, you've got to get out there and do it, and if you make a mistake, you do it again.
• Never comment on the character, never put the character down.
• While working on Mean Streets with Scorsese, they improvised scenes, but it was set and structured by the time they did it in front of camera.
• For Godfather 2, he studied and studied Brando's performance to find the boundaries.
• Says he doesn't like to expend a lot of energy on the set: does the scene then goes back home and rests.
• Says the last thing he wants to do is worry about the scene, because then his action becomes "to worry!"
• Says Scorsese has great respect for actors, which is important to get the best out of them.
• Listening is essential in acting - says actors have problems just listening, trusting themselves, but if there's nothing to do don't do anything.
• Says the notion that if actors look at the dailies it creates a problem, is a myth. Doesn't subscribe to it.
• Says he and Scorsese understand each other, that's why they're able to work with each other so many times and have a good time.. Says they have the same sensibility, says you have to be very honest with each other, about how you feel about things.
• Says he always wanted to direct, that's why he made Bronx Tale.
• Says do authentic work, regardless of how you think people may react. That'll distinguish you from other people.

The Great Acting Blog: "Poetic Acting"

Poetic acting is expressive but not expository, it is intense but with a sense of ease, it's minimal, but most importantly, it seeks to express something in-the-moment, but which cannot always be explained away. On a practical level, the actor commits to doing the actions of the scene, and does not worry about the outcomes. This approach can lead to facial expressions, small movements, bits of emotion, which the actor may not even realise he was doing until after he has seen his performance on screen (he may never realise them on stage). These unconscious, unfettered, unplanned expressions are the poetry of acting. Poetic acting is very different to expository acting, or “doing a character”, whereby the actor consciously and rationally designs his performance, explaining the character with thought-out detail, and detail which may not even be germane to the scene at hand. Designing a performance is not necessarily the same as including those things which are essential to creating the illusion of character – for example; if one were to play a hunchback, a prosthetic hunch may be employed.

Poetic acting gives expression to human experience which cannot be dealt with in any other way - for example; if, in the scene, the actor tries to conceal a difficult emotion (perhaps has to tell a lie in the scene), the repressed energy may express itself, for example, as a displacement, such as the actor handling an object or adjusting an item of his clothing. These small actions may not necessarily “mean” something in terms the literal plot of the scene, but are the symptom of some deeper movement within the actor. The wonderful, subtle expressions may never happen for the by-design actor, because is controlling everything to the extent that he doesn't allow deeper movements to occur within himself, and so there is no poetic spin-off during his performance.

The full implications of a poetic performance may not be fully understood by an audience on an immediate, conscious level, but the performance does create a sense of harmony (even when the action is tumultuous). That's why the poetic actor produces richer results than the by-design actor. The by-design actor may produce a performance which is more immediately impressive, may at first appear to be “natural”, but it is usually generalised and superficial, and the effect dissipates fairly quickly, whereas the poetic actor's performance may at first give the impression that nothing is really happening, and his effect may creep up on the audience almost imperceptibly, but all of those organically created moments of his performance add-up to something deeply affecting, they leave us unsure, they hang in our minds long after the action has finished, lodging themselves there (even if it is only certain moments of the performance which do this). 

I intend to use the poetic form of acting for my feature film, Noirish Project, and I do not mean my own perfromance only, but the performances of all the actors in the film. The camera-work and editing will be pared back, and the script is flat and minimal, with scenes where the characters are hanging around and waiting. It is out of these seemingly empty situations that I hope this poetic form of acting will emerge to create wonderful, unplanned expressions, with the minimalism of the film giving them centre stage.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "Only Worry About Action"

Check out this quick teaser for our new short, Phone Box Gun. 

My action in the scene above, was to get my scene partner to agree with me (within the fiction of script, this amounted to Bob getting Vincent to let him buy him a ticket to Mexico). Now, the scene itself is a fiddly one because I want the guy to agree with me, but sometimes I want to be forceful in order to accomplish that, but not too forceful, otherwise he's going to be offended, and then my task will be made that much harder. So, in a gentle scene as is the one the above clip is taken from, the actor needs to be very self-aware, self-controlled, yeah sure, there'll be moments when passions rise, and the actor will lose self-awareness for a moment,  but he will quickly need to regain his self-control or risk blowing the deal. That's why the whole notion of “becoming somebody else”, or “losing yourself in the character” is such utter nonsense: a) you cannot lose yourself because you've got a performance to give, which requires discipline and precision, and, b) you do have an actual task within the scene to complete, and you mustn't take your eye off the ball.

