From Stage to Screen

A Theatre Actor's Guide to Working on Camera

Bill Britten

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781408184905
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Recitazione e provini

The camera enables us to see right into a character's soul, revealing his or her innermost thoughts and emotions. Screen acting requires a more rigorously truthful and spontaneous performance than the stage, as well as very different technical expertise. From Stage to Screen is a handbook for the professional actor packed with advice on how to make the transition and fully prepare for a TV or film role. The book is divided into three sections: the first examines the relationship between the actor and the camera and how it differs from that of a performer with a stage audience; the second addresses the technical skills the screen actor needs in order to work as part of a large collaborative team and 'make the shot work'; and the third explores the very different experience of an actor working on a screen project, including getting the job, how to prepare properly, what to expect and how to manage the whole process, from casting through to ADR, in order to deliver the very best work.

1

LET’S PRETEND

Acting is about inhabiting a fictional reality. There are many internal barriers we must overcome in order to access free acting. The analytical thinking that our education system trains in us can be one of these barriers, but we can retrain ourselves to be spontaneous and impulsive without becoming impossible to work with.

Acting is easy

‘Let’s pretend is the original impulse of acting’ – Laurence Olivier.

Acting is child’s play. Literally. Throughout history, children the world over have always played let’s pretend. The poorest child on earth will pick up a bunch of rags, pretend it’s a doll and talk to it. Put several children together and they will quickly invent some game that involves make-believe.

Of course play is not just fooling around. It’s the means by which we practise the skills we need to navigate the world and imaginative play is no different. Adults tend to regard play as simply a diversion, a bit of indulgent fun to be enjoyed in our leisure time once the serious business of work is over. Yet, pretending is a fundamental way of understanding the world and of practising behaviour. What’s more, it’s something we never truly leave behind. We rehearse conversations in our heads, running through what we will say and coming up with pithy retorts to the responses we imagine will come our way. The conversation rarely actually goes the way we anticipated, but the practice helps us prepare nonetheless.

The Greeks had a word ‘mimesis’ that describes this innate human capacity to explore imagined or alternate realities. As we start to explore what acting is, perhaps it’s useful to consider three levels of mimesis.

The first is imagination without boundaries. Anything can be anything, anyone can be anyone. These are the wondrous children’s games where one child is Harry Potter, another is Buzz Lightyear, the carpet is the sea and the sofa is a camel. No resemblance to reality is needed and imagination has no limits. Like many parents, I used to find these games with my children depressingly difficult to play. Something inside me gets bogged down with reality and I want to point out that if you’re Harry Potter, I can’t be Buzz Lightyear because he comes from a different film and, anyway, camels can’t swim. But these technicalities don’t bother 3-year-olds. (And as it turns out, camels can swim. I just checked. 2-0 to the kids.)

As we get older and start to recognize patterns in the world and exercise our ability to influence things, we start to impose structure on our games, agreeing on boundaries so that the game works. Arguments break out if a player does something that contradicts the game’s internal logic.

This internal logic takes us into the second level of mimesis where the pretence is about specific scenarios. Before we can play let’s-pretend, we need to agree on the boundaries and the rules. At the heart of this is a collusion between the actors about the dramatic scenario. We agree who’s who and what the situation is and then play it out.

The third level of mimesis involves not only a specific dramatic scenario, but a script with predetermined dialogue and actions as well as outcomes. This is the territory of the professional and it’s what we’ll explore in relation to the screen.

At first sight, the task of truthfully and spontaneously inhabiting something that’s been concocted by a writer can seem bewilderingly contradictory. But, in fact, it is also remarkably simple. You and the other actors agree on the fictional world and who you are within it. Then you play the same game of let’s-pretend but with certain things you have to say and do. And that’s it.

What the writer does, first and foremost, is construct the story through its architecture. A central character pursues something he desires, and narrative events – be they physical actions or words spoken – move the story forward to a resolution.

But no matter how many car crashes or explosions take place, what the audience engages with emotionally is the experience of the characters as they journey through this structure. And no matter how intricate the dialogue or detailed the directions, the author can only scratch the surface of truly defining the character’s inner world; such is the richness and complexity of the human experience. So while a good writer will plot an emotional journey through a scene, and while some of this may be hinted at by the dialogue, most of it is not. Most of it, in fact, goes on between the lines. And it’s the actor who writes that script.

Judi Dench: ‘Acting is not what you say, it’s what you don’t say.’

