Need Ideas for Acting?

 

The acting by Max Schreck was very specific to his personality. He was a loner and had an unusual sense of humor. He liked to spend his time walking through dark forests. Only he could of done this role the way it was done at the time. 

  When you start on a new movie, assignment, or project, you have to get ready to bring some new ideas to the table. For animators this might be inventing a character's personality from scratch. for painters it might be creating a mood and composition from nothing, and writers might have it the hardest, they have to create a whole world. My advice still can apply to everyone: you have to study people who can achieve what you want better than what you can.

     For animators, we want to achieve a performance. An original raw performance acted out by our character that has it's own personality, life, and quarks. To get that specificity some people like to reference their favorite movies and others might search youtube for hours. Sure, those are fine but I'll share what I like to reference. Audition tapes. They are not perfect performances and sometimes the subject has to look down at their paper, but their acting is done on the spot and it's spontaneous. There is no set, there is no context or supporting actors on the side..there is JUST one actor. They have to transform on the spot into a character and make it believe able and authentic. 

     There are a few other reasons why I choose audition tapes and maybe you should apply these reasons when looking for something new and authentic to reference:

-I look for something a lot of people haven't seen before. 

-I look for something that is done better than I could ever do on my own. 

-make sure its unique enough and not just your biased choice of your favorite actors shitty performance. 

     Here are a few I have found. The last one is a video of the great Kevin Spacey. Watch how it's not just his voice, but his mannerisms and the faces he makes. Watch his mouth shapes and how unique each character is. Think to yourself, "Can the character you create, be worthy enough to be impersonated by Kevin Spacey??" 

      There are tons of other examples on the web but if I would post them all here then I wouldn't be promoting good researching skills. Hope this post was helpful to some of you.

-Danny