Acting for screen

For our first screen acting project, we were assigned to perform our own chosen duologues in which my partner and I had to choose together. In this project we had to manipulate all of our skills that we have been learning in our past workshops and show them in our performance which is going to be filmed. Our chosen duologue that my partner and i chose was from a show called Normal People.

Normal People Projects

In class today, we all worked on our projects with our partners that we are performing on screen in a couple of weeks. My partner and I chose a scene from the Tv show called Normal People, which follows the story of Marianne Meriden and Connell Waldron from their lives as teenagers in a small town in county Sligo, Ireland, through to the end of their University Carrere's. Although the two come from hugely diverse backgrounds, they have an inseparable connection between them. I am playing the role of Marianne Meriden and my partner, Carlo, is playing the role of Connell Waldron. We both chose to do the scene in episode one, where Marianna tells Connell that she likes him:

We chose this scene, as it is a very powerful one, you could tell that even though it was the first episode, they were very much into each other by their nervousness but had to strain that away so that Connell would not get caught in school being around her as everyone views her as weird and even ugly.

Research for scene

In class, Carlo and I were given an empty storyboard, which we had to fill in the boxes by drawing our camera shots for our scene. There were only six boxes, so we had to pick out six precise moments within the scene that we felt were powerful and had to make that effect by positioning the camera in a certain way. For example, when Marianne says to Connell that she likes him, we thought that this was a very intense but an important moment in the whole scene, therefore leading us to draw a camera shot in the perspective of Marianne to get that emotional reaction from Connell as the viewers will be intrigued to know his thoughts at this moment. Another important moment that we picked out to be very enticing was the very beginning of the scene when Connell anxiously walks over to Marianne. We chose to do a medium shot of Connell so that we could see his facial expressions as he walks over, because in this moment he is debating if he should go over and speak to her as he does not want to be caught by his other peers and you can also tell that he finds her attractive and that is why he wants to go over to her but also gets a feeling of nervousness.

Furthermore, once we filled in the story board of our six camera shots, Carlo and I rehearsed our scene and recorded it on our phones practicing our camera shots. For example, once we rehearsed our scene a couple of times, we showed our friend the storyboard of the camera shot and got her to film our performance whilst inserting these shots into our scene at the same time. This gave us an overall idea of what it would look like on camera and helped us to see what could change and therefore make it better. One thing that we changed after looking back at the recording was the close up on Mariannes face when she told Connell that she likes, which we changed it, so the camera is in the perspective of Connell and is a little further away which we though were equally powerful and looked better. Moreover, whilst we performed our scene, I manipulated the acting technique, emotion memory by Stanislavski, to make the piece more realistic since we were doing it for camera. I felt that this was successful as I felt more connected with the scene because using a similar emotional memory for the performance helped me to feel what Marianne was going through during it. This also encouraged my reactions towards Connell to be more truthful and not a forced response which would be unrealistic.

Character Profiles

In class this Monday, we all worked on our projects again which we are performing in a couple of weeks. Our television show that my partner, Carlo, and I picked was Normal People, a show about two teens who have a lot of interest in each other and the screen that we chose from episode one really represents this feeling they have towards each other.

Uta Hagen questions

During this session, my partner and I focused our attention upon our characters and worked on analyzing them so that we can form a connection with who was playing. To do this we made character profiles to map out their characters life, backstory, likes and dislikes. Making this character profile for Marrianne Sherridan, it allowed me to find out new things about her a help create a more rounded ‘picture’ of my character so then I could perform better too. Furthermore, when creating this character profile for Marianne, I used Uta Hagens 9 questions as a starter point to know everything about her. For example, one of his questions asked me what my relationships are, and obviously I knew that she has a very caring and affectionate relationship towards Connell, but after doing more research on her character, I found out that she has a troubled relationship with her family as they emotionally and physically abuse her, which added more depth to her character. Moreover, after we finished our profile characters, we then moved on to short form analysis for our characters, where we had to answer more questions about our characters, which added more depth to the analysis. This was very effective as I felt a lot more connected with my character.

