Easy Step Into Acting: Create Your Actor Emotion Card

1. Welcome to Class - Introduction: I know how hard it can be to start pursuing your acting career and how challenging it might be, especially if you haven't done before and have absolutely no prior experience. I want to help explore yourself in the most interesting way possible. Find the acting tal within you and truly have fun while doing so. Hey, everyone. My name is Ib Gini, and I'm a professional movie and theater actor with experience in more than 25 short films, some of which have gained international awards and recognition. Over the last seven years, I have performed in numerous theatrical shows, TV commercials, voice over programs, YouTube productions, and more. I studied at Loco Flahon Private Drama School in Paris, the Moscow film school in Russia, and online Hollywood Acting School, which has offices in both California and Russia. I also have a YouTube channel called Ivgens Heartbeat, where I create inspirational videos, short films, music videos, and personal los about my life in Chile, where I now live as a content creator. But this course is not about me. It's about you, first and foremost, and how you can easily take your very first step into acting. Whether you are an aspiring actor, someone who just wants to try something new, related to the art of acting or a professional actor, looking to challenge yourself to see how precisely you can showcase specific emotions and sharpen your acting skills in that direction. By the end of this course, you will learn how to create your very own first actor emotion card, which will be available part of your future or current portfolio if you already have one. Not only will you gain knowledge, but you will also experience to some extent, the current limits of your acting talent. The range of emotions you can portray on camera and how you can practically apply this knowledge in real life scenarios. Together, we will discover what makes actors so special and different from everyone else, what unique characteristics every actor should have, how to captivate audiences, what the will of emotion is and how we can benefit from it in our profession and much more. If this is the first acting course you are taking, I promise to do my best to help you embark on this journey easily and smoothly. Having fun while discovering your creative potential and playing along the way. To complete this course, you won't need anything other than the computer or device you're watching this video on right now and the camera to make a photo collage of your emotions, which will serve as your acting emotion card. Your smartphone will work just fine. This course is packed with insights and fun. Thank you so much for trusting me to be your teacher. I'm sure we'll have a fantastic time together. Now get yourself ready, and let's start the course. 2. Class Project Overview: Emotion Card: The goal of this class is to create an actor's emotion card. You can find examples of what it should look like in the projects and resources section. You will need to make a collage of your most varied acting emotions in a three by three, four by four or five by five format. But don't worry. All the information you need to prepare for your project will be provided in each video lesson presented here. And in fact, to complete the project, you can just watch the video lessons without looking at anything else. Everything will be explained in detail, so you won't miss a thing, I promise you. Starting from the next lesson, we will begin to study the psychological concept of emotion step by step and explore the practical aspects of its application in acting. In video lesson number eight, I will explain in detail what your homework will entail, how to technically complete it, and I will demonstrate how I will do this project myself. This way, you will have no doubts and will be equipped with all the necessary knowledge and tools to complete the assignment. This course is primarily designed for beginners and is structured so that you can enjoy both the theoretical part and the practical component of the course to the flest. The project can be done at different levels of complexity. So this course will be interesting for you if you are already an established professional actor. I hope you are ready. Let's get started. In the next lesson, we will dive into an amazing story about actors, emotions, and the lie detector. 3. Emotions and a Lie Detector: In this lesson, I want to tell you a very interesting story. This is a real case, and it happened once in the United States. A fascinating experiment was conducted. Two groups of people, each consisting of 12 individuals were selected. The first group consisted of professional actors, while the second group consisted of ordinary people. Each person was given one seemingly simple task to do anything possible to make the lie detector go wild. What does that mean? You might ask? It means making the polygraph literally go crazy, drawing a coyote graph on paper with the highest possible amplitude. The question is, how can this even be achieved? By starting to feel nervous, by experiencing fear, panic, trembling to the point of goose bumps, breaking out in the cold sweat, plunging into intense stress, driving yourself into the hysterical laughter on the verge of madness, feeling horror, deadly hatred, fierce envy. Use your imagination. I believe there are 1,001 ways, if not more, to make a lie detector go really wild. Take action. Before you move on to the next lesson, take just two or 3 minutes to think about how this fascinating experiment with the lie detector turned out. Consider how many people from the group of professional actors actually managed to make the lie detector go really wild and how many people from the group of ordinary people managed to achieve the same result. You will learn the results of this experiment in the next lesson, and you'll see whether you guessed correctly and how close you were to the actual answer. 