Ridley Scott on Method Acting

PaPa said:
because dramatic actors are in their head :P lol, once again, the infamous head.

comedians learn how ot let themselves go, and work with their impulses, because its how audiences laugh and its how they learn to control their public. Which is why when it comes to doing drama stuff, comedians already have that advantage.
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"""""""""""""""unlearn what you learn
 
kimko said:
hmmmm why is it dramatic actors have a hard time with comedy and comedians do fairly well in drama............................ok let's hear the theory..........while you guys talk, i'm going to work.....acting
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unlearn what you learn:nads:
 
And what about British actors?

They seem to have a mysterious kind of "school" or method themselves.

I mean, in my personal opinion as a viewer, many of the best actors ever are British.

Even great American actors like Charlton Heston admit that "Brits tend to be better".

What is it they're doing? Do they feed them differently?

There must be some reason - a method or set of techniques.

Is it the Shakespearean tradition or what?

And what is their attitude towards the System of Stanislavsky and the derivative Method of Strasberg\Adler\Meisner, etc.

Do they use it, or parts of it, or do they deny it, ignore it?

The past week I re-watched Silence Of The Lambs and then Meet Joe Black and... Anthony Hopkins is a real master, his entire presence and expression in the two movies are totally different.

Any trained Brits around? :)

Come on, give away the secret charm. :)
 
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there is method involved, and technique, just like any other art form. Until you learn the tools, you are not free to express your ideas in the most expansive way possible.
 
not so much. Any actor that studies Shakespeare is taught this "method" of Shakespearean acting. there is little to no room for adapting it or changing it. When you study and perform classical Shakespeare, you have to deliver this line, THIS way, and say this line, THAT way. There is a system for it. I am not sure how that can affect or influence other works, because there is a loss of personal motivation, where you must now follow the beats, and rhythm of the text that has been given to you, which you have less chance to make your own, as opposed to narrative, current, storytelling, where you have the freedom of taking a text, making it your own, and being an actor. I.e. Bringing your own interpretation of a given scene, in a given context, and making it real, from you, the performers, point of view, under given direction ( always ) . This is where, much of the time, the actors own twist brings to life a character that is much more than what was on the page.

That being said, Shakespearean actors also have to study technique, which is a form of practice, like any form of acting, or method. This will, no doubt, strengthen their instrument. So yes, there is most definitely a connection, but i wouldn't say that Shakespearean acting will enhance a performer's instrument versus another form of training. In the end, it just depends on how you connect to the elements.
 
Shakespeare wrote direction into each line, word and beat...Actors that break down the text find that there is a very specific way that he wants you to dliver the line...it is very precise...but that doesn't mean that the actor has no influence on the piece...the line is written to be delivered very specifically but it's like story structure...once you know how to manipulate it without destroying the purpose of it, then you are ahead of the game...great Shakespearean actors do make the role their own, but do not change the meaning of the text or line...this is a good example f whyIl ncuraers to realize that acting is a craft and not as as just being themselves...Great actors constantly hone their skills ...there is no time limit...you learn as long as you live...

Best,
Stan The Man
www.xristosproductions.com
www.igfdb.com
 
This comment doesn't directly relate to the discussion but I don't want to start a new thread becuz my threads have a habit of getting "Locked" by the mods. Anyway, one of my actor friends (dude has big time shakes background) says that sometimes the best thing to do is "Just say your lines". Don't act, don't recall the time your cat died, don't try and remember that technique from the Strasburg website, just say the damn lines. ??????

WTF? I still don't know. But how about this. A good scene often doesn't require much. I'm sure of that. A good scene is preloaded with dramatic tension. The tension is there because the story has been structured properly. Example: "Enemy AT The Gate" has a scene where two soldiers must traverse a blown out section of building. It's the one section of the building exposed to the elements and, in this scene, a sniper scope. The sniper KNOWS one of those soldiers will enter the exposed area, but the two soldiers don't and chit chat who will cross the gap first. They don't know that decision will determine which one lives or dies. But the audience does. So these two actors are home free. They don't need to conjure up any magic, they just need to "Say their lines". The scene will take care of itself.
 
I rarely totally disagree but I will on that, Brian...no offense...it's just that if it is as simple as reading or just saying your lines then there is no value to a DeNiro or a Pacino or a Streep or a Daniel Day Lewis...you cannot perform Shakespeare or Mamet or Eugene O'Neill by just saying the lines...and a great writer doesn't just write lines that anyone can just say...that a good filmmaker just needs to shoot and edit cleverly. A good writer writes with subtext , so it's not just about the lines...it's about what is beneath them...it is what the actor brings to the lines...anyone can read, but not anyone can play great parts in well written pieces. It's not magic, it's craft. Even when there are no lines, something has to be going on...watch Paul Newmwn in Hombre or Hanks in Castaway or DeNiro in Heat...often they say little or nothing but they are actively acting...The tension doesn't merely come from the technical expertise of those editing and shooting, it comes from the subtlties of fine acting and craft...put it this way, anyone who doubts this is "Home Free"...because you will never have trouble finding actors if anyone can do it and the scenes take care of themselves. All you really need is a writer that can do that.

