Transcripts
1. INTRODUCTION VIDEO: Acting Technique - Part 1: Hello. My name is
Martina Vogadri. I'm an acting coach
and an actress with broad experience both
in film and television. As an actress, I've worked for big Netflix productions such as Feature Film Lift and
for many Indie titles, both in the UK and in Itsaly. As a coach, I'm passionate
about helping actors at all levels of their careers
from beginners to experience, bring authenticity and truth
to their performances. In acting technique Part one, the foundations of
truthful acting will focus on building a solid foundation for
your acting journey. You will learn how to break down scripts into
actionable intentions. We'll step into character work straightaway and you
will learn how to identify and start wearing the character's point of
view about the world. You will also learn how to deepen your personal
investment and personal connection to
your work and to create compelling authentic
performances from the get go. This class is packed
with exercises and demonstrations to help
you start strong. Whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your craft, this is where truthful
acting begins. Let's get started.
2. Lesson 0 - WHAT DO YOU NEED TO GET STARTED?: What do you need to get started? I'd like you to download
your workbook and to read the two brief scripts that you got together
with the course, Boston employee and Care, as I will be using them to
talk through and demonstrate concepts and principles
throughout our lessons together. Boston employee is a script that was written for
training purposes, and care is a scene that
comes from a film that I produced and shot here in London with my
production company. So feel free to download them and have them in front
of you at all times. You may need a pen or a
pencil and a notebook, but if you're not taking
notes kind of student, that's perfectly fine, since these lessons are
now yours forever, and you'll be able to
play them over and over again however many times
you want and need. Okay, end of requirements, bring your attention and
openness and we're ready to go.
3. Lesson 1 - I HAVE A SCRIPT IN MY HANDS: WHAT DO I DO?: Before we even
venture into talking about technique and
script analysis, I want to address the
most immediate question or concern that you may have. You have a script in your hands. Maybe you just picked one
because you wanted to read it, or maybe this is
an audition piece. Now what? Well, you
have to read it, right? That's a given. But how
do you go about it? Should you be trying
to already make some sort of choices or try
to connect with it somehow? What's the starting point? Well, the starting point is just read it and
get a feel for it. Don't try to interpret,
decipher anything yet. Just read it and
have a feel for it, the same as you would do
in a new circumstance or in a new environment. You would enter that
space, hopefully without preconceived notions
or judgments of sort, and you'd see what it looks
like, and most importantly, what it feels like before you would even start a
process of, let's say, conscious understanding of that space and how
you can move in it, who are the people
that you should make friends with and so forth, you'd allow yourself and
your body to experience it. Characters are people with their circumstances
and with their lives, just like us, but
they are not us. And as such, we need to be
able to see them for who they are instead of trying to make them into a
version of ourselves. So what should you not do? Well, this is a very common
and human temptation. You might have experienced it. Actors at the beginning
of their careers tend to read scripts
not objectively. They try to resonate and
connect with the characters. They try to, let's say, see themselves in a
specific character. And although some of this
could be useful down the line, trying to see yourself in
a character straightaway as you read a script for
the first time in a sort of panic to understand
them would be the same thing as looking at the people walking
down the street, desperately trying to see
yourself in them instead of allowing them
to be themselves and observe and understand that. Try not to look for
yourself in the script, but rather strive to observe
characters objectively, as you would observe people in the world going
about their lives. This will serve your
work a lot better.
4. Lesson 2 - IS SCRIPT ANALYSIS IMPORTANT?: In the previous
lesson, we've seen the best immediate approach
to a script. So what's next? Some approaches may
suggest that you start improvising with
the words in order to begin feeling
the character or that analyzing a script
is not that important. Well, I completely disagree. Script analysis is not only
important, it's crucial. Like my teacher Fabeck always
used to say and still says, it is in the script analysis that you start building
your performance. What is so important to
understand and this will help you see the value
of script analysis is that analysis
doesn't need to be an exhausting
philosophical process that remains in your head. Analyzing a script on the contrary means learning how to read a set
of instructions, the script, and decoding translating them into
something very actionable. This is not too
different from you buying a wardrobe at Ikea, for instance, and
then being faced with the instruction
manual to build it. You'd better read
that manual right, or you're likely going to
build a Frankenstein, right? Following this analogy,
you can also see that when you building
skills, in our case, analysis of the script and actioning of it
become very good, then you will be able to
read the manual a lot quicker and maybe even
jump some of the steps. But hear me out here. A
little patience will get you very far and will make you a much better actor.