4. What Makes Actors So Special: So I hope you thought carefully and completed this menta experiment about who managed to make the lie detector go wild. Here are results from the first group consisting exclusively of professional actors, almost all of them succeeded. Ten out of 12 people, which is approximately 83%. But from the group of ordinary people, only two out of 12 managed to do it, which is about 16%. So what conclusion can we draw from this? Clearly, a professional actor is significantly different from an ordinary person, and of course, the reverse is also true. So who is a professional actor then? It's definitely someone who can control and amplify their emotions. Someone who can flare up, explode, sink into depression, burst into wild laughter, and do all of this at any moment at the snap of a finger. Of course, any of us can experience strong and intense emotions and feelings sometimes if heaven forbid, someone close to you ends the earthly journey tomorrow, you will feel incredible grief. If this year, you get accepted into Harvard University for a program you've dreamed of your whole life and even on a scholarship. Your joy and happiness will be boundless. If tonight, your friend tells you a ridiculously funny joke, you might laugh so hard, you follow your chair. Now, ask yourself this question. Can you convincingly imitate all of the above? Can you sitting alone in a gray room evoke such deep, intense and varied emotions whenever necessary, only by snapping your fingers and using only your imagination. Take action. Now, think about yourself. Recall your own experiences and analyze them in your mind. Do you think you could make the lie detector go wild? Could you produce genuine emotions while being alone in a gray room with nothing but a camera in front of you? What do you personal experiences and feelings and life suggest? Also, consider this. What does the professional actor look like? And how do they behave in real life? What are they like? And how can you identify them in the crowd? Take two, 3 minutes to reflect on these questions before moving on to the next lesson. 5. Who Is a Professional Actor?: So what does a professional actor look like? From my personal experience, I can tell you that, of course, there are days when we are absolutely exhausted. For example, after a long night shoot somewhere in the cold or after endless daily thea rehearsals and performances. There are days when we are completely drained, wanting to do nothing, just lying somewhere on the floor with our empty eyes and just feeling like squeezed lemons from sheer exhaustion and lack of sleep. That way, we're just like everyone else. But in everyday life, when everything is going normally, an actor is always on the move. There is always something happening. Music starts playing somewhere, they begin dancing. And meeting with the friends at the table at Summer house, they burst in as if entering a stage, doing a cartwheel or somersault, and instantly lifting everyone's spirits, getting everyone pumped up. Remember the shaking up of the lie detector? They never speak in their regular voice because they're just too boring. Instead, they'll start speaking in a dramatic voice, imitating or parodying someone. They joke a lot and entertain everyone, and sometimes it's even hard to tell if they're being serious or just messing around. An actor is someone who walks into a cafe. And even though they haven't done anything special yet, everyone is already turning their heads, admiring and whispering about them. That's because an actor exudes an incredible level of energy, a sense of confidence, drive, and the feeling that something really exciting is definitely about to happen. An actor is like a little tornado bursting into the lives of ordinary people, raising their spirits, and filling them with positive energy. An actor is the embodiment of freedom and the thrill of life itself. Take action. Now, think about this. Are you a kind of person I just described? Do you live your life as that abstract actor above 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Are you always on the move? Or do you only allow yourself to open up occasionally? Or maybe you don't express feelings and emotions at all. Always staying focused, serious, and stern. Take a minute or two to think about these questions before moving on to the next lesson. 6. How to Make Stadiums Rock: I want you to remember something. An actor is a real hurricane. It's a ma genius that gives away far more energy throughout life than they ever receive. If you've ever performed in front of a small audience of 12 people or maybe at the concert hall of 200 people or maybe a few thousand people, or perhaps you have performed once at the stadium filled with 20,000 people. The cherished dream. Whatever the case, you know and feel how much energy you give and how much you receive, right? Now, please pay attention. If you are performing in a tiny hall of 12 people, you have to give more energy than all those 12 people combined. If you are performing in a concert hall of 200 people, you have to give more energy than all those 200 people combined. If you are at a concert in front of several thousand people, your energy must exceed all of their combined. Are you ready now? Even just thinking about this feels terrifying. Even now, as I'm about to say these words. When performing in front of a stadium of 20,000 people, you alone must have more energy than all those 20,000 people combined and must be more powerful because you are the one setting the tone. You are the one charging the audience with energy, not the other way around. Only when you can give more energy than an entire stadium full of people, will you be invited to perform at the stadium? It doesn't work like this that one day by some lucky chance or coincidence, you find yourself at a real stadium, filled with real people, and you say to yourself, Well, now I'm going to show them the level. Now show them the class. Now I'll rock this place and get everyone hyped and actually manage to do it. It doesn't work that way, and you'll never make it to the stadium with that mindset. A