Research

Furthermore, after completing our backstories and short form analysis, we then moved on to making a character bio, which includes a paragraph about Marianne's date of birth, where she was born, parents names, key events in their life and how she met the other person in the scene. This was very helpful in adding a sense of truth to Marianne and helping the connection I need with her so that I can perform to my best ability and make it as naturalistic as possible. Once we had finished our backstories, short form analysis and bios, my partner and I were ready to begin hot seating with our characters. This technique was very effective because it helped me to memorize all the information that I had learnt about my character and help me give that sense of honesty when answering the questions. Hot seating also gave me that deeper understanding of Marianne and understand how how and why she likes to keep to herself most the time.

Physical characterization

Secondly, after we did this, we moved onto posture and gait. During this exercise, we had to walk around the room filling the space and the teacher would give us three instructions, such as, which body part to lead with, a type of gait and which speed to move at. For example, one of them was that we were told to lead with our nose, have slumped posture and walk slowly. This gave the impression of a character who is tired and has low energy. For my character's posture and gait, I thought about the type of person Marianne is to help me develop an idea. At times she can be quite a shy person, but often, she is an outspoken and opinionated student, which I think makes her unique. Therefore, this gave me the idea to lead with my nose towards the floor in some parts of the scene when she feels a bit shy and to kind of slouch her back a little to show herself hiding away. However, in the other parts of the scene when she is telling her opinion about the teacher to Connell, she is quite confident and therefore leads with her nose higher up to face Connell. As a result, I felt that focusing on her physical movements and practicing it during my rehearsal's, it was successful as it showed a lot more about Mariannes personality as well as just her facial expressions

Rehearsals

Moreover, during class on Wednesday we began to analyze our scripts and rehearse our scene with all the information we have been gathering over the last few days. Analyzing my script helped me to think from the perspective of Marianne during the scene, allowing me to pick up specific details that make the performance captivating. For example, little things like eye contact are what I noticed a lot especially when she is trying to get her point across to Connell why she spoke back at the teacher earlier on that day as she holds a strong eye contact. Analyzing my script was also especially useful in helping me establish some sub-text. Some examples of sub-text in my script were when Connell said to Marianne “You were fairly harsh of Mr. Kerrigan, hes actually a pretty decent guy” however after studying her character, her perspective would be that she wants Connell to understand why she spoke back to the teacher in the way that she did, so I added the subtext of, does he not understand where I am coming from? Which therefore gave my character the purpose of saying what she said afterwards and a realistic reaction. Analyzing my script also helped me to identify Mariannes objective for that scene. The objective that I thought she would want was for Connell to like her as he is the only person who speaks to her at school, and she does not want to lose any connection that they have or will have in the future, which I believe motivates her in wanting to impress him.

Bits and actions

Furthermore, after analyzing the script, Carlo and I were able to rehearse our scene for the last hour of the lesson. This allowed us to put all the details that we picked up from our information and put that into our performance. This made our performance more natural and realistic, and I also felt a lot more connected with the scene and my character as I had found out a lot about her and knew her perspective from things. Rehearsing the script allowed us to also add in more physical actions that the characters do whilst speaking and how that enhances the type of person they are.

script annotation

In this week's workshop, we learnt about Bits and Actions and how we can find them in our scripts. Bits are the smallest ‘sections’ of each script and in each Bit, the character peruses a simple objective such as ‘to withdraw.’ In class, we looked at many diverse types of Bits, for example, entrances/exits, situation change and change of tactics, which I found extremely helpful in identifying the Bits in our scripts. My favorite type of bits was the entrances/exits as I was easily able to point out the mood of the scene as I learnt that it always changes when a character enters or leaves the scene which was easy to look for. For example, in pairs we were given a short script where we had to annotate it where we feel the bits change and write a mini objective for each of these bits- an action. Firstly, I looked out for the characters entrance into the scene and how it sets the mood for the beginning of it. Then my partner and I would work our way down the script looking out for a situation change or a change of tactics which we would mark down onto our scripts. Once we had found the bits in the script, we were then able to write a simple objective next to each of these bits, for example one of the bits that my partner and I identified was a subject change and the objective that we wrote for that line was ‘To distract you.’ This was especially useful putting the objectives next to the bits as it gave my character a purpose to what they were saying to the other character, which gave us an impressive performance and showed the audience the type of relationship our characters have. However, when reading the script, I found it exceedingly difficult looking for the change of tactics because the characters did not make it obvious when they did this, therefore my partner and I struggled to annotate that type of bit within the script. As a result of this, I would love to find out more about this type of bit as I want to be able to be stronger when looking for it in the scene rather than having to struggle.