Cheers,
Stan The Man
www.xristosproductions.com
www.igfdb.com
 
stan harrington said:
. A good writer writes with subtext , so it's not just about the lines...it's about what is beneath them...it is what the actor brings to the lines...

Cheers,
Stan The Man
www.xristosproductions.com
www.igfdb.com
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The subtext is something that should bleed through the page and shouldn't necessarily depend on the skill of the actor. I've seen great actors transcend the material--they'll inject subtext when there really wasn't any in the script but if it *IS* in the script, it shouldn't take earth shaking talent to get that extra meaning out there for consumption. Similarly, there is dramatic tension intrinsic to great material. I'm not trying to say that acting skill isn't necessary, what I'm saying is what's often interpreted as great acting, isn't so much great acting as it is great a dramatic situation created by a writer and sometimes the more the actor tries to go beyond what's on the page, the more likely the scene will fall down. For example, how much acting is going on in "Saving Private Ryan" when, before the final battle, the Americna troops are waiting for impending doom (Nazi armor) and take a moment to listen to an Edith Piaf song. One soldier is merely translating the lyrics for his friends. Then we hear the rumble of approaching Tiger Tanks. I'm sorry, but all those actors had to do is sit there and stare. That's not acting, that's not to say they aren't great actors, that's not to say there aren't other scenes in SPR that don't require engaging their skills, but in that scene, because it's so perfectly conceived, requires no acting.
 
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stan harrington said:
. Even when there are no lines, something has to be going on...watch Paul Newmwn in Hombre or Hanks in Castaway or DeNiro in Heat...often they say little or nothing but they are actively acting...

Cheers,
Stan The Man
www.xristosproductions.com
www.igfdb.com
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I don't think that's so much acting as it is star power. That wierd ability to remain interesting to the camera while doing absolutely nothing (provided it's not one of the aforementioned brilliantly composed scenes) is something only the big stars have. And it's not always something that relates to acting talent. For example, I like Will Smith but don't think he's on the talent level of a PHilip Hoffman yet Will Smith succeeded in "I Am Legend" where Philip Hoffman might not have. Clint Eastwood is another example--our eyes just go to him. It's not his acting, it's him. Even Arnold, and my dog can act better than he can.
 
Sorry to disagree but although some actors are perceived as better than others, I wouldn't presume to say that Eastwood or Smith have no acting ability or that they are doing nothing other than looking good for the camera and using their star power...comparing them to your dog is I know a joke and I don't want to take this down the wrong road, but honestly Brian, you will not make too many friends of actors if this is how little you respect their craft...You will find it very difficult to cast talented people...but then again, if you don't believe it takes any kind of talent then it won't be a problem for you and you can cast anyone who you think just looks the part.

Stan Harrington
www.xristosproductions.com
www.igfdb.com
 
stan harrington said:
I wouldn't presume to say that Eastwood or Smith have no acting ability or that they are doing nothing other than looking good for the camera and using their star power...comparing them to your dogyou will not make too many friends of actors if this is how little you respect their craft...You will find it very difficult to cast talented people...but then again, if you don't believe it takes any kind of talent then it won't be a problem for you and you can cast anyone who you think just looks the part.

Stan Harrington[/URL]
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Re-read my post. I said none of these things.

Eastwood and Smith are good actors, but that doesn't mean they're as good as Daniel Day Lewis or Laura Linney.

I said my dog acts better than ARNOLD (The Terminator), and I stand by that, Arnold Swartznegger couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, he's really awful. Yet, he has screen presence and engages us. The camera loves him.

I'm not here to make friends, I'm here for discussion, and discussions won't get very far if we can't represent and comment fairly and intelligently upon the posts of other people.
 
I know writing quickly and reading quickly sometimes presents it's problems, so apologies that I misread the line...I agree also that discussion is important and I was responding to the entire post...not just the last line...and I do believe that although star quality is unquestionably a factor in being interesting, I don't believe that guys like Smith or Eastwood are doing nothing...I guess my issue is with the danger of generalities and the perception that all such actors are not working with any craft.

Again, apologies if I have misread anything or misunderstood, and please hit me back if that's the case...I do believe it is an important topic.