So don't rush. Another note on script analysis
is that it allows you to make very specific choices
and to be confident in them. This is great not only for creating your character
and your performances, but also fundamental when you're receiving note from a director
or during an audition. It may sound counterintuitive
at the beginning, and you may think that if you leave your choices
open and fuzzy, you'll be able to
take directions better and that you
will be more nimble. But the truth is that
without solid choices, you will be completely thrown around by any
direction you receive, and you will easily get
lost and in your head, which is definitely where you do not want to be as an actor. You also might not be able to replicate your performance
without having made solid choices or to keep behavioral and
emotional continuity onset. Your clear decisions born during the analysis process will
build a strong ground for you, and contrary to
making you rigid, they will give you an anchor
and a starting point to take any direction without getting lost and
most importantly, without ending up falling
back on yourself. One important observation here. When I will discuss analysis
in the next lessons, I will mostly refer to script
analysis for the screen. Plays and screenplays are
actually written differently. They are constructed
differently. Generally speaking,
we can say that the central element of a
play is dialogue, words. A screenplay, on the other hand, is built around action and emotional numances. The
reason why is this. We can say that the stage
is the means of the actor. On stage, the actor
and the words are central because this is all
you really have on stage, and all that is
conveyed visually in a film must be conveyed
through words, through dialogue on stage. This obviously also
has repercussions on the acting technique
as acting for stage requires vocal projection, a performative aspect
that asks for the actor to use their body and voice
in a non everyday manner. Screen, on the other hand, is the means of the director, and the actor at the service
of the director's vision needs to be super flexible
and totally believable. Because so much of the story is taken care in a
film by the visuals and the sound and all the other technical and artistic elements
that make up a film. When it comes to
the actors work, the attention is more focused on actions and
emotional nuances, on the emotional journey, which normally is conveyed in a much more contained and realistic way by
the screen actor. Obviously there are exceptions
like with everything, especially when it comes to
experimental filmmaking, for instance, certain
genres and styles, certain types of contemporary
theater, as well. But we'll focus here on the most likely and
common scenarios, since they are the ones that
you find yourselves in the most and therefore are going to be the most
useful for you. So yes, just keep in mind
that the script analysis in this course is mostly
applicable to your screen work.
5. Lesson 3 - WHO IS THIS PERSON: THE CHARACTER’S POINT OF VIEW ABOUT THE WORLD: Now that we've established where script analysis is important, and now that we've
read the script and allowed it to make
an impression on us, we want to ask some questions. Question number one, what
type of scene is this? Is this a breakup, an
interrogation, a seduction? This is a general question
that is going to help you understand the ground you're
moving on with the scene, and that is going to clarify the roles of the
characters in the scene. If the writer wants to explore a certain theme or circumstance
in a scene as actors, it's very useful to be able to understand it as it's going to help us with choices we will make in
building our character. Question number two,
who is this person? What's their point of
view about the world? Now, you may be familiar with
this very elegant concept, the character's point of
view about the world or POV about the world that
comes from Mason's work. I feel it's a very
elegant concept because it's what we start
with and what we end with. It's what carries literally
the entire active work. So, what is the character's
PV about the world? The character's PV
about the world is their frame of reference, the lenses through
which a character sees the world and
interacts with it. We could say it's their
identity, their core. I'll give you some examples of character's POV to
clarify the concept. Okay. This is a woman
who's had enough. This is a man who
thinks that the world is his playground. This is a woman who
wants to eat the world. This is a man who's got
a lid on his heart. Now, if you sit for a second
with these sentences, which always start with this
is a man, woman person, who and then get completed with the core of the
character we're considering, you all feel quite
clearly that they speak of some
fundamental truth of a certain individual and
that they speak both to your head but most
importantly to your body. They immediately
invite behaviors and a certain emotional ground
specific to the character. They are not mere concepts. And this is very important because character is embodiment. Being someone else means knowing what it feels like
to be someone else, not thinking about them, but knowing what it
feels like to be them. Sure, character is many things. A character is a universe, but what is the core, the fundamental truth
of this character, out of which
everything else stems. What's the sun of this