stadium is not a place for learning. It's essentially a place that recognizes your achievements and the vast experience you've already gained. So how do you get to the stadium? Very simple. First, you learn to shake up a small hole and give more energy than 12 people. And then, like in a video game, you give energy and shake up a hole of 200 people, then a couple thousand, then 20,000. And then one morning, your manager calls you and says, you've been offered to fire up a stadium of 70,000 people. And you absolutely calmly and fully aware that you can genuinely do it, say to them, No problem. What date you were playing for the performance? Just like that. You know that you can give more energy than 100,000 people. And you have been invited to an event where there will be only 70,000. That's like 30% less than what you can actually give in real life. As you can imagine, achieving this is incredibly difficult. How many times have there been events even among acquaintances, many of whom have stage experience. And yet, no one can genuinely energize, even a group of ten familiar people. That's how hard it is in real life. Takeaway. So what conclusion can we draw from this lesson that you need to constantly learn, grow, build up your energy, become bigger, stronger, cooler, more powerful, and be capable of rocking entire stadiums. If you've learned how to do all this, you don't have to worry about how to make it to the stadium, because the world itself will feel that you're ready, and before you know it, that cherished stadium will find you on its own, so go for it. 7. Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions: The well known American psychologist Robert Pluchk came up with a so called Wheel of emotions. He took the eight most basic emotions and arranged them in pairs of opposite poles. Here they are anger and fear Anticipation and surprise, joy, and sadness, trust, and disgust. Bluchek's theory states that these emotions can either soften or intensify becoming more nuanced or more intense. If we look at this diagram, we see that the brightest, strongest and most pronounced forms of emotions are located in the center. As we move away from the center toward the periphery, the emotions smooth out and become softer. Take, for example, the emotion of anger. Is brightest and most expressed form is rage, while its softer form is annoyance. The emotion of joy, its most intense form is ecstasy, while its softer form is serenity. Emotions placed directly opposite each other are complete opposites. If we look at the central circle where the most intense emotions are represented, we see that, for instance, grief opposes ecstasy. Admiration opposes loathing and rage opposes terror. Interestingly, you might think, how can rage and terror be opposites? Aren't they similar by nature? Actually, no. And if you carefully analyze the entire wheel of emotions, you will understand that there is no mistake here. If we take the outermost circle at the periphery, we will also see that the emotions at opposite posts are fundamentally opposite to each other. Pensiveness opposes serenity. Hanoians opposes apprehension, and boredom opposes acceptance. Another interesting aspect is that the closer emotions are to each other on a diagram, the more they have in common. At the junction of two emotions, located next to each other, we get new combined variants of feelings and emotions. At the intersection of surprise and fear, we get awe, anger and disgust together produce contempt. This is especially clear in their extreme forms, rage plus loathing. What is that, if not the perfect formula for feeling contempt? Ecstasy and admiration give us love. Now, you probably have a question in your head. Why do actors need to know the psychological theory of emotions, and what benefit can it provide beyond general knowledge and simple interest in such an unusual topic. This knowledge gives us an understanding that the number of emotions a person can experience is limited. It's finite. You might think you can portray thousands of shades of your emotional palette on stage. But as you can see, we actually have only eight basic emotions and a series of additional shades, either softer or more strongly expressed. Pluchik's Wheel of emotions gives us an idea of what our range can be when it comes to performing on stage or in a film. It helps us understand our limitations and see where we can aim to improve. The closer the emotions are to the center, the brighter and therefore more obvious and vivid they are making them easier to play. The further the emotions are from the center, the more subtle they become, and that's where true acting mastery is required to play them convincingly. Acceptance and serenity are many times harder to portray than admiration and ecstasy. But by understanding that both of these pairs are forms of trust and joy, we see where the roots lie. My advice if you want to portray a softer form of a particular emotion, move from the center to the periphery, starting from the brightest form of the emotion and gradually lowering the intensity. That way, you might be able to capture all the necessary shades to successfully tackle this challenging task. For example, terror gradually flowing into fear, and then into apprehension or grief gradually transforming into sadness and then into pensiveness. Take action. Study Bluek's wheel of emotions carefully. Look at how the emotions are arranged in relation to each other and what connections exist between them. Consider in your mind what you think would be easy for you to portray. And what would be incredibly difficult. In the next lesson, we will begin working on a homework assignment for this course, a project called the Actors Emotion Card. I promise it will be both fun and incredibly difficult at the same time. Let's see how your expectations of what you can portray match the realities of what you will capture on camera. See you in the next lesson. 