Acting is
hard
Acting is fucking hard.
I knew this, of course, before I started into my latest series of mini-film monologues (designed to teach myself how to act), but focusing totally on the process of performance made me appreciate what professionals must endure.
I have a distinct advantage in that I get to rewrite over and over until I can handle the text (meaning I can commit it to memory and my tongue doesn’t drag on the floor when I’m trying to say the stuff), but this dumps me into the middle of the other aspects such as where do I look and how does my body language reflect what I am saying?
I’ve already discovered that I can’t use the monitor on the camera except to set up the shot. It is too distracting seeing myself on the screen when I’m trying to work out the details in my head of what I am saying and how I should act.
I’ve done three new monologues in the new format so far. These are straight productions. No cuts. The first one I screwed up because I hadn’t rewritten the text well enough and couldn’t commit the whole thing to memory. For these short pieces, I need to be able to perform the whole thing at once.
The following two worked better because of the polished text and my ability to run through it completely, allowing me to “act” out the scene without fear of stumbling over bad language or memory lapses. Even then, I needed to do eight to ten takes just to get what I wanted.
Some of it has to do with breathing. I’ve noticed that I let out a breath prior to jumping into text sequences, and I’ve forced myself to stop that.
But it is also just getting all of the details in the scene right – the right tempo, the right mood, the right expression. Since I can’t actually see myself while taping it, I have to do it over and over until it feels right.
With the last video – My Old Man – the first take was the best for text, but the last take had better body language. I should have done another take, but I wasn’t sure until I started editing.
Props held immensely – although I think I over used the cigarette in scene.
While I did shoot inserts I chose not to use them for this film because the straight single shoot seemed most natural. I also do not want to get lazy and think I can make up for not memorizing the text or providing a good performance by my presuming I can make up for them later in editing.
Eventually, I will start editing things in. But the original performance has to hold up as a single, quality of unit first, and whatever I add will complement it.
In the end of all this, I know I still won’t be a great actor, but it is teaching me how to write for film, to tighten the text in the way Shakespeare did so that the text is so strong that any idiot can do it, but perhaps a quality actor can do it very, very well.
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I’m still reading the first Indiana Jones movie script. What an eye opener!
You have to wonder how much of the text was actually shot, and how much Spielberg rescued in editing (a mystery I doubt I’ll ever solve). I keep thinking about Annie Hall and how editing created a great movie. This may also be the case for the Lost Ark, since there are subtle but important changes in some of the text, while other text was completely dumped.
As with Schindler’s List, Spielberg
also appears to have modified the film to combine characters so to keep the
action going without confusion of too many people. He did similar things in
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Although I’m going to do more
monologues, I’ve finally got a working script for the new version of “The Ghost
at Old Mill Tavern.” I may or may not put it up on the monologue webpage. But
there are so many versions there now, I might just skip that since it is likely
to change as I get closer to filming. I’ve talked
I’m modeling it after Spielberg’s ghost story – although I’m still trying to keep the humor of the original script.