universe, so to speak, with all the other aspects
relating to it and moving around it like the
planets in the solar system? Now, close your eyes for a
moment and ask yourself, if I was to see myself
as a character, what would my POV
about the world be? This is a very
interesting question for us actors because
it allows us to get a slightly more
objective idea of our own character and
its characteristics. And this allows us
to see how close or distant we may be from the character
that we're working on. It's also very important to
realize that to some extent, we are characters ourselves. Who we are is not set in stone. We are who we are because of the life circumstances that we've been through
up until this point. If you had a different family, you were born in a
different country, had different life experiences, you would be a different person. And this is great news for
us because it means that there is an element to who we are that is quite accidental. And therefore, we weren't born with it, so
we can shift it. We can move it, and we can
really become someone else, really get to experience
life as a different person. So we can really act truthfully. Not saying that this is easy, but I'm saying that
this is possible. I personally love the concept of the character's Pervi above the world because it's
encompassing concept. If, for instance, I
needed to act you. So you were my
assigned character, and I could literally
swap my point of view, my core with yours. Then I wouldn't
need anything else. I would be you. Pretty cool, right? And this is the task
of our journey, getting you to a
point where you can take on a character's POV about the world for real and act
pretty much with that alone. In order to get to this
point of expertise, though, you really have to train your emotional and behavioral
instrument and get rid of all the resistances
that would prevent you from
becoming other than you. Super important note. In order to start working with a POV, you don't need to get
it right straightaway. Consider rather like
working hypothesis, very similarly to conducting
a scientific experiment, and then you go about
disproving your hypothesis, and you adjust it
in the process. Let's imagine that you're
focusing on one character, the one that you need to prepare for your audition, for instance. Ask yourself, who
is this person? What is the core of
this individual? This is a man who, a woman, who, a person, who, a
girl, who? What? From what you've
read, what kind of personality traits do
they seem to have? What are the predominant
emotions that they display? Once you've explored this a bit, come up with a POV that sums up all the exploration
that you've done. Remember, we formulate the
character's POV in this way. This is a woman who, this is a man who, this is a person who, and then we complete the
sentence with what you think and feel is the
core of this person. So this sentence is what we call the character's point
of view about the world. For now, this working
hypothesis that we've come up with will lead our exploration like a lighthouse
in the distance. And chances are that you
will begin to feel it working and sinking in your
mind and your body already, taking you towards the
character steadily as you learn all the other tools that I'm about to
take you through.
6. Lesson 3A - PRACTICE SESSION: Find the POV and EXERCISE IT: Here's our script,
Boston employee. Hopefully, by now, you've read this scene one time or more. If you haven't, please pause the video and read it.
It's just very short. Now, first of all, what
type of scene is this? How would you define
it? Ask yourself, what is the main
thing going on here? We could say, for instance, that this is a
negotiation, right? Now, I'd like you to come up with a character's
POV about the world. You can choose one to focus
on that's perfectly fine, either Chris or Los,
whichever you want. Stop the video and
try to come up with it. Do you have it? Remember, try to keep the phrasing of the
POV quite short. It doesn't need to be a thesis, but rather a concept that
speaks to your mind, but most importantly
to your body. If you make the process
too intellectual, the POV is not
really going to help you because it will remain stuck in your head and
it won't be able to reach the body,
which is what we need. Sit with a POV for
a few seconds or a few minutes if you need
to the POV you've found, let it sink into your body. Now, go through the
scene and practice your lines with that POV
mind and in your body. Okay, I will give
you the lines here, leaving enough space for you to reply so you can use this to
practice your point of view. Obviously, if you
find an acting pal that wants to do this
with you, even better. And next up anyway, is a little demonstration
that I prepared for you. So if you're feeling uncertain, please go ahead and
watch it to get some ideas before you do this
exercise on point of view. I hope it will inspire you and further clarify the work
on the point of view. Come in. Is that very good? Nice work. Can I help
you with something? Ah. I see. Well, I'm pretty
sure we decided we'd visit the subject once the Clarence project
was completed. Is it? I'm holding the
first draft of it. Hope. It's great work. Okay. Thank you. Yes. I wanted to talk to you
about the raise we discussed in my last
performance review. Yes, we discussed I would
visit the subject in January, and, well, It is January. Well, it is completed.
