Why I teach Acting for the Camera

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People often ask me about teaching acting for camera. They often mistakenly ask me what technique or approach I use.

If anyone ever comes to you and says they have a technique they have developed for working in front of the camera run far, far away from them and don’t listen.

They are selling you snake oil.

There is no magic, no secret pill that will make you better in front of the camera other than being a good actor.

Yes, it’s true you have to adjust things for working in recorded media be it in film, television, commercials, or new media. You need knowledge about sets, the language, the people, how things are shot and the workflow. But there is no replacement for good acting.

There are only two things I am concerned with when working with students, Truth and No Truth; and I call the camera The Great Barometer of Truth.

When the camera is recording there is no place to hide, you are either in the moment being spontaneous and truthful or you are schmacting. Believe me there is nothing worse than watching yourself schmact. When it’s on a big screen in a movie theatre, it’s humiliating.

99% of working in front of the camera is being comfortable and confident there. Feeling like you are free to do your job and god forbid, be an artist.

Most students of acting spend years on stage and back stage, in acting classes and in scene studies where the focus is about being on stage. You spend years working on your voice and speech to be clear, heard, and resonant. Think of how many plays or musicals a student actor has been in or been involved with and compare it to how many live sets the same student actor has been on. See the discrepancy?

I remember my first time working on set as an actor. It was disorienting. I felt stupid. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and much of what was going on around me was foreign and strange (even though I was more prepared than most). I never want a single student to feel as dumb and useless as I felt that day. I think back to early jobs and say, “Oh, my gosh! If only I could have felt like I was free enough on set to act.”

That’s my job, that’s my technique, and that’s my point of view as an educator. To remove that fear, and make sure you have the knowledge and the skills to feel confident and competent so that way, when you hear the word, “Action,” you can actually be free to act, be creative, and be brilliant.

What’s wild is that as actor’s we have a limitless amount of accessibility towards watching recorded media from network television, to cable, to the Internet, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, and Vimeo; programs are all around us. As actors we can watch all of the work on-camera that we want, but we get little experience doing it, whereas with theatre, most of us, once we get the bug, have spent more time in front of an audience on stage than being in the audience. Weird huh?

What’s even weirder is when one thinks about how much money one earns in front of the camera versus being on stage. The salary discrepancy is disgustingly large between the two. How strange is it then, that so many programs put their entire emphasis on theatre and make the camera the after thought?

Not that I am saying that we should stop training for the stage. On the contrary it is essential to the development of an actor. The roles, stepping out on stage night after night, the language, the sheer skill involved is amazing, but to ignore the camera as a performer seems like a terrible idea. It seems like an injustice and since we are solidly in the digital age, where web series can be shot on an iphone for very little money – I know it is time to rethink the tools we are sending our students out into the world with.

Big 'Ol Sensual Pussycat

I had a realization today as I was teaching. Of course it wasn’t a new realization, it was one I’ve had many times before, the only thing that’s different today is that I’m writing about it and articulating my thoughts.

I am repeatedly stunned and amazed at how disconnected this generation of young actors are from their bodies.

I have to be clear and forthcoming in saying that I believe everything is connected (acting, movement, and voice) and that most things start with the body.

This point was driven home to me today in Meisner class. (At UAlbany I am teaching a section of Acting Two, which is Mesiner based.)

Two very lovely young people were working on a scene (yes, it’s final scene time) where they are playing two lovers who have never consummated their relationship. They are in relationships with other people, one of them is very religious and here they are, after three years of sneaking around, finally in a hotel room ready to consummate their affair.

The two lovely actors were like robots. They were in the scene, but behaving like an Amish couple in church.

They didn’t touch each other the whole time.

They also were on a bed they refused to use.

I love beds on stage. I kneel on them, lay on them, roll around on them, and hang off the edge of them. They are my favorite set piece/prop.

These two actors were talking heads of repression.

So I cleared them of the bed and proceeded to roll around on it. I had the actress feed me her lines while he stood beside the bed. I asked the male actor if I could touch him, he consented and then I held his hand. He held mine. Then I asked if I could put my head on his chest, he said yes and he did a speech with my head on his chest. He opened up. The speech lit up. He went places and connected in a way he hadn’t before.

I turned to the class and asked,  “Was there anything we did that was sexual in any way?”

The class, “No.”

“What was it then?”

Silence mixed with looks of confusion on their faces.

“It was sensual.”

I could see light bulbs going off and realizations happening.

“Sensuality and sexuality are two different things. While it certainly helps if they go hand in hand they are not mutually exclusive. Being sensual means being tactile and connected to one’s partner and environment. It means being present in a larger way and being open. It means following impulses and being in your body.”

As I looked around the room at them, I felt sorry for them.

For the most part (and this is a gross generalization) they are a generation that is afraid to touch. Where everything can be construed as something else, everything can be misinterpreted. They are a generation  where everything is litigious and they fear being uncomfortable and they are detached from their bodies. They are a generation of file complaints and ask for it to be easier rather than problem solve and invent. They are a generation where empathy has been replaced by the tweet and they live a life connected to their devices instead of to each other.

So what am I going to do about it? I’m going to give them more assignments in their journals where they have to connect. (And yes I have them do their journals digitally online.)

I’m going to force them to interact with each other and with art. (They had very mixed responses when I had them go to the free art museum on campus and respond to a piece of art that “struck them.”)

In Acting One (which I teach every semester), I am going to do more old school improvisation work and force them to interact physically. I’m going to make sure that every warm-up forces them to be PHYSICAL and IN CONTACT with each other.

We will see how this experiment pans out. At UAlbany we don’t have movement or voice classes. In the show I directed I did voice warm-ups with them. I’m also teaching Acting Three which is in essence a movement class since it is the outside-in, physical theatre class.

But these students don’t have the opportunity to roll around on the floor like a pepper grinder, tumble, paint the wall with their voices, or roll around on the floor with each other like big ‘ol sensual pussycats.

Perhaps in Acting One I will do a round of open scenes where I will set criteria such as, you have to touch each other at three different points in the opens scene in some fashion. We will see if it will make a difference. All I can do is keep chugging along and help them anyway I can.

I frequently say to me students, "It is the artists job to illuminate the humanity of life." I'm going to start following that line up with, "So let's go light up the sky."