Different techniques are required for stage and screen. A big, bold approach is best suited to the stage, whereas a simplified, stripped down approach is best suited to the screen. Stage and screen acting both have the same ingredients, but in different proportions.
When working in film, the audience is usually very close to you, only as far away as the camera lens, so communicating ideas and emotions to the audience is no more difficult than communicating with someone sitting across the table from you.
On a large motion picture screen, you become many times your real size, and every subtlety in your performance is magnified. On a television screen your face in close up fills the screen and focuses the audiences attention on your face. As with a motion picture screen, all the subtleties are seen and to a certain extent, magnified.
Because you are so close to the audience in the film medium, it takes less effort to let them know what is happening, and because all their attention has been directed toward you, it takes very little effort for you to be effective.
Therefore the larger-than-life performing style necessary for naturalness in the theatre is unnecessary and undesirable for the screen. On-screen anything that you do that is dishonest in relation to what the character is thinking or feeling will be noticeable to the audience, for the camera allows no deceit.
Either you are truthful and believable, or you are not. For the camera, as opposed to the theatre, less externalisation is more effective. The energy and passion are moved inside for the camera, not over-externalised as a mere surface display. In front of the camera you work across real space, not artificial space as in the theatre when projecting to the back row of the auditorium.
On stage, you can give a performance. In front of a camera, you must have an experience!
Effective and engaging screen acting is the ability to truthfully respond to real or imaginary stimuli. Humans react to stimuli in a continuous action-reaction pattern, and since acting is supposed to mirror true-life behaviour, the actor should also respond to stimuli from moment to moment. The audience has only two senses that you can reach. They can’t taste, touch or smell you; they can only hear and see you.
That is why the physical and verbal components of the performance are vital when communicating to the audience. Whatever you want them to get, they can only get through those two senses.
The physical refers to anything, however subtle, that the audience can detect: a pause, a movement of the eyes, delaying the intake of breath for a moment, or the mere raising of an eyebrow.
A screen actor relates to the audience in a very subtle way by internalising their feelings, desires and emotions in an effort to capture the meaning and truth of the moment.
The key to successful screen acting is simplicity without loss of passion. If you react truthfully to the things that happen to you – the stimuli – then you will gain empathy with the audience, and they in turn, will be drawn into your performance.
You are far better to do nothing in a close up, and leave the audience to draw there own conclusions as to what you are feeling and thinking, than to overreact.
At the Screen Actors Workshop, we make it clear to our students that when acting for the camera, to keep it simple, passionate and real!
Learn how to act in front of a camera by taking acting classes.
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