You're holding it. Okay. Are there any corrections? Well, then the project
is completed, no. But
7. Lesson 3B - PRACTICE SESSION: POV DEMONSTRATION: So normally you'd have enough
information in a script to help you decide what is
the character's POV, or you would be
given a character breakdown in an audition, for example, that
helps you define it. This is not really open to any interpretation as the writer has taken a long time and great care to create
a specific character, and our task as actors is
to embody that character. The script that
we're using, though, has been left quite open. There isn't a lot
of context that suggests definitively a
direction that we should take. And this is on purpose so I can demonstrate the power
of point of view and how choosing different POVs radically shift to performance. Come in. Is that very good? Nice work. Thank you. Can I help you with something? Yes. I wanted to talk to you about the raise we discussed in my last
performance review. Ah. Yes, we discussed how we would visit the subject in January, and, well, it's January. I see. Well, I'm pretty sure
we decided we'd, um, visit the subject once the Clarence project was completed. Well, it is completed. Is it? You're holding it. I'm holding the
first draft of it. Okay. Are there any corrections? Hope. It's great work. So the project is
completed, then, no? Is very good. Nice work. Thank you. Can I help you with something? Yes. I wanted to talk
to you about the raise. We discussed Silas
performance review. Oh. Yes. We discussed I would
visit the subject in January, and, well, it is January. Let's see. Well, it is completed. You're holding it. Okay. Are there any corrections? No. Great one. Well, then the project
is completed, no. Come in. Oh, uh, these are
very good. Nice work. Thank you. Can I help you with
something? Ls. I wanted to talk to you about the raise we discussed in
my last performance review. Oh. Yes, we discussed how we would visit the
subject in January. Well, it's January. I see. Um, I'm pretty sure we we decided we'd visit the subject once the Clarence
project was completed. Well, it is completed. Is it? You're holding it. I'm holding the first
draft of it. Okay. Are there any corrections? Um, nope. It's
great. Great work. So the product is
completed, then? Come in. This is a very good mess up. Thank you. Can I help
you or something? Yes. Um, I wanted to talk to you about the race we discussed in my last
performance review. Oh, yes. We discussed how it visit
subject in January, and W is January. See I'm pretty sure we decided weekly that the subject monster clans project was completed. It's completed. Is it? You're holding it. I'm holding
the first round of it. Okay. Are there any corrections? No, it's great work. So then the project is completed, no? Okay, did you see
how much the choice of a different point of view
shifted my performance? It's the same script, right, but two very
different characters. So this shows you quite
clearly that text is nothing without a precise choice on who person delivering it is. Now it's your turn. Play around with point of view and have fun.
