You Can Act on Camera

  “D. W. Brown is one of the most insightful and best acting teachers around.”

  —MEG LIEBERMAN, Emmy Award–winning casting director

  “D. W. Brown guided me and how to work with actors. I’ve incorporated the basic premise he works under and he gave me a lot of tips.”

  —SAM RAIMI, director, Spider-Man

  “Working with D. W. Brown is the most important thing I have done for my career.”

  —SHARON CASE, Emmy Award–winning actress, Young and The Restless

  “As one of the premiere teachers in Hollywood on the craft of acting, D. W. Brown teaches how to be great and what it takes in this business to be successful. No one knows acting or teaches it better than D. W. Brown!”

  —DAVID ROGERS, Emmy Award–winning director/editor, Seinfeld, The Office

  “Over the 30 years or so I’ve been producing, the Joanne Baron/D. W. Brown Studio has etched a place of renown for the skills they teach and care most about—performance. This has to be an exceptional book by an exceptional person.”

  —DOUG CLAYBOURNE, producer, Fast and The Furious, North Country, The Mask of Zorro

  “Even if you’re not an actor, but a writer or director or AD, this book gives you insight into the actor’s perspective and psychology. It will help you communicate with actors as well as re-approach your own craft from a new perspective.”

  —CHAD GERVICH, writer/producer: After Lately, Cupcake Wars; author: How to Manage Your Agent; Small Screen, Big Picture

  “I remember feeling a sense of security from D. W. He provided an atmosphere within which the insecure novice actor could safely strive, explore, and even fail.”

  —ROBIN WRIGHT, actress, Forest Gump, House Of Cards

  Insider Tips for Delivering

  A Great Performance Every Time

  YOU CAN ACT

  ON

  CAMERA

  D. W. BROWN

  Published by Michael Wiese Productions

  12400 Ventura Blvd. #1111

  Studio City, CA 91604

  (818) 379-8799, (818) 986-3408 (Fax)

  mw@mwp.com

  www.mwp.com

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover design by Johnny Ink. johnnyink.com

  Interior design by Debbie Berne

  Copyediting by David Wright

  Copyright © 2016 D. W. Brown

  This book was set in Garamond Premiere Pro and Whitney.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, D. W., 1956-

  You can act on camera : insider tips for delivering a great performance every time / D. W. Brown.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-61593-233-7

  1. Motion picture acting. 2. Television acting. I. Title.

  PN1995.9.A26B97 2015

  791.4502’8—dc23

  2015015516

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The 32 Principles of Acting on Camera

  “On The Day”: An Essay on Getting Your Best Performance Recorded

  The Interviews

  Peter Bogdanovich

  Catherine Hardwicke

  Jon Gries

  Michael Rymer

  William Mapother

  Peter Macnicol

  Gregg Champion

  Mimi Leder

  Peter Cornwell

  Martha Coolidge

  Jerry Zucker

  Rob Cohen

  John Patrick Shanley

  An Actor’s Manifesto

  Charisma Revealed

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  No matter the medium, good acting is good acting, and the difference between what’s good for the stage and preferable for a camera is a matter of nuance. If your style of acting is naturalistic, engaging your emotional belief in a scene’s circumstances and maintaining uncertainty for how it will unfold, the difference is often little more than the theater’s requirement of vocal projection and the occasional “cheat” to be seen. Still, an actor and a camera do have a special relationship and the conditions designed for recording a performance have their own unique challenges.

  This book will address that nuance and those challenges. It lays out thirty-two key principles for the creation of an effective performance on camera and offers advice on how to surmount the particular obstacles associated with attempting to rise to the occasion on a set. Also included are interviews with very smart professionals who offer insights and practical advice on getting your best work captured.

  I advocate here, as in my first book, You Can Act: A Complete Guide for Actors, an internal style of acting (associated with Stanislavski) that urges an artist to live through their performance, as opposed to an external approach whose primary concern is to demonstrate behaviors for the benefit of the audience. (You can see the extreme of the external style in silent films.) The internal approach is, by far, the prevailing style for current film and television work, but this is not to say that I believe an actor should be limited to portrayals straight from their own personalities or cut themselves off from the many wonderful non-naturalistic presentations possible. I only encourage that the horse to be kept in front of the cart with a prevailing spirit of emotional truthfulness and a tilt toward subtlety.