We probably all know from seeing more than one production of the same play, if you put the same words in the mouths of two different actors, you will see two wholly different human beings with two different journeys through the same story. And this brings us to a central fact about acting: there is no right way of playing a scene. There are wrong ways certainly – ways that don’t ring true or don’t give sufficient weight to what the story needs. But there are many, many pathways through every story and every scene that do the job in terms of narrative development and simultaneously create a unique, credible human character with a rich inner world.

Recognizing that you, the performer, get to make most of the choices about this inner world can be intensely liberating. What’s more, it applies just as much to the smaller parts as to the lead. ‘There are no such things as small parts, only small actors.’ All right, let’s be honest, there are parts so small that we’re frankly not interested in the character’s inner world – the spear-carrier or the policeman who brings in the suspect for questioning perhaps. But even with these parts we recognize the difference between a spear-carrier or copper who’s engaged in the world of the story and a bored actor who’s going through the motions to fulfil a function. Indeed, it’s amazing how one’s eye is drawn to the extra in the background who’s either overacting or bored because it’s the fourteenth take. We want the smaller parts to be rich and detailed as human beings.

The professional actor brings third-level mimesis to the specific words and actions of the script, responding spontaneously and organically to what goes on around him. In so doing he creates a rich internal world and truthful emotional interaction – the communion that Stanislavski wrote about. And through watching this communion, the audience understands, on a deep level, how the character’s emotions have been influenced and why he has said and done what the script dictates.

If you have done your preparation; if you have truly understood your character and his situation; if you have succeeded in turning a bunch of words on a page into a deep identification and embodiment of a human being; if you can really listen; if you can absolutely give yourself up to the fictional scenario, as a child does, then acting is easy. You can begin to work on an intuitive level, engaging wholly with the context and the characters, just behaving and reacting without thinking, similar to the way top sportspeople describe how they play when they’re at their very best, ‘in the zone’, seeing the ball earlier, playing it effortlessly, making the right decisions without conscious thought.

The best acting is incredibly simple. Hugh Bonneville: ‘Both disciplines – stage and screen – require you to listen, look people in the eye and tell the truth.’

Acting is difficult

It won’t have escaped your notice that the previous paragraph contains a lot of ‘if’s. To reach that state of simplicity – of openness and spontaneity and technical mastery – requires huge amounts of hard work and commitment, rigorous training and dedication. And, of course, a lot of talent. Because let’s not pretend there aren’t a handful of supremely gifted individuals who somehow seem to be able to do the above without the tiresome business of hard work and preparation. Those actors who just seem to start from somewhere different, with an engagement and a commitment and a lack of inhibition from the very beginning, much as there are some kids who just have superior innate coordination and a better eye for the ball. Lucky them.

But before we all disappear into a quagmire of envy, consider a couple of things. First, these actors have to master the technical requirements of the medium – stage or screen or radio – just like every other actor. And second, if they do not work to maintain their talent, to protect and nurture this balance between focus and freedom, they will not have a career. The world of show business has an endless appetite for novelty. It moves on and there are plenty of starlets who never progress beyond an initial burst of promise and attention, who occasionally pop up in some bit of telly and you think, ‘I remember him. He was everywhere and then he just disappeared. I wonder where he’s been for the last ten years?’ Sometimes the answer is ‘drinking’. But more often, they were just lazy. They didn’t put in the graft required to turn talent into expertise. They took their success for granted and complacency destroyed their careers. In short, they lacked professionalism.

(Of course, sometimes they were neither self-destructive nor lazy and were just plain unlucky but, hey, perhaps that compensates for their good fortune in possessing natural talent in the first place.)

Back to reality and the rest of us and this nirvana of free acting. My assumption is that if you are reading this book, either you are trained, are training or are considering training as an actor. One of the major jobs of drama schools and actor training, generally, is to help actors reconnect with this inner child who can give himself freely to ‘let’s pretend’. And for most of us it is a question of reconnection because there’s a lot of stuff that gets in the way. Lots of inhibitions and blocks and internal rules about behaviour that we need to let go of. To achieve this we have to cultivate a way of being, a way of engaging with the world and other people that gives us access to the impulses and feelings that will charge our acting with truth.