8. Lesson 4 - INTENTIONS: So now that we know what type of scene we're working
on and we have our working hypothesis on the character's POV
about the world, it's time to dig
into the analysis and to start building
up performances. You probably already feel like your body's wanting to go in a specific direction
following the POV, and this is fantastic. It means that your
body is already activated and is ready to take part into this game,
as well as your mind. Now, many approaches
and techniques, and you may be
familiar with this, begin with asking the actor to find the characters objective in the scene and maybe even
the super objective in the script or in the play. At times, this can be useful, but in other circumstances, it can be a little bit misleading and it may even
flatten your performance. A character's objective in a scene speaks to us
about their desire, about what they want
in that circumstance. And although we often
do want things, we are, and so are the characters a lot
more complex than that. Think, for instance,
about your life. How many times have you
decided that you wanted something and gone
and got it directly? Maybe a few, but how many
times have you wanted something and maybe
you have done something totally inconsistent
with achieving it. Maybe you have self sabotaged. Maybe you have found excuses. Maybe you had valid
reasons not to, or maybe you have
pursued that thing just in a very indirect
and roundabout way. Another issue with
insisting too much on the objective is that you may feel the emotional
connection to it, and as a consequence,
you may not pay enough attention to
how the character goes about to get
what they want. And here is a very important
truth about character. A character is what
a character does. If you and I want the
same thing, for instance, we'd go about getting it in very different ways because
we are different characters, which is to say, we would
take different steps, we would do different things. We would act, react, and feel differently in similar circumstances because we are
different characters. So, you see, it's not enough to connect with a
character's desire. What's most important
is to be able to act, react, feel like they
do moment by moment. You surely can work on the complexity of a
character through objectives and obstacles and tools you may already
be familiar with. And if that works for you, this is great. Keep using them. But I'd like here to
suggest different approach, an alternative that is
derived by Meisner's work, and that has been developed further by my teacher Fay Beck, through her
neuroscientific studies which show how we actually work, how our brains actually
work, and therefore, how the characters who are
people just like us, work. Suspend for a second
the temptation to find a solid direction in the
scene through the want, the objective, and immerse
yourself in the scene. We already have a hypothesis about who this character is
through the point of view. Let's now see what it
is that they are doing moment by moment
and what it is that they are feeling moment
by moment in the scene. We want to find the
characters intentions and how they feel
moment by moment. But what is an intention? This is quite self explanatory. An intention is what a
character intends to do often to another character
in a specific moment, which has an effect on
the other character. Intentions are very
important because words themselves can mean
many different things. And as humans, we often use language to conceal what is
really going on with us. But it's the intention behind
the piece of dialogue that determines the truth of what
is happening in the moment. So if you find the
right intention, you will be able to
say those words and mean do feel exactly what
the character means, does, and feels in that moment. For instance, I could say to
you that everything's okay. And my intention in that
situation could be that of hiding my pain. Do
you get what I mean? If you are acting, everything's
okay at face value for what the words actually
and factually mean, you'd miss the entire truth of that moment and possibly
of the entire scene. A intention always has
a behavioral component, the actual action that
you see the character do. For instance, a character
may be attacking or reaching out or diminishing or
showing off and so forth. And then there is the
emotional component. How does the character
feel in the moment? A character may be attacking
because they're afraid, or they may be attacking because they're disgusted
by what they see. Someone may be reaching out because they're concerned about you or they may be reaching out because
they're desperate, or they could be reaching
out because they're excited. You can make the
emotional part of an intention part of
how you describe it. For instance, you can
say that in this moment, a character is
excitedly reaching out, or carefully testing or lovingly
suggesting and so forth. The more specific you are
with naming your intention, the easier it will be for your body and not just for
your head to take it on. If the character is reaching out, how are they reaching out? Are they carefully reaching out? Are they suspiciously
reaching out? Are they demandingly
reaching out? Are they desperately
reaching out? What we want to do
here is to make sure that especially
at the beginning, we get really, really
meticulous about finding intentions line
by line in a script. Find out what the
character is doing, what their intention is
in a certain moment, and how they feel and come up with a very specific
intention that gives you a clear behavioral and
emotional direction for a specific moment
and a specific line. This process may feel a
little long at the beginning. I hear you, but
it's essential to build the structure of
the scene and to make sure that you do and feel
what the character is doing and feeling and not what
comes natural to you. Once you have practiced the
unfolding of the intentions, they will sink into your
body and your body will know where it needs to go without you having to think about it. Once again, making
sure that you have clarity in your choices
is going to allow you to let go and to be totally present in
the moment without being confused about what is happening next or how
you're supposed to behave. Specificity does not constrain
you. It makes you free. Finally, you can check back
with your POV hypothesis. Do the choices that
you have made on your intentions align with
the POV you had come up with? Do you need to rethink it, or do you need to rethink
any of the intentions? Remember, actions,
reactions, and emotions stem directly
from who the character is. With intentions, we are basically reverse engineering
what would naturally happen if you were working directly and fully from
the character's POV. A good way to help you visualize the process as a whole is this. Think of the POV as your
ideal fitness shape, and think about intentions as the weights that you need to lift in the gym to get there. At the beginning, even
small weights seem a lot. But as your shape gets better, you will fly through them, and you get closer and closer
to being able to work from the unifying elegant concept that is the character's
POV about the world. As you get stronger
and more flexible, less weight lifting
will be needed.