  When acting first appeared on film it was called a new art and generated a theory that these works induced in their audiences something of the experience of a dream. It makes sense. The reason you can watch a character climbing a mountain in one moment and then instantly cut to them taking a bath in the next without becoming alarmingly disoriented is because you experience the same sort thing of every night. In this way, an actor acting on camera does well to consider themselves participants in these dreams and therefore can enter into this world of intimacy and rawness as naturally as a second home.

  Good acting is good acting. It’s the joy in playing pretend, the passion to inspire, and the discipline to serve material consistently and successfully. Whether it’s performed for the eyes of hundreds or the single lens of the camera, the actor’s calling is to find their way into another open heart.

  THE 32 PRINCIPLES OF ACTING ON CAMERA

  1.GET YOUR LINES COLD

  The single most important act of preparation for your role is to get your lines down cold. You’ll think you know them and then on a chaotic set with the pressure and the two new things you’re supposed to do . . . nope, they start slipping away. Don’t memorize inflections, but know your words by rote so perfectly you could rattle them off while falling down stairs.

  “Be conscious where you should be conscious, so you can be unconscious where you should be unconscious.” —T. S. Eliot

  2.TIGHTEN EVERYTHING

  Everything being recorded that could be used in the final product should be kept clipping along and free of dead spots. When an event happens, react and speak as you’re taking it in. Rarely pause while speaking. Engage and compress.

  “If you take any activity and push it as far as it will go, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.” —Tom Robbins

  3.DON’T SAY MUCH

  React and drive your basic Actions, but don’t explain or make points or address yourself to people’s intellects. Attempts to communicate information from your brain to their brain will thin the voice and create facial tension that gets magnified in the close-up. Let the information take care of itself. In every screenwriting class the point is made to “show, don’t tell
,” and, with this in mind, accept that the information you render is of very low value.

  “Be not a slave of words.” —Thomas Carlyle

  4.FIND YOUR ROLE AND BE THAT A LOT

  Everyone involved in a production has a job and you have yours. The story is trying to be something and you must put your desires in line with helping it be that thing. It may want you to create tension or it may want you to create peace. It always wants the situation of the lead to be clearer.

  “Are you willing to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life?” —Henry van Dyke

  5.MATCH AS MATCH CAN

  Your best work from one portion of a take can be cut together with the best portion from another take and played as one continuum provided those two takes have no jarring physical differences or differences in points of escalation or quietude. It is therefore to your advantage (and the filmmakers who will appreciate you) to maintain a consistency for these things from take to take. Reinvest in the values, but put that cup down at the same place each time you run the scene.

  To be conscientious about this while acting will in no way diminish your imaginative involvement (it may even improve it), but do not be a slave to continuity. The truth of the moment must always and absolutely dictate your behavior.

  “Do what you have to do, so you can do what you want to do.” —Denzel Washington

  6.STAY FRESH

  The key element in most work on camera is to appear as if real events are taking place for the first time. Whether big things or small things, the audience wants to have the sense they’re watching something unique in the history of the universe, like each moment of actual life. We don’t want the feeling that you’re ahead of what’s unfolding in any way.

  Whatever it is you have to do (or not do) to give that impression, do that.

  “To understand is almost the opposite of existing.” —George Poulet

  7.ACT SMALLER THAN THE SIZE OF THE SHOT

  Calibrate your animation and volume to the framing. Ask the Director of Photography where you’re framed and notice where the boom mic is being placed, then gesture and speak at a volume minimized to well under that.

  “Speak your truth quietly and clearly.” —Max Ehrmann

  8.BE IT, DON’T SELL IT

  Walk your walk, and win through the weight of what you’re about, not your chatter. Vibe the other characters, as if communicating telepathically. Convey what is essential through a relaxed sharing of your life force. Happy about it or not, they get you.

  “All paths lead to the same goal, to communicate to others what we really are.” —Pablo Neruda

  9.LOOK THEM IN THE EYE AND TELL THE TRUTH

  Seek to have steady looks and a consistent, fluid channel to express the essence of your Action.

