I. Less is written systematically about acting than any other aspect of the filmmaking process.

A. Yet, acting is the most obvious element for audiences.

B. Acting is the least explained and most evaluated part of the creative process. That is not logical, but it is reality.

C. What is acting?

1. Classically, acting is the ritual celebration of the human spirit.

2. The actor is the major celebrant in direct contact with the audience.

3. Film acting begins with thinking that becomes moving and speaking, and finally the most important element of performance – reacting.

4. Acting is the complex interpretation and expression of character.

a. It is portrayal, playing the part.

b. It is above all else communicating with the audience the ideas of the screenwriter in concert with the director and other creators of the film.

B. Without demeaning acting, actors need to retain the qualities of adolescence - a positive immaturity that includes a (an):

1. Sense of discovery.

2. Desire to escape reality.

3. Ability to fantasies.

4. Preference for changes in lifestyle.

5. Openness to rapid change

6. Ability to be emotional.

C. Actors tend to be personality shoppers, trying on personalities rather than buying them and doing things in public they might not do in private. Actors are not normal - they are special.

D. The actor is out in plain sight not hidden in the credits and this leads to too much praise/blame.

II. The actor is a conscious artist who makes major contributions to film. The key may not be directing actors, but casting them.) Only the actor has the potential to express human behavior on the screen. The actor is the major symbol in film literature for audiences.

A. The actor uses her intelligence to understand what needs to be done.

B. His imagination to expand and intensify insights.

C. The actor must use memory to store and recall experiences in new configurations.

D. She must possess communicative skills that trigger understanding and correct responses from the audience.

E. The actor consciously has learned the significant differences between

1. Stage acting

2. Silent screen acting

3. Acting for the "talkies"

5. Small screen or TV acting

5. Acting is evolutionary with adjustments in style constantly emerging as more and more realistic based on what the audience believes is real.

a. The reality of The Wizard of Oz or Mrs. Doubtfire required or at least allowed a broader style than

b. The reality in Philadelphia or the Remains of the Day or Schindler's List

c. As a rule comic style is broader style than dramatic acting, thus creating a different kind of reality in a film. Or, in other words, the audience accepts a "broader" or "larger than life" style in comedy and fantasy films than it does in drama.

III. The Actor's Creative Process makes the old look new spontaneously, yet it is crafted out of work and very calculated.

A. Actors work with "signposts" rather than hard and fast rules. A director can explain the psychology or the causes or the action, but the actor must then find a way to express the emotion of the moment.

B. It is not technique so much as the singular use of technique that makes for a great performer.

1. Marilyn Monroe could project a joyous sexuality.

2. Paul Newman eschews a kind of macho anti-hero.

3. Peter Sellers had a manic sense of the absurd that was perfectly acceptable (normal) to the audience.

4. Sometimes a "relationship" develops between actors, they relate to each other in a way that improves both performances and the film as a whole. In both The Sting and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Paul Newman and Robert Redford worked as a team without the interference of "ego". A later film of George Roy Hill, The Great Waldo Pepper, suffered from the loss of that interaction. Robert Redford has an easy like ability and charm and sexiness not unlike the kind that of Paul Newman.

5. Jack Palance, Christopher Walken and Bruce Dern fill the screen with an uneasy edge and project mental unbalance. That edge makes the audience uneasy even when they play the "good guy".

6. Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal have cultivated a "macho-physique" image. Both Stallone and Schwartzenegger are tried to expand their persona with comedy and children as sidekicks. They are back making action films.

a. Copland is a "stretch" for Stallone.

b. Like John Wayne as the "Rooster Cogburn" character, Stallone goes against "type." He is an overweight, out of shape, pseudo- loser.

7. An actor playing someone known to the audience is difficult, because a choice to be made between playing a character or playing "the personality" the audience knows.

8. Angela Bassett’s performance as Tina Turner (and Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner) manages to incorporate both the character and the star in What’s Love Got to Do with It.

C. Actors communicate insights in unique patterns.

1. Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia expresses an internal war of emotions and contradictions.

2. Steve McQueen in Papillon stares the audience into submission and acceptance for the character's will to escape.

3. Katherine Hepburn's "Rosie" in The African Queen is a beautiful rendition of a spinster (vulnerable yet resilient) redeemed and redeeming and a drunkard (Humphrey Bogart) who is hard on the outside and soft on the inside.

4. Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice is a tremendous comic interpretation of a stand-up comic or car salesman-demon.

D. The actor is subjective and uses the only tool she has is , herself, and she uses her inner most resources to glorify someone else.

E. The actor is the most important contributor to popular audiences who remember:

1. Gary Cooper in High Noon (Directed by Fred Zinnemann)

2. Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (Directed by Victor Fleming)

3. Mel Gibson in Braveheart (Directed by Mel Gibson)

4. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Alien tetralolgy (4 dramatic pieces or 4 movies) is the first action heroine in feature films. She did not need to be saved by a man, and had to be brought back from the dead as a computer, to insure the success of Alien 4: Resurrection..

5. Or John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction

6. Holly Hunter in The Piano

7. Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects and Seven

8. The "bad guys" in the Batman series are the characters audiences remember. It is how Batman defeats them that make the title character necessary. It is Jack Nicholson, Michele Phieffer and Jim Carrey that make the movies memorable, rather than Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and perhaps George Clunney who wear the mask -- the persona of the bat and we all what all want to know is "Where did he get those wonderful toys?"

F. The actor's tool kit includes:

1. Intelligence and street smarts

2. Temperament and curiosity

3. Observation and imaginative memory

4. Conscious relaxation and control to handle tension and expression

5. Intuition and ingenuity

6. Preparation which generates spontaneity

7. Absorption and concentration

8. Sense perception and the ability to communicate what is seen, heard, touched, tasted and smelled

9. Talent and training

10. Motivation works at three levels:

a. understanding it in others.

b. ability to motivate themselves.

c. generating it in co-workers and audiences.

11. Technique is not so much doing something but making the audience feel what is happening.

a. In The Champ Ricky Schroeder makes the audience cry by not crying.

b. In Jurassic Park the actors generates wonder or panic in the audience by not by "feeling" those emotions themselves. The actors did not have the FX to react to that frightened the audience. They had to "project" or communicate what the audience in the end would feel.

G. The actor, in effect, is a lens through which the written impressions become visual and aural expressions – that are experienced (felt) by the audience.

Impression < LENS > Expression

1. The core of performance is reacting but in a controlled, calculated and creative responsive manner.

2. The actor's role is to make the silly responsible and the ridiculous sublime.

a. Alec Guinness makes "May the force be with you" believable in Star Wars. Alec Guinness is the one absolutely essential actor in Star Wars.

b. Who is the real OO7?

i. Sean Connery breathed a sinister, hard line in the James Bond character,

ii. then George Lazenby remained George Lazenby in the minds of the audience.

iii. Roger Moore, who gave Bond a very cultured turn, suavely smoothed the rough edges out.

iv. OO7 was given a no-nonsense, sexually responsible urbanity by Timothy Dalton, a classically trained actor to whom the audience never really warmed.

v. And the fifth Bond is now Pierce Brosnan, who was unavailable, when Dalton got the role by default.

Golden Eye made more money than any other OO7 film.

IV. Character is the personality of a role projected by the actor through technique by the selection of characteristics that are emphasized.

A. Characterization generates character through vocal, physical, emotional, and intellectual mannerisms.

1. Marlon Brando creates Don Vito Corleone's character in The Godfather with subtlety - you sense his power and the audience gives the character respect.

a. And Michael Corleone’s tragic flaw is he inherited rather than earned the power needed to understand the violent deeds to keep the family going. The Godfather trilogy (3 movies) is really Michael Corleone’s knowing descent into hell.

2. Orson Welles' characterization of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane is much larger in terms of technique, but equally satisfying.

a. Tragic acting is more time bound than comic acting, b. We accept the great comics of the silent era, but find the dramatic style of the period too big too exaggerated.

B. Characterization breathes life into character.

C. Three major participants create character -

1. The screenwriter originates character.

2. The director influences character.

3. The actor communicates character.

D. Character Development is a process of analysis, trial and error and finally identity.

E. Portrayal of character can only be contributed by an actor based on the script and direction.

1. Portrayal is the essence of performance.

2. Only the actor can "play" the character.

3. One of the great villains in film history is Lawrence Olivier’s "dentist" in Marathon Man. His portrayal brings new and frightening meaning to the question "Is it safe?" Dustin Hoffman’s fear is our fear because we have all sat in the dentist’s chair.