Best,
Stan Harrington
www.xristosproductions.com
 
I'm just saying that there are two occasions when actors can get away with running on cruise control.

1) If an individual has got "It", the unteachable attribute that people like Will Smith and Arnold Swartznegger have--call it star quality, charisma, screen presence, I don't know what it is but I know it when I see it. It's rare. They can sit there doing nothing and it's still interesting somehow.

2) Those times when there is such inherent dramatic strength in the scene (I used scenes from Saving Private Ryan and Enemy At The Gate as examples) that an actor's performance becomes secondary and even incidental to the material.

Instance #2 occurs rarely. Even the best films might have just a few such scenes or none at all even.

On a side note, recognizing a great scene in a script is not always easy. They can look fairly mundane on the page.
Writing such a scene is something like coming up with the Theory of General Relativity.
 
brianluce said:
I'm sorry, but all those actors had to do is sit there and stare. That's not acting
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Do you think if they were comfortably waiting for a nice home cooked meal, their waiting would have the same quality as their waiting for impending doom? This question isn't rhetorical , I'm curious as to what you think.

When a director tells an actor to "just say the line", the actor is always trying to do too much with it. The same with the direction "Don't Act". This kind of coaching or direction exists in each and every discipline. It seems like the point of your discussion is to minimize the craft of acting rather than illuminate it.
 
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Brian:

-Have you ever acted in a well-written, scripted dramatic scene, been filmed doing it and seen the results? (Let's not even get started on comedies).

-Have you ever done the same in a scene with little or no dialog, but lots of subtle physical acting?

If so, and you thought it was good, could you please post a clip of it?

If not, then I'd respectfully request that you do so before you continue describing acting as though it's easy. It sure isn't for me, or anyone else I know who's done it seriously for more than five minutes.

I've been acting seriously for several years now, first in classes and then for the last few in a couple of dozen films and other projects, including several features, both comedic and dramatic. At this point, I'm frequently complimented by the directors on my acting skills, for which I'm deeply thankful. And I'm increasingly getting cast in better and better, higher paying roles. Everything's looking up.

But honestly, from my own point of view, compared to Will Smith for example, who you characterize as merely having "a thing" or some other vague language, I'm a piss-ant no-talent hack. He's a FAR better actor than I am, from every single standpoint. I aspire to his (and any number of other fine actors') level of skill every time I perform. I'm improving every time I do it, but I'm telling you - this acting thing is not easy my friend. Not easy at all.

As Tommy Lee Jones (another great actor) so pointedly said to Mr. Smith in "Men In Black" (although not about acting): "Try it".

Offered in the spirit of constructive discourse...
 
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long, wandering and possibly not totally accurate reply

long, wandering and possibly not totally accurate reply

Gents...

Check out the history of these techniques.

I believe that the first recorded method of preparation, inner and outer, that can be linked with the current modern method of acting was Stanislavski's (a particularly good example of such recording is "Stanislavski Directs" by Gorchochov, recommended by no less a luminary than Stanley Kubrick himself).

A couple of Stanislavski's students brought that technique over to New York. They started various studios and trained others in "the method", and some of those in turn set up the studios we have today. (I'm oversimplifying here, there's a bunch of history for the googling...)

In brief, the method proposed that acting outwardly resemble real life behavior, but with each moment of the performance (and the character behind it) being repeatable, accessible, and fine-tunable ("adjustble").

The method is important in history because up until this time, acting, like singing, was larger than real life.

For example, bel canto, or "good singing", or opera singing, is like this because it's loud. There were no amplifiers in the old days so the singer had better be loud to be heard in a theater with an orchestra playing.

In the old days, in a theater with no amplification, the acting had to be similar, or else nobody would understand what was going on. You can see this in the first movies, the silent ones.

Then we invented the closeup and the amplifier/microphone.

Things got a lot more intimate. The audience could come up close, as it were. Cross the proscenum, the line dividing the actors from the audience.

So the amplified facsimile of reality was exposed, like too much makeup is exposed if you get too close.

So, another way had to be found.

In the US, the actors who were pantomiming in the silent movies couldn't remember their lines and/or had lousy voices (the first recording devices weren't very sensitive, much the same as the first fllm emulsions weren't very fast) and were replaced by stage actors from the east coast and elsewhere.

Those actors soon discovered that the early film directors were more into their cameras than their actors, and so brough over theatrical directors to help them get their own performances straight. To this day, the Hollywood director is mainly the head of the acting department.

Then, as I say, the technoligy got better and the cameras started moving in closer. The mics as well. Standard theatrical acting became over-acting and another "method" had to be found.

That method was to tone town the theatrical style and make it less theatrical. Witness Standard American Theater Speech and the acting of the 50's. Still very much a stylized represenation of real life, not a facsimile of it.

