Unrequited self-love

In Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - actress Toni Colette plays Sheryl, under stress, eating a Popsicle as "comfort food" in a decidedly uncomforted way. It is baldly, and masterfully, played out in this sequence. The tension is driven home with the hand-held camera getting awkwardly squeezed more than once in the kitchen/dining room doorway as the main characters run about venting.

Who hasn't sought solace in a comforting food or activity, when it was clearly the wrong time try doing so? The comfort is absent, leaving us with a hollow - yet meaningful - gesture. These are prayers for our own selves that go unheard and unanswered.

Nice quote on capturing The Essence

As storytellers we need to constantly make choices about what to show an audience and what to leave out. It's all about steering the associations we make with the information provided. An underrated scenarist from the second half of the 20th century, Jacqueline (Jay) Presson Allen, is quoted in the March 21, 1999 issue of the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, as saying about her experience working with Alfred Hitchcock on the initial drafts of the script for his film, Marnie:

"When Hitch hired me for Marnie, I had never even read a screenplay. My approach to narrative was totally linear, so when it came time to getting Sean (Connery) and Tippi (Hedren) from the altar to the reception to the honeymoon cabin on the ocean liner, I wrote three plodding scenes.

Hitch gently suggested that we might pick up the pace by doing this all in one scene, i.e.:

CLOSE UP
A large vase of roses with attached card saying 'Congratulations.' In the vase the water is sloshing, sloshing, sloshing."

Bingo! This, for me, epitomises the efforts needed to distill down a scenario to its most elegant form. It respects the intelligence of the audience, allowing them to experience the subconscious satisfaction of piecing together some of the story points.

A New Angle on Pushing Poses

Richard Riehle, as Tom Smykowski, in Office Space (1999) proves that a live action person can walk hunched over at a 45 deg. angle. Animators must surely be able to loosen up & crank their performances more after seeing this! He is humiliated by his interview with a slash & burn tag team and now runs into his colleague, Michael (David Herman), and - after a perfect example of a "pause for a beat" - he storms off screen. That pause is genius; it allows the audience to reflect on what dark depths he must be in as he faces a friend who is unaware of the trauma he'd just experienced.

So much more effective than just dashing from hitting one mark to the next. More on Office Space in another entry, as we see some of what went into this grievous meeting.

Don't Stop Living

Kevin Kline's Otto, in A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

This sort of element will help enhance our "keep alives" of characters. They don't stop living & thinking just because they aren't speaking.

As the crooks are plotting around a table, watch Kline's reaction when Michael Palin's Ken struggles with his stuttering. Kline is in the BG, not speaking, but utterly in character, revealing his true nature as he squirms with awkwardness in a very politically-incorrect way. As an actor he doesn't get showy with this, doesn't distract the viewer from the speaker, but his presence is felt - increasingly so - until he can no longer contain himself and seemingly has to speak.


Note also how Kline demonstrates, just before he speaks, how we sometimes need to rest our eyes on a neutral subject as we plan what to say. It's probably natural that people are too "loaded" a subject in critical moments; giving them regard inspires distracting thoughts as we formulate our response to something. Palin's struggles make Kline so uncomfortable that he searches left and right, his eyes darting for a resting place, as he tries to untangle his thoughts from the web of his emotions. He's got adult concerns mixed with schoolyard attitudes. And they all come out through his face and body gestures. Pure genius. Kline's inside Otto completely.

While we're on the topic of eye darts, remember that it's about the darting from one potential resting place to the next. Hold the eye fix on any one location for a beat before transitioning to the next within a frame or two. If it was one smooth scan across space it would appear stunned rather than searching. Pay attention the next time you are in conversation and words fail you for a moment. (Heaven knows that's my usual state) You may well find you break eye contact and scan about, focusing on random objects as your brain attempts to package the next batch of words.

spying with the voyeur

Here's a chance to appreciate Gary Farmer's turn as the character Nobody in Jim Jarmusch's film, Dead Man (1996). He takes William (Johnny Depp)'s hat from beside where Depp is sleeping (~40 mins in) and tries it on after first sniffing it.
Farmer then proceeds to mouth not once, but twice, a very casual, uninhibited phrase of gibberish, such as he might do - we'd imagine - if he were, in fact, the owner of the hat. Depp wakes up at a point and glances over, but the editing ensures we know that he is surreptitiously watching, and that Farmer's character is quite unaware.

It's wonderful stuff, made all the more powerful by us having a sense that we are spying on Farmer's character when he thinks he's truly alone (and let's face it, it's only when we believe ourselves to be alone that we can remove our masks). While Farmer doesn't mug self-consciously, his jaw movement is nevertheless so silly that we learn how Farmer's character feels about his sleeping partner. He even double checks that Depp is asleep before repeating himself. This juxtaposition of shots serves a few emotional purposes: It not only confirms to us that were are getting the uninhibited Nobody (since we see him check to confirm William's asleep) but a prior CU of William glancing briefly at Nobody imitating him, then silently drifting back to sleep, implies William's acceptance of Nobody. A fine moment.

The Joy of Transportation

... and we ain't talking vehicles here; this is all about being swept away by actors' sublime performances. I'm wanting to chronicle great characterizations created in live action films. While this can serve as an inspiration to all cinemaphiles, it is also intended to help animators "plus" their characters' performances by reminding us how we can delve further into a personality to mine the rich uniqueness that makes up an individual.

Physical movement - nothing more, nothing less - will be at the root of these entries. How do actors move their bodies to enhance our understanding of who they are portraying? What distinguishes cliche, derivitive overacting from a sublime piece of art? From the macro to the micro, we'll be examining everything from subtle eyebrow shifts and sighs to broad physicality. Witty dialogue and awe-inspiring camera moves are irrelevant here - it's all about the actor.

Please share any favourite physical acting moments you may have, and I'll try to track down visual support materials and URLs for the most champion efforts.