Acting Skills for a Better Life

In this short film "A Special Kind of Love" we see a young man who is torn between his love of caring for his dying mother, and his hopes of finding love in his own life. His mother in turn knows she needs to rely on her son, yet at the same time wants the best for him also. Take a look at how the actors listen and react to one another. What clues are there that each is really being heard by the other? Make a note of some of the things you observe in watching the interactions between the characters, and note them in your learning journal as tools you can incorporate in your own work.

In this clip from a web series, the actor was invited to work from a basic set of scripted lines, but then also encouraged to improvise as he saw fit in the moment. The result is a great depiction of the image we were going for, which was a very believable description of a lousy landlord. Enjoy the work, and try freeing yourself up to improvise your own "lousy landlord" stories. There is no right or wrong approach to this, just have fun! If you feel comfortable, consider video recording yourself with your smartphone or other recording device, just to see how well you can tell an improvised story. Practice makes perfect!

In this brief clip, a character has an instinctive realization (or perhaps remembrance) that someone she loves is no longer alive, and it is both a sorrowful moment but one that is also awash in happy memories. Can you see it? Where are the moments in which you sense a change in her? How would you play a wordless scene like this, using your imagination and empathy to create an emotional moment? Remember, there are no right or wrong answers in this kind of work. Try it out, and even try multiple approaches until you find something you feel works for you. Consider videotaping yourself with a smartphone or similar recording device to see which approaches you like best in your own work.

In this trailer for the feature film "It's About Love" each character delivers only one line, from early on in the film when the audience first meets each of them. Have a look and listen, as many times as needed, to think about each character, and start to develop a back story for each one! This is a tough exercise, since you are given so little to work from, but at the same time, it is very freeing because you get to decide a lot of things. Where did they grow up? What are they like? What is their personal history? What kind of work do they do? And so on - have fun and practice freeing your imagination to work up a rich back story!

In this reversal comedy "Monetized" we see two characters who have each have world views that we might have expected in the other. Take a look at their interactions, and try to guess what each character is doing to win the scene at any given moment. What do you think the overall intention or world view of each character is? What objectives do you think they might have at various moments in the story? What tactics do they use (eg. to challenge, to interrogate, to parry, to convince, to cajole, etc.) at various points throughout the story? Finally, how might you play each character? Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here!