Enter the Russians, who, together with the French, had been fooling around with cinema too, but had another theatrical tradition that we in the west didn't have yet, that of art following real life, instead of life following art.

To this day, Hollywood US films are mainly the cameras following people around. The story is told during the shots. Stanslavski was a proponent of uninflected cinema, where the story is told in the cuts. I don't believe he was the only one, or indeed the first one. It's just that his were the words that were written down in a coherent manner, and that his words survive.

So his methods made it over here to the States, the gang of four started up, and the new method was seeded, and finally came into light of day decades later, as has been discussed elsewhere in this thread.

The acting itself, whether it be type a) acting or type b) acting (see elweshere in this post), isn't as important for our purposes as the repeatable, accessible part ot the method. For this to be clearer I'm going to have to butcher a bit more history (those in the know please don't flame me, I don't want to write 8000 words just to be precise and I don't have the time to get more concise than this)

It had to be done this way because in theater, the director only sticks around for the rehearsals, for the openings, and maybe a little while after, unless the actors get out of control and lose their way. The actors, like solo concert pianists, are truly in charge of the real performances in that when they're in performance, nobody can leap out in the middle and say "no, not quite. Could you please...?". They're on their own, which is a good and a bad thing.

So there had to be a language between writer/creator and performer, taking the script to be similar to a piece of music/manuscript. A concert pianist wouldn't be much if he made up his own notes whilst playing Beethoven, for instance. Or else he'd be a jazz pianist, but not a classical one.

These methods were developed for the stage, enabling rapid and comprehensive communication between actors and directors/writers to get to the heart of the plays and then to maintain that heart over the course of the play's run, which was many performances, hopefully, under (necessarily) changing performance conditions. The problem was to maintain freshness, or the illusion thereof, in the face of word perfect repetition, time after time, come rain, shine, headache, period, heartbreak, hangover, whatever.

The idea of this kind of preparation was, and is, to give the performer a basis so that the heart of the performance can be accessed under varying performance conditions.

Now, this is film making. Not stage.

Even in this arena, there seem to be two ideas behind the acting -

a) that the performer be seen to be performing (you pay extra money to see XXX famous actor play Hamlet, therefore XXX actor feels obliged to give his employers and you your money's worth, and play XXX playing Hamlet), and

b) that the performer's own personality be transparent, subservient to the part being played. You should have no idea who the actor's own person is, but only see the character of part being played.

Call them star style acting adn character acting, whatever. Both methods are commonly used, and both commonly seen in the same movies.

So maybe the method is outdated?
Possibly. To my mind there are still plenty of good uses for it, particularly in commercial film production, which I define for this purpose as any production where time is of the essence.

If time is not of the essence, you can shoot your scene in continuity, cut it together, and if you don't like what you see, you can chuck it and shoot it again.

Most people being paid for their time don't get to do that. They have to deliver the goods first time out, as much as possible.

So they end up shooting, for instance, out of continuity. The A side of a conversation between lovers is shot at a different time from the B side, sometimes with the lovers not even being in the same room as each other.

And we all have to get this to cut together as if they were totally in love with each other.

And maybe it's raining in one and not the other, etc., but that's physical continuity. Emotional continuity is much more noticeable if it's off. If one actor is speaking slower than the other, or less intensely, or more intensely, or reacting wrongly, we all react much more clearly to problems in that arena than if a cigarette leaps from unlit to lit between shots.

So quiet preparation time, firstly between the writer and the director, then between the director and the cast, is central to the method. You use this time to get the story straight, to make choices as to possible interpretations, then to tune the performances, and to set up certain physical and emotional keys and pathways, in other words, to develop a shorthand language that you can later recall during the stresses of the production environment.

To sum up, to finely tune a character's emotional level at a given point of the story is a delicate business, and not quickly done. It's much more efficient, says the method, if you can do all of that beforehand, and then get on with the filming itself when you're finally on set or when the curtain finally rises.

That's what the method is, IMHO, useful for. As a bridge of communication between the creative/talent team, to get the actors to their pre-chosen emotional pitch and sense levels, to get them comfortable, protected, safe and relaxed enough to be flexible, responsive and nimble, to provide a stable platform over time and under changing production circumstances so that they can give of their very best, standing firmly on a sold base of preparation, to take us and break our unbelieving resistance down, and speak our so-so-written words and give them true life, to move us and shake us to our very souls.

That's what it's for, I believe.
 
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Do you think if they were comfortably waiting for a nice home cooked meal, their waiting would have the same quality as their waiting for impending doom?
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wait...like Kuleshov? aha! film school works! =P
 
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