8. Homework Project: Actor Emotion Card: Alright, everyone, our project is called the Actors Emotion Card. You've probably seen such cards on the Internet before, so you can imagine what we're about to do. Take your phone or camera and mount on a tripod. Then stand in front of the neutral background, black or white, for example, you can even do this on a welded day against a neutral colored wall. Honestly, the background doesn't matter. What matters are your emotions and how seriously you approach this assignment. For good lighting, you can stand near a window so that sunlight falls on you at about a 45 degree angle. If you want a more professional look, you can buy a soft light like the one I'm using now. There are plenty of YouTube videos explaining what kind of lighting to use for a home studio. You can check them out, but that's not essential right now. Your task. Perform several different emotions, express them, and capture them on camera. It's that simple. Your project should be a collage of the following sizes. Three by three for complete beginners with no experience, four by four for experienced actors or even five by five. If you already feel like a virtuoso and want to push your limits and challenge yourself for real, creating a five by five collage will be difficult even for professional actors. Usually, four by four collage is more than enough. There are no rules here. Choose nine, 16 or 25 emotions depending on the collage size you're making and play those emotions the way you see them. That's it. For inspiration, you can check out attached example files in the project and resources section or look for similar materials online. Once you've taken all the photos, upload them to any photo editing software and create the necessary collage. Now, I'm going to show you an example of how I personally would do this assignment. I'm going to make my own actor motion card, which I'm going to share with you in the next video lesson, and you also will be able to find it in the project and resources section of this course. So let's say I want to make a four by four collage. I wrote down 16 emotions on a piece of paper, and I advise you to do the same, so you would remember what emotions exactly you want to portray on camera. In that way, you won't forget anything. You can randomly choose emotions from Pluek's will in any order, or you can choose a specific path and explore various degrees of one particular line of emotions, starting from its most intense expression. For example, in this order, terror, fear, apprehension. Of course, you can do it in reverse. Apprehension, fear, terror. There are no strict rules here. Alternatively, you can go around the wheel exploring similar emotions and feeling the differences and common traits. For example, in this order, grief, amazement, terror. Remember, the closer an emotion is to the center of chick's wheel, the more vivid and easier it is to play. It's not always the case, but most of the time, it is. The further it is from the center and closer to the periphery, the softer and softer the emotion becomes, making it harder to accurately capture on camera. So let's say I'm going to start exploring the emotion of fear and its various degrees. I want to start with its most intense form, which is sir I set up my camera. Can see it. It's already here, and I play these emotions the way I see it fit. So terror. Done. Now I'm going to play the emotion of fear. Done. And now I'm going to play the more subtle emotion of fear, which is apprehension. Great. I recommend doing several takes for each emotion and choosing the best version for your final collage. If you want, you can even try to act out all the emotions from Bluchek's wheel. I know that sounds crazy, but if you do it, you will be really exploring your own acting nature so profoundly and you will start to feel understand and really see what emotions are easy for you to play and what emotions are really hard to portray, and you struggle with them even after 20 takes in a row. And then you can upload this big collage as a homework project for the scores. If you want to do it, I promise you, it will be worth it. Now, something very important. Never label the emotions on your final collage. You should strive for each of your emotions to be so clear that any passerby could immediately say, Here I see apprehension. And here I see anger and so on. Acting is about precision. We should strive for each of our emotions to be clear and recognizable by absolutely anyone. The audience will be your judge. It doesn't matter what we personally think. What truly matters is what other people actually see in us. Remember that. Once you've shown your photo collage to some of your friends, acquaintances, or relatives, this can be one, two, or three people. Upload your emotion card to my project in the project and resources section. Now, after publishing your collage, leave a comment mentioning how many emotions your friends were able to guess correctly. So you can write your name in the comment section and write something like six out of nine emotions were guessed correctly. I also encourage everyone to try guessing the emotions on other people's projects in this course. For example, if you want to guess someone's emotions, you can command like this. From left to right, first row one, this emotion, two this emotion, three, this emotion. Second row, four, this emotion, five, this emotion, six, this emotion. So on. The project's author can then tell you in a comment section which emotions you guessed correctly, which you didn't, and which were the emotions they intended to portray in the first place. This is an optional task at your discretion. The most important thing is to create your emotion card. So I wish you the best of luck, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 9. Benefits of Emotion Card for Actors: Alright, friends, if you're watching this lesson, I assume you have already made your own emotion card. For some reason, you haven't done this yet, I urge you to immediately please stop watching this video. Make your own emotion card, and only then please come back here. I want to tell you that I also put in the effort and made my own emotion card, and here it is. You can check it out. I tried to give my very best as much as I could at this point. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing your work, and I will try to comment and provide feedback on each of your projects. I'm sure you're all doing great. Now, attention. What do we actually do with our emotion card? Here's the surprise. We never show it to anyone from the professional film industry. Yeah, you haven't misheard that. We actually never sent our actor emotion card to casting directors or filmmakers. This is because serious casting directors are very skeptical about actors' emotion card. They see it as unprofessionalism and amateurism at best and probably childishness and even clowning at worst. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I can't even hear the question in your head now. Why is that? Well, if any of my professional actor colleagues are watching this video now, guys, I'm sure you will absolutely 100% agree with what I'm about to say. There is a huge difference between playing a real role, maintaining your character's arc and genuinely existing for a long period within a complex, dramatic scene. And just briefly exaggerating or forcing out some caricature emotion for a split second to capture it on camera. There is a huge difference between turning on some expression for just a split second and truly leaving your role for a 90 minute theater performance from beginning to end without breaking character even for a moment. An emotion card gives a casting director no guarantee that the emotions you captured for a split second in a photo can be actually sustained over a longer period, let alone in a way that's interesting for the audience to watch. Now, you might ask, why did we do this, then? Well, because this master class is an invaluable training exercise meant for your own acting self development. For beginners, it's an excellent opportunity to get in touch with the craft of acting in an easy, interesting, and engaging way. You choose an emotion, you portray, then you take a photo. And then you look at yourself from the outside and evaluate. Hmm. That's not quite what I wanted, actually. I wanted to portray something different. Let me do another take or let me do another five takes until I get the greater precision. This process, analyzing yourself from the outside is priceless for you as a creative individual, which an actor truly is. Here you have many elements of real acting work, and these elements are being revealed to you. The same kind of work which you will face in the future onset, I promise you, in real acting life, whether in theater or cinema, you step onto the stage or enter the frame, you do something, you try, then you look back, analyze, and understand. Okay, this part was good, but that part wasn't all. I need to fix this and that right away. And so take After T Rehearsal after rehearsal. A real acting work is a journey of constant self improvement and the attempt to do everything better each time than before. By making your emotion card, you performed a simplified version of the real work that actors do on a daily basis. I highly doubt that you irresponsibly captured each emotion on the first take and uploaded the collage to the course without even reviewing it. Most likely, you retook each emotion multiple times, making many attempts, realizing that sometimes you weren't precise enough and wanted to improve. You felt your acting potential, the limits and edges of your current abilities. And you also saw where and what you should strive for. You've gained invaluable experience in such a short period of time. You did a fantastic job. I'm so proud of you. The work you've done is unique, and now you understand its true meaning. 10. Final Words. Continue Your Journey: My dear friends, unfortunately, our course has come to an end. This was a wonderful master class that I prepared over a long time, and I am so glad that I managed to share this priceless knowledge with you from the bottom of my heart. You can post your entire emotion card or just part of it on Instagram or other social media, if you like. But please do not send it to your potential agents, casting directors, productors or directors unless they specifically ask you if you have something like that. If you have a YouTube channel, this master class will greatly help you in the art of photographing yourself for your video of thumbnails. On YouTube, you often need to portray a vivid and engaging emotion or action on the thumbnail to attract viewers, so they want to click on your video. In my life, I've had three castings, I believe, where I was asked to send photos displaying specific emotions or even the entire emotion card. And once, I was even asked during a live audition to perform bright and vivid emotions, gradually intensifying them 0-10, each time delivering the same line with different intentions and different objectives towards my scene partner. That was probably one of the most challenging auditions in my life. But I was ready for it. Behoy part, I want to tell you that we actors do not actually play emotions and feelings on stage or in film. Emotions and feelings are merely natural byproducts of us as actors, setting a clear goal for the scene and striving to achieve that goal at any cost through various methods which typically grow in complexity within the dramatic progression. Also, I hope to release more new acting classes here on a Skillshare platform. I hope you enjoy taking this course, discovered and learned many new and exciting things, and are now ready to continue growing and striving to conquer the whole world. Everything is in your hands. Guys, I want to tell you something. I am really believe in you. And if I manage somehow to ignite even a spark of that actor's passion within you that has always been there, then I'm so truly happy. Thank you so much for your time. This was a wonderful experience. My name is Yevgeni. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope to see you again very soon. Thank you.