The trouble is, this way of being can often seem antisocial or childish or downright selfish. Certainly, sticking inflexibly to decorum and propriety and conventional behaviour isn’t going to help us access the freedom we need. Lots of actors like to see themselves as unconventional and unorthodox and bohemian. But we also have friends and families and lovers. When we work, we have to collaborate and compromise and get along with people. We obey the social mores and conventions (or at least most of them) that enable us to function in society. So while we aim to be free and totally spontaneous in our work, we also have to manage our impulses so that we can live among our fellow human beings, and there’s a bit of a contradiction there. But then contradictions abound in acting. Not least in that we’re trying to be utterly spontaneous and truthful in conditions, both on stage and screen, which are hugely artificial. Well, suck it up because that’s the job.

The intellectual actor

For many of those who aspire to be actors or to become better actors, the biggest challenge is to stop thinking and start feeling. Our education system trains young people in thinking and the prizes are given out for analytical skills. But fundamentally this is a cerebral engagement, impassive and rational. And this kind of education – especially at degree level – is often in direct opposition to what actors need to cultivate in themselves.

For much of our lives, we are served well by the ability to think logically about what’s happening and make considered, rational decisions about what to do. Indeed, for most professions it’s essential. I’m guessing we would all rather be operated on, or have our taxes done, by someone with the rigour of thinking to be able to analyse a situation and come up with a reliably intelligent plan of attack.

But the foremost job of an actor is to commit to the fictional world of a drama and this is not a cerebral activity. The qualities that will really make a performance – spontaneity, impulsiveness, emotional availability, unguarded vulnerability – are neither logical nor intellectual. And these are things we can deliberately cultivate in ourselves.

Nicolas Cage: ‘I invite the entire spectrum, shall we call it, of feeling. Because that is my greatest resource as a film actor. I need to be able to feel everything, which is why I refuse to go on any kind of medication. Not that I need to! But my point is, I wouldn’t even explore that, because it would get in the way of my instrument. Which is my emotional facility to be able to perform.’

There may be a cost to this of course. Personally, I’m quite proud of my ability not to get railroaded by my immediate response. Only this morning my 12-year-old daughter did something that really annoyed me and I consciously had to stop myself responding in a petty and vengeful way by saying something unkind or depriving her of something. As I write this, I’ve completely forgotten what her offence was, which tells you something about its seriousness. But it illustrates the tension that exists between emotionality and impulsivity and the restraint and self-control that can make us better human beings. And the one will have an impact on the other.

There are lots of ways in which what I’m saying can be misunderstood, so let me clear up a few of them.

First, there’s no romantic heroism to losing your temper and visiting your uninhibited emotions on those around you. There are plenty of actors for whom Heathcliff is the role model; actors who think it’s OK – and kind of sexy – to indulge their emotions and rage and have tantrums, as if this is somehow justified by the work. Indeed, there are drama schools where it’s seen as acceptable for everyone – students and tutors alike – to behave badly, on the grounds that it’s inevitable, or even desirable freedom. I think this is nonsense. The job of the drama school is to help actors access their inner impulses and learn to manage them in productive ways. After all, an actor without control will be unable to participate in the collaboration that is filming. Not only will he have no friends but he won’t be able deliver when the director calls ‘action’.

I’m not suggesting that great actors are not intelligent. In fact, I’d say it’s impossible to be a great actor without being highly intelligent. But it’s not necessarily the kind of intelligence that earns you praise and qualifications at school.

But neither am I suggesting that the academically smart cannot be great actors. In the English-speaking world, there’s too long a list of great actors with degrees from Oxbridge, Yale and Harvard for this to be plausible.

Actors certainly need the ability to analyse intellectually in order to understand the drama fully and make interesting choices. There’s frequently a lot of analytical work that goes into researching and understanding the world of the drama and a lot of deduction required to piece together the clues in the script that go into creating a rich, thorough characterization.

But I am suggesting that there comes a point when actors, especially screen actors, must abandon the intellectual and commit themselves to the intuitive. And to some extent actors must cultivate in themselves a kind of anti-intellectualism that enables them just to be: to act and react spontaneously.

Developing yourself

There are profound inner qualities that you should aim to grow in yourself. You need to cultivate the ability to be uninhibited, to commit, to give yourself freely to the now. This is about so much more than a technical proficiency. It’s about a whole approach to life.

Let me give you...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Let’s pretend
• 2 The big differences
• SECTION ONE SHOWING, SHARING AND THE INNER WORLD
• SECTION TWO MAKE THE SHOT WORK
• SECTION THREE DOING IT
• About the author
• Index
• Copyright