Once we practiced annotating the scripts with the ‘bits’ and ‘actions,’ we then had to get into our performance groups and do this to our own scripts (Normal People). Carlo and I went through our script and identified every single bit within our text and chose an appropriate action for that section. For example, at the beginning of the scene when my character (Marianne) is telling Carlos's character (Connell) that she got a detention, he begins to change the subject by saying to her that she was ‘fairly harsh on Mr. Kerigan’ earlier on that day as the conversation began to die down a little and he wanted to keep it going, as a result we decided to Bit where he changed the subject of the conversation from her detention to him talking about how harsh she was on the teacher that day and we put the action ‘To grab their attention’ to that Bit. Annotating our script for Normal People was extremely useful as it gave meaning to our words and how we were saying to each other. Moreover, it also shows the audience the type of relationship that they have between them because by annotating the scene with the bits and actions, you can really tell that the characters are into each other especially when Connell wants to carry on the conversation.

Normal People project

A task that I completed this week was expanding my sense of space in the scene so that the performance is much more interesting. Before I was given feedback by my teacher Mrs. Wright, I did not move very much in my performance, instead I stood still the whole time, which she believed was not naturalistic and wanted to change that. This was a particularly important change that was made as our scene is marked based on Stanislavski's methods as his ideas are centered around being believable and embodying your characters behaviors to get that genuine physical action which is what we wanted to achieve in the scene. For example, to make my performance more physical, instead of standing still and directly looking at him whilst I said, “Why are you talking to me?”, we changed that by walking a little away from my partner and turning away to therefore make the scene much more intense but also awkward, which consequently made the scene more absorbing to watch.

Expanding my sense of space in the filming links very well with screen acting and keeping it natural because it contributes to a believable conversation and style of speaking. This helped me to find my focus points in the scene which helped bring the intensity of the performance to life. For example, in some parts of the scene, I would lock eyes with my partner (Connell) to show that I am in control of this moment and at other times I would turn away from him and look in the opposite direction to show my anger. As a result, finding my focus points in the scene was immensely powerful, as the audience will read into where you focus and what this indicates, which therefore makes the scene more natural.

Finding my focus points was phenomenally successful because it helped me not to look directly into the camera as that would spoil the illusion of the scene, which as a result helps the scene become more natural. Looking in multiple directions shows the different reality that we are in, and it shows a lot about your character, which is especially important.

During my performance, I used the acting skill emotion memory, which is where the actor uses an emotion they once felt and applies it to how the character is feeling in this scene. This helped me to think like my character (Marianne) and show how she would experience everything Connell is saying to her, which made my performance rawer and more believable for the audience. As a result of using this technique in my scene, it helped me to forget “acting” out the emotions such as being angry at Connell and instead use a personal experience from my own life to help bring these emotions to life.

To conclude, I believe I could improve how much I move my body. This is especially important so that I can always be on my mark, or I will not be in the camera lenses and therefore must keep re-doing shots. To ensure that I am always on my mark next time, I will practice hitting my mark through many run throughs of my scene so that it will just come naturally where to stand and as a result feel more confident whilst performing.

Reflection on my Normal People performance

During my performance, which was taken from Normal People, I found that reacting to what my partner (Conell) said, showing a clear facial expression made my performance more naturalistic, which was very beneficial for the viewer's when watching. Reacting to what the character was saying to my character really gave the words weight of what he was saying, meaning and importance, which gave our performance a more depth. Moreover, when I was reacting to his lines when performing gave a more detailed story and said a lot about the character.

Furthermore, the projection of my voice went well throughout my performance which was key for making my words sound clearer. Projecting my voice helped to create my character and needs to be internalized with dialogue, movement, and gestures to highlight crucial characteristics of my character.

However, one thing about my performance that I need to improve on is my physicality throughout becuase i noticed that I did not move around a lot and stayed in the same spot the majority of the performance. In the future, I need to embody my character more and show off their personality through body language so that the performance is more realistic.