101 Acting

After watching the video today, I realized that acting is not so much a talent, but more of an art. Michael Cane went on to talk about how simple you have to look in front of the camera and that less is more, especially on close ups. I did some researching of my own and found some other helpful tips that might help the rest of the class with their replication project.

1. If your scene has dialogue, tell your actor/actress to make sure he/she knows the character they are playing. if the character is serious, then the dialogue shouldn't come across funny or sarcastic. IF your having trouble keeping your actors from laughing, go through the scene a couple times until the laughter dies out. It is too easy to spot out on screen actors holding in their laugher, and it only ruined the shot.

2. If you have characters in the background or just simply not speaking, give them something to do while on camera. What I mean by

that is to make sure he/she isn't doing something to just get T/V time. They should have a purpose to the shot and should be doing every day kind of things.

3. Last, be aware of overacting. Make sure you understand what the scene's purpose is and that you don't exceed or miss the point. A lot of the time, beginner acts feel like they need to stand out from the others so they feel obligated to try and make more of what they are suppose to do. This mistake is easily avoideable and shouldn't be seen in any of our projects.

I hope this helps to all that read. Give me any feedback you got or anything else that I should maybe add to the list.

Steve Kinslow

Foreign Invasion

I find the new trend in television of hiring foreign actors to be an interesting statement on the talent in the country. Many of my favorite shows have cast foreign actors or actresses to play characters that are clearly American. I don't just mean the stray Canadian imports, but many actors are now being imported from places like England and Australia to play American roles and are covering they're accents very well. Many people (including myself), if they have never heard of Hugh Laurie before watching House would never suspect that he is British. I did not realize that his flawless American accent was an impostor until I heard him except a Golden Globe Award several years ago for his role as Dr. Greg House. Other foreigners impersonating American accents in television include Yvonne Strahovski who plays Sarah Walker of Chuck, and several cast-members of True Blood who have the harder challenge of learning a Southern accent. This trend that has recently hit American television has been going on in the film industry for much longer. Although I believe there are many good actors in America, I think this is a statement on how actors are trained in other parts of the world. In American since we have the mentality that anyone who has a dream can make it come true there are many people who do not have as much talent, but still have a career because they were in the right place or knew the right people. In these other countries these actors had to work hard to train to have refine their craft.