4. Most actors’ performances do not change radically from film to film. An actor only has so much range.

a. The variety of parts he can play affects the "believability" of a film.

b. We believe Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, but we do not believe or even care about his character in Outbreak.

i. He is not the hero type. I know that is "the point" of the picture, however the gamble didn’t work.

ii. We do care about the "buddy" doctor, Kevin Spacey.

iii. That character should have lived and Hoffman and Rene Russo should have died.

5. It is the nuances that make the difference, because film holds a magnifying glass up to the actor with minor variations of technique taking great significance.

6. Actors do anger or love or fear rather than being angry, etc.

a. control is absolutely essential.

b. actors observe, recall, turn-on, and channel passion - it is technique.

c. The actor transforms the audience rather than herself.

i. Audiences develop expectations.

ii. They "type" actors based on previous performance.

iii. Therefore casting against type is very exciting.

iv. For example, heroic actors make great villains-

a. Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man

b. Gregory Peck in The Boys From Brazil.

c. Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West

F. Persona is Latin for mask, and in film personality (character) is the mask the actor wears.

1. The Greek and Roman actors actually wore large masks that the classical audience could see and associate with specific character types.

2. Consider Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb , he has three personae.

His three characters are three variations on his personality.

a. Group Captain Lionel Mandrake is a stiff upper-lipped officer of the empire.

b. President Merkin Muffley is a reasonable academic striving ineffectually to control events.

c. Dr. Strangelove is the twisted, crippled Nazi scientist.

d. Major Kong -Sellers' heart attack led to Slim Pickens doing the role.

2. The masks reflect what the audience’s needs to see based on physical and vocal technique, make-up and costume. They make the audience believe in all three while knowing they are one.

3. Robert DeNiro has great range, he has that ability to

get inside" a character and make us believe in his characters.

V. The techniques of acting fall into three broad categories; vocal technique, physical technique, and timing. Costumes, makeup, editing and multiple takes are external factors that are also important, but the actor has little (or less) control of these variables.

A. Vocal Technique -- Great actors have a distinctive vocal quality. Actors needed engaged voices rather than the disengaged, neutered voice of TV news actors (or anchors).

1. The voice is the actor's essential instrument in most talking pictures.

2. The actor's challenge to raise speech to an aural art form.

3. The voice is the instrument of verbal action.

4. The characterization has a "voice print" in the mind of the audience.

5. The vocal mechanism is a machine with a motor, vibrator, resonators, and articulators.

a. The motor is the diaphragm, the muscle that powers breathing.

b. The vocal folds (cords) serve as the vibrator, which creates sounds.

c. The chest, throat, mouth and head serve as resonators, which amplify the sounds.

d. The teeth, tongue, lips and soft palate are the articulators, which shape the sounds.

6. The trained voice -

a. must learn to breathe.

b. increase or decrease volume

c. adjust pitch

d. modify rate, inflection, pronunciation and phrasing

e. develop accents, diction and dialect unique to each character

7. Vocal style can become inseparable for a "typed" actor or a character.

a. Humphrey Bogart has a distinct nasal lisp and a lip-curling snarl.

b. Inspector Clouseau's calculated cracked accent turned monkeys into "minkeys" , which he could say but not hear.

c. Kirk Douglas "whines" his voice around an audience in an emotional strangle hold.

B. Physical technique begins and ends in deportment or how an actor carries his or her body. It is really character's physical ego. Great actors have presence a kind of dignity under pressure.