9. Lesson 4A - _ PRACTICE SESSION: SCRIPT BREAKDOWN, FINDING INTENTIONS: Let's dedicate this class to applying what
we've learned so far. Let's have a look at our
scene, boss and employee, and let's decide
that we will work here with the most obvious
POVs for these characters. Chris, this is a woman who
wants to keep the status quo, and Los, this is a woman who wants to climb the
corporate ladder. She's ready to do whatever
it takes to get there. So here I'm going to treat Chris and Los as
female characters, but this is just
for my convenience in demonstrating things to you. Please feel free to pick the character that you
want to explore to work on with no gender or
age restrictions whatsoever. This is a script that was
written for training purposes, and so you can use it
very flexibly and freely. Let's try and find some
intentions together. Of course, I'll give
you some options here, but this doesn't mean that they are the only right options. You might have different ideas or disagree on some of these, and that's perfectly fine. Test your favorite
ones and see what you think works best and is more in line with the
character in the scene. Okay, first line, come in. You see, Chris's
first line come in is a great case of how we could
miss what is going on here. We can surely say that
she's letting her in, but we could make a more
interesting choice, which is in line
with the fact that Chris wants to maintain
the status quo, and that she's
probably disturbed, bothered by the
knock at the door. We could say, for instance, that she's annoyedly or
reluctantly letting her in. If Chris was a
different character, like in the other POV, we tried in the
previous class on POV, which was a woman who
wants to appear generous, he or she would
probably be warming, inviting her in as
opposed to annoyingly or annoyedly or reluctantly
letting her in. You see, if we make this
intention specific, we know immediately what she's doing and how she
feels about it. Let's keep reading.
These are very good. Nice work. We could say here that Chris, we said doesn't want
things to change, is probably doing the opposite
of what the words suggest. I say that here Chris is
dismissing, cutting short. She doesn't want
this conversation. She doesn't want to get into it. She doesn't want lows around. Now we're with Ls. Thank you. Again, this is a case of a very short sentence
that, however, can reveal quite a lot about the character if
we play it correctly. If Los is someone
who wants to climb the corporate ladder
and is ready to do what it takes to
get what she wants, we can see that this intention, the intention for
this thank you, could be something
like expectantly waiting for more rather than
actually thanking Chris. As a result, as you can see, Chris asks, can I help
you with something? And the intention here is
something like what you want. We could say, again,
reluctantly opening the conversation since Los
is not leaving the office. Las says, yes. This
is just a yes, but for the sake
of the exercise, we could say that she's
taking her space. This is something
like game on for Las. Los proceeds to sit down. I wanted to talk to
you about the raise we discussed in my last
performance review. We could say that here, she's eagerly opening
the conversation. Chris. Oh, here Chris
is taken aback. She didn't expect this. Las continues. Yes, we
discussed how we would visit the subject in January
and well, it's January. We could say that here,
Las is cornering Chris, but she's not doing it yet in
an aggressive or overt way. So to convey this, we could say that she's
delicately cornering Chris, and this is a very
interesting intention to try. And Chris, I see.
She's acknowledging, realizing what the situation is, and we could say that she
feels pressured by it. Then I'm pretty sure
we decided we'd visit the subject once the Clarence project was completed. Here, Chris, you can see she's counterattacking by
undermining Laws. Las? Well it's completed. She's standing her ground here. Chris, is it?
Challenging, again, with a diminishing flavor. Las, you're holding it. Las is stating the obvious here, but once again, kind of standing her ground.
