Film and Television Acting

From stage to screen

Ian Bernard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781136081736
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Film and Television Acting offers solid techniques for creating a natural, believable performance for film and television. The reader will discover techniques for listening and reacting, blocking and business, character, focus, the closeup, and comedy as they pertain to acting in front of a camera. The book analyzes the differences between theatre, film, and television acting, providing the theatre trained actor with specific approaches for making the transition to on-camera work. This second edition is thoroughly revised and updated. The book contains numerous scenes and exercises, including sample scenes from Cheers and Seinfeld, which provide the reader with ways to practice the specific techniques outlined by the author. Included are interviews with well-know actors and directors: Don Murray, Norman Jewison, and Emmy award winner, Glenn Jordan, to name a few. These interviews illustrate how the professionals apply their training and technique to filmed performances. There is also a chapter-length interview with John Lithgow, in which the actor provides a first-hand account of the differences of acting for the theatre and for the camera.

The Evolving Play versus the Frozen Film

DOI: 10.4324/9780080506364-1

Although they might deny it, actors who perform in long-running plays perform by rote at times. Rex Harrison once confessed that during the run of My Fair Lady there were times in the second act when he wondered what he was going to have for supper after the performance. The intrinsic nature of a stage play creates an atmosphere wherein a variety of things can happen in performance depending on the reaction of the audience. The actors often say, “it was a good audience tonight” when everything seems to click.

I have never heard a stage actor say, “It was a good performance because our rehearsal and preparation made it possible.” Now you realize the rehearsal was done weeks before, so everything, theoretically, had been set. All the questions about interpretation should have been answered. Night after night they perform the same words, the same actions. But even though the actor does the same ritualistic tune-ups before each performance, each performance is different. It is this feeling that attracts so many actors to stage acting: that no matter how planned everything is, each performance is new. There is nothing like the immediate response from a live audience.

The variety of this response at any performance depends on many factors. If the actors are good enough, technically, the audience’s reception always is positive even if the performances, from the actor’s point of view, were just so-so.

This sense of creative discovery at each performance doesn’t exist for actors in film. They must be prepared to create a part and know that as soon as it is filmed the performance will never change. Except for Woody Allen, I know of no filmmaker who, after viewing the scenes, is allowed to reshoot scenes until he or she is satisfied. The usual procedure is to shoot as many takes of the scene as needed. Then the director decides to move on. Once that decision is made, there’s no turning back. To redo a scene days or weeks later is rare and is more often caused by the film’s being damaged at the lab rather than a director’s wishing to reshoot. This means one thing to the actor: You have one chance to get it right.

The essential thing is to determine who the character is and the choices you make in relation to this character and this particular material. You study the material pretty much the same way in stage or film, but then it is more of a technique of delivering the character in front of the camera. Laurence Olivier was talking about character work and said: “I think in the theater you can inhabit a character, but in a film, the character must inhabit you.”

Louise Latham

OK, so Olivier said the character must inhabit you. But Jack Lemmon said, “I’m not as interested in how a character should behave as how he could behave. If I can legitimately find a way that’s very exciting, then I’ll push to do that.” So the idea is to find the character, then perhaps go one step farther? In film and television, this is disastrous. A little bit of ham on stage becomes a feast on camera.

Most actors have no problem with going one step farther. It’s called overacting. But there’s a greater problem with the actor who doesn’t allow that to ever happen. The fear of doing too much has led to some pretty dull performances. The trick is to find the correct, most comfortable, and honest place. One of the best ways of doing that is to listen and react, listen and react.

An actor on stage has two reactive elements to deal with—the other actors and the audience. Because each actor senses audience reactions and each in his or her own way behaves differently because of that, we have an everchanging play from moment to moment. A film actor has no such feedback. When the scene is over, the director may offer suggestions to modify the performance, but while the scene is being filmed, you are on your own.

The expression goes: The director asked for a close-up and there was nobody home. It means the eyes were vacant, not a thought could be seen.

How do you keep somebody home?

Listening and Reacting

DOI: 10.4324/9780080506364-2

I can’t prove it, but I would surmise that every child in the world at one time complained, “Nobody ever listens to me.” Experts are hired by large corporations to give seminars on how to listen. It is quite probable there would be no more war if people listened to one another. Listening is the vital first link in communication. Because acting is an artistic form of communication, one would think that actors were superb listeners. They’re not.

The Reaction Shot

We all know you can do a lot without saying anything in behavior.…You can do more with one eyebrow sometimes than ten lines of dialogue. If you can do it with a look, it might be better.

Robert De Niro

In the movies and television there is something called the reaction shot. This is a close shot in which one actor is listening to another actor and reacts to what is being said. (There is no such animal in the theater.) The reaction shot is often used to reinforce how the director wants the audience to respond. The actor listens and reacts. The audience empathizes and does likewise.