1. The physical tools are:

a. the body trunk

b. the arms, hands, fingers

c. the legs, feet, toes

d. the face, lips, nose and

e. Most importantly THE EYES in film

f. Hair can be changed most easily with wigs.

g. When there are special needs for a close up, the director will on occasion use a "body double" for an actor or actress to get the right effect, the street scenes in the short skirt were "doubled" for Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. There are hand, leg, and hair models -- it is a specialty occupation.

i. In fact, there is a very good little movie called Body Double with Melanie Griffith that uses this technique and the basis of a murder mystery.

j. Character's personality resides in physical attributes and "moves".

i. The way the character smiles.

ii. The way the eyes reflect light.

iii. The walk and lean and stance of the character

iv. The character's degree of physical or muscle tension and tone

v. The directness of the gaze

vi. The tilt of the head and slope of the shoulders and arch of the back all contribute to the feelings of the audience toward that character.

vii. It is the kinetic expression of personality.

a. Walter Matthau's physical geniality

b. George C. Scott's inner strength

c. Anthony Hopkins controlled turmoil.

d. Emma Thompson's forthright vulnerability

2. The art of cinema is to some extent photographing beautiful or unique people. Plain folks have little place in film.

a. The "stars" body is young, lean, muscled and hopefully tall.

b. The overweight, the old, the unattractive are character roles.

c. In film, unlike the theatre, the close-up makes the body parts more important than the whole.

d. In film, the face and eyes dominate. The face must reveal the innermost conflicts and the complex nature of the character.

e. The classic face has:

i. large, expressive eyes

ii. straight nose

iii. full lips

iv. small, flat ears

v. strong chin

vi. long neck

vii. full head of hair

f. The eyes are windows of cinematic personality.

g. Until recently, ethnics were restricted to supporting roles.

3. Screen beauty is part natural and considerable make-up and aging is the cruel fate of all and to be retarded at all cost. The camera loves certain actors. The thin are in! The camera adds about 15 pounds.

4. Sex appeal is an essential ingredient. The audience wants to respond emotionally. Sex appeal is hard to describe, but Mel Gibson and Michelle Phieffer have it what ever it is. Juliette Lewis and Robin Williams do not have it.

5. Movement of the actor is the physical expression of thought or body language and involves:

a. direction - in relation to the camera

b. speed - smaller and slower than on stage

c. length - in terms of time and space

d. strength - direct or resisted

e. fluidity - smoothness and style

f. balance - grace is essential

g. naturalness - it should feel "right"

h. motivation - purposefulness

6. Actors with unique movement styles reflect body attitude.

a. John Wayne's tilted walk to showdowns

b. Orson Welles` murder of Joe Grande in Touch of Evil is played as if the character is a ponderous whale out of water moves of Quinlin and the fluttering fear of Akim Tamiroff make the scene work.

c. Alec Guinness' totter to the explosive device in The Bridge Over the River Kwai

d. Peter O'Toole's effeminate delight with his robes and dagger in Lawrence of Arabia.

e. The wonderful, gentle, "gay" movements of Hank Azaria, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in The Birdcage

f. The marvelous recreation of Chaplin by Robert Downey Jr. in the Richard Attenborough film.

C. Timing is doing the right thing at the right time that gets the right reaction from the audience involved.

1. Co-ordination of body and voice

2. Co-ordination with other actors

3. Co-ordination with technical elements

4. Splendid editing is the actor's new timing technique unique to film acting.

5. Characteristics of timing are:

a. Tempo and pace - comedy is faster

b. The uses of beats (pauses)

c. The cardinal sin is predictability

d. Business before a line is suspenseful

e. Business on a line must add a dimension or be discarded

f. Business after a line is a reaction to the line

g. In the Yiddish theatre, comic business was called "shtick" and this is a term that has stuck. And a comic bit or shtick can be done 3 times. Then a variation on the bit must be used or it is no longer funny.

VI. There are essentially three basic approaches to film acting.

A. The Personality Approach where the power of the "self" of the actor dominates the performance.

1. The actor's medium also impacts on dependence on personality as the core of a performance.

2. Key descriptors: Individually stylized, popular, film & television, theatre

3. Actor’s personalities are not static, but have a "range" that they can play convincingly.

4. The star system was built around the "cult of personality" of:

a. Bette Davis as the tough, vulnerable bitch

b. Henry Fonda as the quintessential American quiet hero

c. Fred Astaire as debonair

d. Parts were "tailored" to the studio's talent pool.

e Actors were typed and to some extent were "trapped" into playing only certain types of roles. They were said to have a limited range.