Actors are told “not to think”, but to “just do it”. When we are acting well (which is to say, truly) we have rhythm and grace, we are energised, the performance seems to carry us along, as though riding the crest of a wave, but we still must observe ourselves to ensure we remain on the right track. Again, these are not special rules which only apply to acting, they apply to real life aswell – when we function well, we seem to be self-conscious and instinctive at the same time. When we're doing a task we enjoy or is important to us, we may become engrossed and forget ourselves, but it is beside the point to actively not think, so why should actors not think in performance? The counterbalance to not thinking, is “characterization”, whereby the actor plots out everything, every little movement, every little gesture, every emotion, and does it in the way they think “the character would do it”, and regardless of what is actually taking place in the scene, thus murdering spontaneity. In the scene.

When playing, overdoing instinct or self-awareness can be damaging – if we operated purely instinctively, then our work may lack shape and become a meaningless mess, or alternatively, trying to control the results of our performance too much, can lead to a bland stodginess (ergo: most acting) – the pressure is removed from the actor, he becomes complacent. I say, don't worry about thinking, don't worry about not thinking, and don't worry about how instinctive you are or lack thereof, but concentrate only on doing your action as fully as you can, and putting your attention onto your scene partner, adjusting your performance in relation to his responses to you. This will bring you, an thus the scene, alive.

I hope you enjoyed the clip.

The Great Acting Blog: "A Response To Otar Iosseliani's Comments On Actors' Aura"

 

“I cant stand intimate scenes in cinema....because every human being has an aura which is hard to penetrate. Professional actors imagine that it's part of their job to allow the director or other actors to penetrate their aura and enter into a totally unnatural contact with somebody they don't know.
Which is also why I consider it completely shameless to have very tight close-ups of people because the so-called “actor” cannot hide who he is, he's too close to us and he becomes distanced from the character. He becomes an actual person, an individual with all his considerations. And I have no desire to have an actual person on-screen. I want it to be a character, always a character.” - Otar Iosseliani.

I don't agree with much of what Iosseliani says here, especially about close-ups, because, for me, close-ups are not necessarily intimate. However, what did pique me, were his comments about “aura” and character. It's worth pointing out to those unfamiliar with Iosseliani's work, that typically he uses “non-actors” in his films, whose general lack of technique creates an awkwardness, and this awkwardness demarcates the performance, thus the character is always present.*  Further, the “non-actor” is usually more inhibited than the experienced actor, and is therefore less apt to “show”.

But what does Iosseliani mean when he speaks of “aura”? Well, aura, in my view, means diginity – people with an aura, act with the dignity, it's their dignity which gives them an aura. And dignity is about self-control, self-respect, acting with conviction, and behaving honourably (Chishu Ryu immediately springs to mind). The character is always present if the actor remains true to the  aesthetic integrity of the work at hand, which is to say; committing fully to the actions called forth by the scene, and excluding everything else. Whenever an actor supplies an emotion which has not been organically produced by his attempts to do the action of the scene, such as when those people with a knack for making themselves  cry decide to turn on the waterworks for no other reason than that they can, the aesthetic integrity of the piece is violated, the illusion is shattered,  suddenly the audience become aware of the actor exposing himself, and the dignity of not only the actor, but of the audience and the whole dramatic interchange, is lost (typically, in a desparate scramble for self-respect, this exposure manifests itself as admiration for the actor's technique by the audience, and for the actor's part, he speaks about the moment as “liberating”, and, “a breakthrough”).

The intent to remain true to the aesthetic integrity of the scene, is not the same as the intent to expose oneself. All this stuff about actors “going further” or “making themselves vulnerable”, points to a gross misunderstanding of what acting actually is, and is part of the trend in our wider culture to just let it all hang loose. In the end however, this transparency leads to trivial acting: because in letting us see everything, the actor expresses nothing. Great acting requires discipline and restraint, precision and control, artistic choices are made, only that which is essential is offered. A truthful performance, that is, one where the actor is true to the work and to himself, is always dignified, always mysterious, and, to use Iosseliani's language, never penetrates the aura of the actor. And, for the actor, the character does not exist other than as a reference for analysis, but by only sticking to the actions of the scene and cutting away everything else, the actor's performance becomes hi-definition, deliberate, and as a result it would seem, as Iosseliani would have it, as though the character is always present – the actor is ignoring those parts of himself which are not required for the scene, certainly his quotidian troubles have been left behind. This is also how the actor may reveal the truth of his own personality, while at the same time, maintaining the essential mystery of himself.

The Great Acting Blog: "The Paradox Of Acting - Boredom Of The Disgust - Part 2"

Check out the trailer for our new feature film, part video essay, part fiction.

