Actor Growth

Interesting day this was. I was back on Stargate Universe today as expected as part of a continuity shot from last week. Let’s just say, today involved work that required me to be on the ground a lot which was unexpected. However, another unusual thing happened too where the director was giving me directions as to what to do.

Since I wasn’t exactly doing a principal role on this series, that was very odd to me as from school and all the sets I have been on it is usually a no-no to interact with the director when you are not a principal player as that is up to the assistant directors to do.

So you can imagine my confusion as he was giving me direction and I was a little confused at first. Example, he was telling me to turn and I would turn a little when he actually wanted way more. Funny thing is afterwards he literally grabbed my head and turned it to the position that he wanted for the shot.

Then he looks into the camera view as the cameraman was pointing the camera right at me and he was so happy with that shot that he shouted out to me “I’m going to make you F’n famous!” I didn’t get to see it myself though of course, but this sure was an interesting experience. And no, I don’t think that shot is in anyway going to make me more well known professionally acting wise despite being featured on that shot. Fun for experience though.

In the workshop one topic that came up is that how as an actor you have to understand the strange terminology that some casting directors use when they are trying to get you to enact the scene in a certain way. For example, they could tell you to be “a little colder”, “warmer” and one really odd term was “smellier”.

So imagine doing a scene where you interpreted the character a certain way and afterwards the person asks you “Can you please try that scene again except try being a little smellier?” I’m pretty sure most people would just be frozen over that.

Basically, the casting director is trying to tell you do the scene in say a lighter approach, more sinister fashion, etc. The thing is too there is no universal dictionary for these things as every casting director uses different terms and may have different meanings for them. The only real way to learn is based on experience.

Kind of an interesting obstacle that actors face.

Got together for our weekly meetup today and today we did scenes. While observing another pair’s scene, there was an interesting scenario where the two actors kind of had different interpretations of the scene and in turn it felt like they individually had good performances but the scene itself didn’t seem to mix.

This brought up the topic how in film if the director felt that one guy’s performance was perfect, despite what you might think you should then be able to adapt to it as oppose to just sticking to your own view of what you feel is right. Interesting point as I had to do that before during school.

In that example, the scene I thought was pretty intense as the character was being accused and blackmailed. However, the other actor was so calm. As a result, I had to rethink the scene to match the other actor’s interpretation by re-evaluating how the character thinks and sure enough it matched the other actor’s tone level.

I usually like doing scenes as it really is a test to see how well you can work with others. Unlike a monologue where in most cases it is all about you, I think scenes give you more of a challenge as you are focusing more in making the whole movie in general work.