The reaction shot in the process of editing is used to cover up a technical glitch or a bad performance from the other actor. It is also used in editing for dramatic pause and comic timing. The pace of a movie depends on this editing process when the editor has a choice of different shots. For example, Actors One and Two are in a shot that encompasses both of them. (This is the master shot.) The scene is repeated with only Actor One, then again with Actor Two alone in the shot. There are now three versions of the scene. With their choice of which shots to use, you can see how the director and editor can control the timing. You can also see how they can cut away from the speaking actor to the listening actor, controlling dramatic emphasis as well.

The reaction shot is one of the most important elements of film acting. It is usually done in close-up or over the other actor’s shoulder immediately after the master has been shot. You as the reacting actor may or may not have lines to speak. The important thing is to hear the words spoken and make the audience believe you have never heard them before.

One may often hear a director say, “Keep alive!” Loosely translated this means, “Think! Keep thinking!” In preparing a stage role, actors do their homework by making character biographies, plotting and analyzing scenes, and doing whatever it takes to play the part. They react according to the material and to the other characters. Film and television actors usually perform the same process, but they must take it a step farther.

One never knows when those close-ups will occur. That means the actor, at any time, can be called on for a reaction shot. Let’s say, for instance, the actor who is speaking is going on about a school he went to back in Ohio. The speech is four lines long. In addition to other factors, the reacting actor loves the character who is speaking. The speech is ten seconds long. This is a very long time on the screen. Does the reacting actor play ten seconds of love?

That one emotion may be enough, but then it may not. Because you don’t know before shooting when these reaction shots may happen, you must prepare in a general way. Then the subtleties of film acting come into play.

A stage actor may prepare a subtext with one idea, one objective, and that usually suffices. A film actor has the opportunity to take this moment and play a variety of emotions. (Of course, they must be appropriate to the scene.) It is possible for the editor to use this one close-up in other scenes if needed. In other words, if the actor has a variety of emotions, the shot can be used in a variety of places. Editors sometimes steal a shot from one scene and put it some place else in the movie. (That is, providing locale and costume are the same.) One must be careful that the variety of emotions is not overdone. Time and time again the actor must remember that what seems normal for the stage will appear too much for the camera. It’s best to keep the thought process in a related channel, that is, love, first kiss, special place, the thought of marriage, children, honeymoon, and so on.

The reaction shot, to be effective, depends entirely on the ability of the actor to listen.

Listening

It’s fatal to act in film. Listening is the most important thing. Think about what is being said.

Rex Harrison

The actor on stage stands with head cocked to one side. The face is intent. The body is tense. All of the signs point to an actor listening to another actor. The audience believes it. The director at the back of the house believes it. Even the other actor in the scene believes it. Yet it is possible for the listening actor to fool everyone at that moment. Like Rex Harrison, when he wondered about supper, the actor can wander off and lose focus (it doesn’t matter what you call it) and not be able to get back. At one time or another, every actor has done it. Expressions such as going up, drawing a blank, and losing one’s place all stem from this lapse of focus.

Most of the time, the actor clicks in, and no one except the actor is the wiser. Going up begins with the actor’s conscious knowledge of the other actor’s lines. They become not words but cues. They’ve been heard in rehearsal and at each performance. The words lose their meaning, and the actors no longer listen to them. They pretend to. Pretending to listen can work on stage but never in film or television.

Listening doesn’t merely mean you’re supposed to look at someone and listen to the words. It is listening to the real intent behind what the hell they’re doing. No man did that better than Spencer Tracy. He could hold you for five minutes while somebody else was talking. … He may be looking around, looking at the floor, but you could tell something was going on in his mind. The problem for an actor is to reach the point where he trusts himself to just think. I still, and always will, find it difficult at times to trust myself. It is seldom that I think I’ve been guilty of underacting. When I’m wrong, or off, it will usually be because I’ve done too much.

Jack Lemmon

There is a story about Marlon Brando when he made a picture called The Freshman. Mr. Brando purposely didn’t learn his lines. Instead, he had a small speaker put in his ear so that when it was his time to speak, a person told him his line via the speaker, then Brando delivered the line. The reason for this, the story goes, is that Brando wanted to be sure that each line was fresh, and the time he spent listening to his line before speaking it would assure that the timing was correct. Because most actors, no, make that all actors, will never have this kind of treatment, it is necessary to discover a technique to achieve the same results.

Spencer Tracy was reported to have said, “Know your lines, show up on time, and don’t bump into the furniture.” Mr. Tracy had the ability to know his lines in such a way that the audience had the impression he had just thought of them a moment...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 The Evolving Play versus the Frozen Film
• 2 Listening and Reacting
• 3 Blocking and Business
• 4 Preparation
• 5 Character
• 6 Focus
• 7 Comedy
• 8 Situation Comedy
• 9 The Close-up
• 10 John Lithgow on Acting
• 11 The Workplace
• 12 Scenes
• 13 The Business
• 14 This Is a Wrap!
• Index