She's not letting go. Chris, I'm holding the
first draft of it. Chris here is complacently
correcting Las. Los. Okay, she's taking this on. Los, are there any corrections? I think it could be interesting
if here for a moment, Los pretended she has accepted Chris's point
of view argument. So this intention could
be something like humbly asking or
pretending to ask humbly. As we know from what
happens right after this, that she's not genuine. She's not really
humble about it. But she's playing the game.
Chris, nope, it's great work. Chris is ending the
conversation here. She's had enough. Los. So the project is
completed, then, no. Check mate. Los is striking here with satisfaction as she
knows that she's one. As I said before, you may be
making different choices, and this is totally fine. Please play with it. This exercise of
finding intentions may also help
clarify some points in the scene that
may have felt a little cloudy when you
were running through it, practicing point of
view in Lesson three.
10. LESSON 5 - HOW TO PRACTICE INTENTIONS: Now that you have all your
intentions mapped out, you may need some help
with understanding how to practice them and
how to say the words, making sure that you carry the right intention and
that you don't fall back on saying the words just in line with what
they mean literally. Some of these
actions, behaviors, and relative emotions attached, make them easier
than others to you. That's completely normal. We
all start from ourselves. So if you're a shy
person, for instance, and have to act someone
very confident or arrogant, that will be quite
tricky for you at first, as it will require you to move quite a bit outside
of your comfort zone. With intentions, the first
very important thing to understand is that they need to speak to your body and not remain
stuck in your head. Sometimes we do understand
what the character is doing, but the body doesn't
quite know how to match that information,
if you know what I mean. I give you a pretty
straightforward example from the script we're
working on Boston employee. We said that the
first line, come in, Chris is annoyedly or
reluctantly letting laws in. Maybe your body understands
this action with its emotional component
straightaway, and that's great. But let's say that
you understand this intention, what it means, but it remains a little
bit stuck in your head and your body doesn't seem
to follow as easily. But there is something very
useful that you can do here, which is called
personalizing the intention. What this means is
literally rephrasing, rewording it so that it speaks to your body and not
just to your head. For instance, we have this clear intention with
its emotional component, which is reluctantly
letting her in. How can we personalize rephrase this so that it makes your
body spring into action? You know that you have an
intention right when it's your body that springs into
action, not your head. We could say something like,
I guess, I have to do this. And this, I guess, encapsulates the reluctance, the resistance in
letting laws in. And it may speak to your
body more directly. Try it. How does it feel? I guess I'll have to do this. Let's try with the next one, which is dismissing,
cutting short. We could reword this as, in a way that your
body understands, something like I don't
have time for this. I don't have time for this. Do you understand?
Only personalize, though, if it's necessary. If your body understands
the intention straightaway, there is no need of rewording
and complicating your life. Now, it's important that when
you practice intentions, you really go for it, both
behaviorally and emotionally. Otherwise, you just sing words, and this is not going to help you sing things from
your head to your body. Remember, this is
what the character is doing and feeling. When you feel that you've got a good handle on
your intention after you've repeated it a few times and it has
sunk into your body, say the line keeping
that intention. I'll give you some
examples. We said that in the first line come in, Chris is reluctantly
letting laws in. And we reworded it as I
guess I'll have to do this. So I will say my
intention a few times and really connect with it
behaviorally and emotionally, and then I will say the line
carrying the intention. I guess I'll have
to do this. I guess I'll have to do this. I
guess I'll have to do this. Come in. Again, I guess
I'll have to do this. I guess I'll have to
do this. Come in. Do you see? I carried my
intention through in the line. So I did not go back to what
the words actually mean. Literally, factually, I used the intention and I put
the words on top of it. I carried the intention, I guess I'll have to
do this, in the line. If my body understood
reluctantly letting her in straight away, I
could have used that. I'll show you. I'm reluctant
to letting her in. I'm reluctant to letting her in. Come in. Again, I'm
reluctantly letting her in. I'm reluctantly letting her in. Come in. See? My body understands reluctantly letting her in the
reluctance element. And so I wouldn't necessarily
need to rephrase it. So just check if
your body already understands before rephrasing,
rewording anything. Let's try with the second line. These are very good, nice work. If we go for this
missing cutting short, we said that we
could reword this as I have no time for this. I have no time for
this. Let's try. I have no time for this. I have no time for this.
