This week:
We worked on:
1. 7 Dwarfs: Building a more interesting character
7 Dwarfs: Building a more interesting character
Today we worked heavily on the process of building a more interesting character. Many times, even if a script gives you a character description, it tells you very little about how to play a scene. On top of that, the lines themselves could be said with dozens of different voice inflections, actions, reactions, and movements. In order to make the scene more interesting for everyone involved, we need to create more interesting characters. In order to create more interesting characters - we need to map out motivations that lead to deliberate acting choices that help form a complete character - instead of a chameleon character that has no distinctive characteristics, that is not memorable, and adds nothing to the scene or other actors.
We start to map out these motivations, deliberate actions, and choices, by writing a mini backstory that could explain what is happening in our scene, our roll in it, what preceded the scene in the character's life to make them react that certain way in the scene, and how they would react to the other things that are happening based on the story we have created.
We do this with 3 or 4 bullet points that are simple, to the point, and help tell us where to go.
With our 7 dwarfs exercise, everyone got the same monologue - and a different characteristic (or dwarf) to use to form their backstory. The biggest actions, reactions and movements had to come from whichever dwarf they had been assigned - but the intricacies of their individual monologues were determined on the other bullet points they came up with.
For example - if someone got "Sneezy" as their dwarf - their big, defining action is pretty straight forward. However, when you add the other bullet points of - he's working somewhere that his boss has told him if he sneezes one more time he will get fired because they are losing customers over the phone because of him - all of the sudden you add paranoia, and the actions that accompany it (like looking around, trying to sneeze quietly, or panic if a sneeze slips out) every time a beat happens when the major action has to be done.
Even with just one other bullet point - our scene becomes more interesting, and has more deliberate choices - making it more interesting and enjoyable to both act and watch.
Here are our videos from today!
Before/End of our lesson:
Labels: Group Acting