5. Actors remain recognizable and play types to great advantage

a. The Burt Reynolds type

b. The Clint Eastwood type

c. The Bette Davis type

6. The actor's personality is precious and made wonderful by the excellence the nuances and style of characterization.

B. The Internal Approach finds its creative juices in the thoughts, emotions and feelings discovered in a kind of psychoanalysis of the role.

To some extent it is a psycho physical performance style. Do the voice and the body express the psychological state of the character. The actor exposes the inner recesses of the character.

1. The role is begun within the "psyche" of the part and then built from within. The actor is said to work "inside out".

2. The actor imagines a creative fantasy as to background personality traits.

3. The approach evolved from the work of a Russian actor- director-teacher Constantin Stanislavski and was popularized by Actors' Studio under the aegis of Lee Strasberg.

4. In popular jargon it is called "method" acting from the Stanislavski Method

a. It tends to be an introspective, creative psychoanalysis of character

b. External technique of portrayal is "motivated" from within the "personality of the role"

c. It has had tremendous impact on film acting style

i. Marlon Brando, James Dean and Kim Stanley (older group)

ii. Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman (younger group)

5. The actor tries to move from seeming to becoming to being.

6. To my knowledge there is no such thing as "method comedy".

C. The External Approach is rooted in technique to create a role.

Technique means what the actor does and how she does it. The actor is said to work "outside in".

1. It is planned, specific execution of technique.

2. Whereas, the internal approach is emotionally intellectual, the external style is physically intellectual.

3. Character emerges from the way one looks, dresses, walks, gestures and speaks.

4. It is "business"( physical things the actor does, wears and uses) dependent and we build character out of characteristics.

5. It's recent roots are in the English theatre, classically trained school with Lawrence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Alec Guinness as the most brilliant examples, They are master stylists and technicians, which some American critics maintain is emotionally distanced and technique replaces an emotional bonding with the audience. (Obviously, I disagree strongly with that position.)

D. In reality, most great actors depend on all three approaches at varying degrees. No one way is better; they are indeed complimentary.

1. Film acting is representational art - art that masquerades as reality.

2. Actors are the audience's representatives in the drama.

E. Ensemble acting generates organic wholes in scenes and films where a creative action generates complementary creative reactions leading to a kind of artistic unity. (The Big Chill or The Wild Bunch or Four Weddings And A Funeral))

1. When actors work well together the momentum of a scene increases geometrically rather than arithmetically.

2. Everyone takes on an added dimension.

3. The studio system developed "stock companies"

4. Some directors had a cadre of "types" for supporting roles as well leads.

a. John Ford, recreated the American West and its' heroes with selected actors.

b. Frank Capra -had perhaps the most famous Hollywood Ensemble.

c. Orson Welles brought his Mercury Theatre Group to Hollywood and Citizen Kane is a masterwork of ensemble playing and used the Mercury Theatre of the Air radio training to great vocal effect.

5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest generated that feeling of artistic cohesion.

6. Some acting combinations strike sparks.

a. Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave in Julia

b. Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

c. Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point

d. The Wild Bunch is a superior example of ensemble acting.

VII. The actor must relate to a variety of factors during production.

A. Obviously "other actors" which is the charm of most films.

B. The microphones and cameras must be "played to" and are two additional participants in the staging.

Michael Caine in Acting In Film says,

If your concentration is total and your performance is truthful, you can lean back and the camera will catch you every time; it will never let you fall. It's watching you. It's your friend. It listens to and records everything you do no matter how minutely you do it. if theatre acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser.

C. Action/Events requires actor/athlete/dancer/singer. Although stunt men double in most dangerous scenes, actors need to be in shape to perform. There are also unique physical things great comic actors do like Steve Martin in All Of Me.

D. Because of conditions on the set concentration is essential.

E. Animals/Things require actors as cowboys to ride and rope and shoot. Clint Eastwood's relationship with "Clyde" the chimp makes the

Every Which Way But Loose series work. Then there is James Cromwell and his acting with the 43 piglets in Babe.

F. Special Effects are big box office and the actor must make the unreal and unavailable look alive. Star Wars is here to stay. Jurassic Park audiences needed the actors projecting that they believed the dinosaurs were real and they were in danger.

VIII. There are other ways of describing actors based on the performances they give.

A. Character actors try to develop a variety of characters through variation of techniques used in performances. The audience is asked to accept and respond to the same actor playing a new character.