These are very good. Nice work. I have
no time for this. These are very good. Nice work. I could do the same thing using the original intention
without the wording, which is, I'm cutting it short. I'm cutting it
short. I'm cutting it short. These are very good. Thank you. These are
very good. Great work. I'm cutting it short. These
are very good. Great work. Cutting is short,
right? I didn't necessarily need to
personalize this, so only do it if it's necessary. If we decided to go for the
other option for this line, which is pretending to care, the wording could be
unpretendT is amazing. I'm pretending this is amazing. I'm pretending this is amazing. Very good. These are
very good. Nice work. I'm pretending this is
amazing. These are very good. Nice work. I'm pretending
this is amazing. I'm pretending this is amazing. These are very good. Nice work. I'm pretending this is amazing. These are very good. Nice work. Do you see here, maybe the rewording can help
a little bit my delivery, because it's a slightly
more complex doing. There's the pretending element here that maybe is not
as straightforward. Do you see, the way you
choose these intentions really shapes the scene
and the character. So practice them and see
what works best for you. I'll also give you an example
with an intention that has a stronger emotional charge to kind of drive the point home. Let's say that the
character is aggressively attacking and you don't
quite know how to get there. A good way to personalize
this could be something like, I'm gonna smash your face. Do you see the body may not understand
aggressively attacking, but straightaway
understands this rewording. So it may feel a little
bit confronting, but you don't have to reveal your
personalization to anyone. The important thing is that they make the action come from your body and that they
work for you and you can deliver them both
behaviorally and emotionally. An important note, if you do decide to personalize
the intention, make sure that you don't transform the intention
into something else. Keep in check your rewording, just to make sure that it
doesn't take you somewhere else to something that
is not quite the action, not quite what the
character is doing, but maybe what you're
comfortable doing. So please use personalizing
with caution and always check back on the
original intention to see if you veered
away from it.
11. LESSON 6 - PERSONAL INVESTMENT: THE TALKING OUT EXERCISE: Sometimes you may find it
a little hard to connect emotionally to some intentions
or to a scene in general. At the beginning, it's quite normal that you'll
be able to bring more personal investment to certain scenes and
less to others. And this is because
you're still very close to yourself and not so used to getting outside of
your comfort zone and outside of the boundaries
of your own identity. If you find yourself struggling with personal
investment in a scene, you can try this
simple exercise. It's very powerful. You know
what type of scene this is? This is the first question
we asked. Remember? Now, let's say that this
is a breakup scene where we see a couple that
has finally come to the realization that
this is the end. If you've seen a marriage story with Scarlett Johansen
and Adam Driver, this is a very famous and
great example of that. We'll learn more about
emotional connection when we talk later about
emotional preparation. But for now, this is what you can do to tackle
such a scene. Ask yourself, given
that this is a breakup, for instance, what is
my character here for? Are they here to end this? Are they here to beg
for forgiveness? Don't get mistaken.
This is not like finding an objective or
a want in the scene. I want you to keep this
way looser than that. I simply want you to ask yourself what your
character is here for, and then try to talk it
out in your own words. Let's say that you
understand that your character is
here to beg for forgiveness because they've done something very, very bad. Tok this out and allow yourself to fall into
this emotionally. You may start by
saying something like, I'm so sorry. I
really messed up. I'm so, so sorry. I don't know what I
would do without you. I need you. I need you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. And keep going and try and back those words up progressively with the emotion behind them. Use your own words, and you can repeat the same words over and over again until you feel that connection beginning
to happen within you. This way, you can create
the emotional ground for most of the intentions that you have found in such a scene. You don't need to do this. If you truly commit
to your intentions, so in other words, to what the character is doing and feeling in any given moment, you will see that the
personal investment is embedded in the intentions. But if you get stuck
or if you feel that you need to go a little
bit deeper emotionally, you can definitely
use this exercise.
Martina Avogadri