 

Having completed the documentary scenes for the film, we moved on to the fictional scenes. First up, I was to have an argument with somebody who wasn't in the room, but I was to create the illusion that I was talking to somebody, so all the audience would hear are my responses to this imaginary other person, and if that wasn't enough, Rashidi decided to make it a little bit harder by turning a radio on in the room, blasting only white noise, and no actual music - an actual antagonist as oppose to the imaginary. Again, there was no rehearsal, so I just had to pick a task and back myself. More and more as I get older as an actor, I put my faith in my imagination rather than my powers of reason, largely because the imagination will always cough something up which I can use, whereas my reason can create self-consciousness and cause me to dry – acting technique then, is about intentionally liberating the imagination when under pressure. And my imagination did cough something up: I had arranged a party which was very important to me, but my (invisible) other half was refusing to attend, because the restaurant in question didn't have the kind of chicken she likes, so the improvisation became about me trying to convince her to come to the party – that was the literal action (ie - the fiction of the scene) – however, the essential action (ie – the concretely doable task I was to give myself for the scene) was to “get a loved one to come through for me”. Of course, I didn't think of this whole situation right at the beginning of the improvisation, I just made a start, and the picture gradually emerged, with my imagination feeding me data. Throughout the scene, I executed the action in different ways; to reason with, to persuade, to cajole, to plead, to beg, even to mock (using my special reverse psychology techniques, of course), to lay down the law was another, and all the while trying to deal with Rashidi's mischievous radio and it's fluctuating volume. This scene involved the exploration of a nice, clean line of action, which is such a joy to perform. Having now watched the completed film, I had completely forgotten that Rashidi had been torturing me not only with a radio, but also with his lighting scheme: sometimes a strobe, sometimes creating a shadowy, noirish world, and finally cutting the lights entirely near the end of the scene, so that I was left standing in total darkness, shouting abuse at my non-existent scene partner; “you're f**king nuts, you're a f**king lunatic....”

Essentially then, this scene is a real summation of the acting techniques that I regularly discuss on this blog: eschewing characterization for action, and a proper commitment to doing the actions will lead to a truthful performance, and then the illusion of character is created in the mind of the viewer – and here the paradox of acting is revealed to us: that a truthful performance helps the viewer to believe a fiction.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "Performance Without Rehearsal"

 

As I noted in the previous blog, there were no speeches or dialogues to motor my performance because all of that work had been completed in Dublin. In Cork, I only had my face and body and pure physical actions to express myself with. As always when working with Rashidi, I am only briefed about the specific actions of a scene shortly before we come to shoot it, Cork was no different. However, and unusually for me, when given my instructions for each scene this time, I didn't need to convert those instructions into an doable action , as I still felt “full” from my work in Dublin, and I simply thought that that energy would fuel me. Essentially then, I was working almost completely intuitively, however, my tasks for each scene were more concrete than my tasks in Dublin; for example: unwrapping the packaging around a bottle, or making a cup of coffee. So, I had concrete points  in the scenes to give structure to my performance, which is different from only having improvised dialogue where you have to magic something from nothing. Still, without putting my instructions through my usual process, I wasn't sure what I would be capable of delivering.

As soon as the scenes started, I felt an inner emotional intensity, which rarely manifested itself physically, but it gave me energy, which lead to an intensity of thought. I began to feel as though the stakes were high (which for the fiction of the film, they were), everything I did seemed to take on the utmost importance. There is a scene where I buy some liquid from a sort of apothecary, played by Maximilian Le Cain, and my concentration became furious – it was almost overwhelming, but at the same time I had to focus it and give it direction, which resulted in a tension coupled with control and reserve – a combination just right for the character.

So how can this performance come about without rehearsals or conscious application?

Well, it's possible that rehearsals are overrated (certainly lengthy rehearsals are) – an heretical statement in our age of the goody-two-shoes, middle-class, industrial-earnest-pseudo-art, where we're supposed to have an “idea” for every line of dialogue,  where we pretend that “drama games” are anything other than waste of time, where the actor is  told if he's not willing “to make a fool of himself” then he is not a real actor (how dare the actor even think he can own his own work) and where we are supposed to pretend that “research” is interesting and useful, and that use of the imagination is a mere self-indulgence – the truth is, acting belongs to the brash, arrogant individualist with a hyperactive fantasy life, and all the attendant gak which has built up around the actor's ambition  should be shoved to one side, and ignored. The other important point however, is that the actions I had chosen for myself four months previously in Dublin, were now working  for me in Cork. During that four month break, the work I had done in Dublin would have been churning around in my sub-conscious (especially as I knew I would be coming back to do more scenes, and my mind would not have jettisoned the material completely, but put it in storage somewhere), which then expressed itself during the scenes in Cork – hence, I didn't feel the need to find new actions for myself. It's a similar situation to the screenwriter, who reaches a dead end with one of his scripts, so he takes a break from it for a few months, but when he returns to it, he is easily able to find solutions to problems which had previously seemed insurmountable. And that is the whole point of using actions : it works for the actor, organizing and directing his performance, which then leaves the actor free to play.

