An excellent actor isn’t just someone who can read a script for emotion and bring that out, it is someone who understands how to be a professional in front of the camera and operate on set. Professional actors take the craft extremely seriously. If you want to find better parts in movies that offer competitive pay and more interesting scripts, you’ll need some fundamentals for acting behind the camera.
Stop Acting for the Back Row
There is no back row in film, no need to fill the room with your presence. Unless the scene demands it. Acting is a complicated craft that involves a lot of emotion and subtlety that stage acting often struggles to convey. In film, we can do those dramatic close-ups and pick up the subtle tones in voice that come with character acting. It’s often better to dial it down a bit because you have so many things working to enhance your performance. The microphone is especially perceptive, so you have to be careful about the volume of your voice.
Make it Believable
Stage has something of a curse when it comes to making believable characters. When a play catches fire, it tends to be staged all over the world and performances tend to become iconic. There is great pressure for an actor to conform to those caricatures, or else they risk the audience disliking the changes made to the piece. Film has the opposite problem. Acting in film is about believability and that often trumps what the audience may expect from your type of character. Scripts may change the day or hour of shooting, so it is important to stay in character and stay true to those motivations.
Charles Matthau directed the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s “The Grass Harp.” The Charles Matthau Company is slated to produce the upcoming TV series “Mexican High.” To find out more about Charles Matthau, or his projects, visit the Matthau Company.