1. Today who are Robert Duvall or Robert DeNiro or Dustin Hoffman or John Hurt going to play. Audiences allow these actors to be many different characters.

2. Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Holly Hunter and Anna Pacquin were all cast against type in The Piano and it worked wonderfully.

3. The audience allows the actor and the image to blur and refocus.

B. The Star System was based on the physical potency of the performer, who was not necessarily a great actor but carried great screen presence with her from role to role.

1. It is often referred to as aesthetic weight and has an aura that the audience accepts wholeheartedly and is not very accepting of variations in roles (Christian Slater and John Travolta did action good guy / bad guy, which is a departure for them, in John Woo’s Broken Arrow .)

2. Roles can be distorted to fit the actor in the movies, rather following the traditional French definition of a "comedian" as an actor who can adapt her style to play many if not all roles.

3. The personality of the star is part fact, part myth, part mystery, and part publicity (the public image).

4. Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds may not have great range as classical actors do, but the have great screen presence. They have specific screen identities that audiences love.

5. Movie stars have face, mannerisms and an aura. Their "name" is their persona. They become locked in types of roles or even specific characters in the audience’s mind.

6. The actor / person becomes the character in our minds.

7. And the camera loves them as they are, therefore they are "typed".

8. Breaking out of being typed requires a special role at the right time in their career,. Jane Fonda was a starlet until she had the chance to make They Shoot Horses Don't They (then Klute and Julia).

C. Physical acting really involves a kind of physical "beauty" or style that is in vogue at a specific time, and is greatly dependent on a very specific "look", such as Clara Bow and Theda Bara or Bo Derek and Raquel Welch or Marlon Brando and James Dean or Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.

D. The Natural Actor is the person the casting director finds off the street (at Schwab's Drug Store) the discovery, the real people in neo- realist films. They do exist in real life. They like ballplayers are called "naturals". Models are now moving into acting. And Andie MacDowell and Michelle Phieffer have been successful.

1. They are, in reality, specialty roles that reflect a lifetime of experience. John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn

2. Life glows in their face, their posture, and their eyes. Their vitality and pathos are real. They are like children, without artifice or pretense. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lechter

3. Anna Pacquin won an Oscar for "being" the little girl in The Piano. Her previous acting experience had been as a "bunny rabbit" in a school play. She was a natural in the role.

4. However, the moment actors become self-conscious or begin "to act", they fail. It is their naturalness in the role that makes for the moment. Little Barry was wonderful in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as was Drew Barrymore in E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.

5. They "live" the human condition. The shock of discovering the real Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game was the audience’s shock. We become the Stephen Rae character and he visualized our reaction.

IX. Film Acting vs. Stage Performance

A. Film is representational (more real): the stage is presentational (more abstract)

B. Film audiences are close and "dead", stage audiences are away and "live" - they react, laugh, cry and applaud.

C. The stage actor has a rational order of performance, the film actor's scenes are shot out of order.

D. Stage actors enjoy considerable rehearsal, the film actor has little or none. Most rehearsals on the set are for the technicians rather than the actors.

E. The director's attention is focused on the actor on stage, but diffused in film.

F. Disruptions unthinkable on stage are commonplace on the set.

G. The theatre actor is consistently active, the film actor goes through long periods of inactivity.

H. When a scene is played on stage the other actors are there - in film not necessarily. The screen actor has to hold the emotional moment of the scene and deliver the goods to a blank wall if need be.

I. The screen actor has less help from atmosphere.

J. The film actor creates pieces of a performance, the editor makes the whole piece of cloth.

K. Scenes in film are staged for hardware rather than actors.

L. Scenes can be reshot in film.

M. The stage actor controls the audience’s eyes and ears but the technicians do it in film.

N. In films the actor commits to a character the first day of shooting, but to some extent changes can be made after the show opens in theatre.

O. The stage performance is bigger, reactive to audiences, and more symbolic. Film depends on the inner resources of the actor, the technology and the editing.

P. In essence, film acting is smaller than stage acting but in reality more intense because of the smallness, because it connotes a more realistic presentation of the emotions involved in the characterization. It is amazing how powerful the smallness of screen performances can be.

Q. In film acting - less is more.