The Great Acting Blog: "The Audition Lowdown"

Check out a clip from the film, above.

 

For those unfamiliar with the film, The Audition is about an actor, Tony Wallis, who is being seen for a part in a play. He breaks the ice with his interviewer then starts to speak the lines of the play, and it's here that Tony's problems start. Each time he speaks the first line, the director interjects to explain that Tony is not saying the line correctly, before repeating back to Tony how he wants it said. The trouble is, Tony can discern no difference between the way he is saying it and the director's way, but instead of speaking up, he pretends that he can discern a difference, in order to please the director. I described the film (charmingly I thought) as a “tragedy of manners”, because it is essentially a tragedy in the sense that Tony brings about his own downfall through his own choices*, and of manners because on the surface the two characters, bound by the professional behaviour of their trade, appear to be trying to give eachother what they want (it is more normal for the objectives of the protagonists to butt against eachother). The script is very slight and gentle – had I sent it out into the commercial world, it would probably would have been fed into the sausage grinding machine – and therefore I knew the visual aesthetics needed to be pared down, minimal, in order for the tension of the scene to manifest itself. Co-incidentally (or perhaps not), this is just the kind of cinema I love, and so the film is made up of static, frontal shots, and I tried to find a simple formalism for each. Similarly, the script itself is formalized, with a great deal of repetition, but it's also disciplined and precise, the dialogue appears to be naturalistic at first glance, but each line becomes almost like a mantra as the scene unfolds. I love this deliberateness in conjunction with the minimalism,  the film becomes simultaneously flat and theatrical as a result. And with the sound, I had wanted this hissing background noise which I think gives it that quality of someone-just-turned-on-the-camera-by-mistake.

And so to the acting. I have self-directed myself many times, and do so even when working with a director – I believe it's crucial for all actors to develop this ability to look objectively at their work, in the same way a painter or a carpenter may look at theirs, and make adjustments accordingly.** The Audition is a fiddly, technical script for an actor, largely because the action alters almost line by line, and you have to be alive in the scene all the time, you have to listen and pay attention to your scene partner, you cannot just turn up with your mapped out characterization, kick back and knock the lines out. No sir. Well yes, you could do that but then you'd generalise the scene, and as I said above, there would consequently be nothing on the screen to look at, the nuances upon which the scene depend, will have been rubbed out - then you haven't got a film. So, what you need to do is stick to very disciplined lines of actions, and focus completely on doing the action throughout the scene. Whilst doing that of course, you're focussed on what your scene partner is doing, because what he is doing will determine what you will do next (note – this may not be in line with your careful planning – deal with it, that's the whole point), everything you do is in response to what your scene partner is doing, and in service to your action. What your performance effectively becomes, is a moment-to-moment improvisation (within the strictures of the text – when there is one), continually working out the best way to accomplish your action within the reality of the scene (ie – as it actually unfolds in performance, not as you rehearsed it). You obviously need to be switched on in order to do this, it's challenging and scary, but it means that your acting will be full, you'll express yourself with all your body and personality, every gesture, every inflection, will be true, provocative and various.

I would like to explore further the notion of people within a professional context, I.e.- scenes like The Audition, where the character may be feeling all kinds of emotions under the surface, but is bound by  professionalism to maintain self-control, and continue to go through the motions of a business meeting, even when the character clearly isn't getting what he wants. I think this situation creates a very interesting tension, an ambivalence is brought forth, and watching someone wrestle to keep his professional dignity in place is interesting, it also helps to create that "theatrical flatness" (or, "flat theatricality") I was talking about. Similarly, in terms of the visual aesthetic, I would like to develop further the notion of deliberateness with simplicity, within a naturalistic setting. Next month, I hope to do another script of mine, Phone Box Gun, which is a short film noir, so perhaps I will be able to employ these ideas there.

 

* all the way through the film Tony thinks he is doing the right things in order to get what he wants, but he is finally frustrated from accomplishing his goal by these self same actions.

** On the subject of actor's self-direction, it's worth reminding ourselves that Sir John Gielgud directed a production of King Lear, with himself in the title role, when he was aged just 25.