  Typically you want to look into the eye of the off-camera person that is closest to the lens, and not flit glances, as you would normally, to their other eye and down to their mouth. You also don’t want to look as much as you might normally at the other people in the scene who you’re not talking with at that moment. Avoid checking in with how those secondary characters are receiving what’s going on, unless, of course, they’ve just gotten big news.

  “Let there be truth between us two forevermore.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  10.PUT IN RESTING MOMENTS

  To move and speak at the same time is an important admonition to actors, but when working for the camera, it’s good to have a sense for where an editor might want to cut. For instance, when you enter a room or a car, pause before speaking so that they can cut to the other characters registering your arrival.

  When someone opposite you finishes speaking, take your time to get a full charge of response energy (even if it would be odd to do so in normal conversation), so you can then let it all pour out in a fast stream. They can always cut out the flat spot before you speak. You don’t want to overlap dialogue when only one person is in the frame.

  “Use time: go smoothly through its spaces to the center of opportunity.” —Baltasar Gracián

  11.HAVE SOMETHING PHYSICAL GOING ON

  Don’t let the unreality of the set prevent you from conducting yourself as a human being. Interact with the physical world. Get very handy with a prop, an aspect of costume or jewelry, and enter the scene dealing with it as would be logical. Continue to manage or even toy with it during the scene (if it isn’t distracting).

  When drinking, eating, dressing, or engaged in any of these types of normal life behaviors, don’t allow yourself to think about them. Just go on automatic and let your body do as it’s done thousands of times before.

  “Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.” —Somerset Maugham

  12.DEVELOP THE CHARACTER IN YOUR BODY, RELEASE IT THROUGH YOUR EYES

  All the analysis you do is for the purpose of finding a way to embody a character: Do they live in your forehead, your chest, or your low belly? Do they resemble a specific animal? Your character wants contact with the world.

  “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” —Mary Oliver

  13.SPEAK AS FAST AS YOU CAN, ACT AS SLOWLY AS YOU CAN

  Rip quickly through your dialogue. Tend to speak as fast as it’s possible to speak while still using your vocalization to affect the heart of the other character.

  “Let go of this everywhere and this something, in exchange for this nowhere and nothing.” —The Cloud of Unknowing

  14.ALWAYS BE ASSIMILATING

  You might have been rewarded for appearing totally on top of it in life, but we hate people like that on camera. Even characters up for every challenge shouldn’t be too sure of anything. Your best stuff is going to be when, whether saying lines or not, you’re in the process of intensely trying to digest a singular truth.

  Nobody cares if you understand, believe, or know what to make of a situation, only how horrified, awestruck, or otherwise occupied in seeking your deepest feelings about it you are.

  “We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.” —Marcel Proust

  15.POUR IT ALL INTO A SMALL SPACE

  When acting on camera you want to project a narrowing focus. Feel free to offer up different planes of your face and respond to everything, but concentrate the energy of your will on an almost impossibly small spot, usually at the impossibly central spot (not a physical place) of the person you’re addressing.

  “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” —Henry Miller

  16.ROUGH IT

  Keep your performance unfinished and mussy. No matter how much rehearsal you’ve had, don’t let your performance get too polished, clean, or wrapped up with a bow. Beware knowing what you’re doing.

  “The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.” —Henry James

  17.BE PROFESSIONAL

  Keep your agreements and be neither noticeably present nor noticeably absent from the set. Use discipline when not acting, so you can be wild when you are acting.

  “Combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.” —John Gielgud

  18.KEEP A SECRET

  When playing romance or other deeply intimate relationships, you want to create the sense of a shared secret (the intensity of the secret is the intensity of the relationship), but it’s also good to have personal secrets known only to yourself. Create complications with the other characters. Entertain the possibility you could reveal the truth of this secret at any moment and set off a bomb.

  “Let Mystery have its place in yo
u.” —Henri Amiel

  19.TALK SOFTLY

  Watching a recorded fiction creates a magical world where intimacy among the characters becomes a given. This means it’s nearly impossible to be too quiet when acting on camera. You can fail through a lack a connection to your stomach and poor follow-through, but as long as those things are present you can speak at a level barely audible, much quieter than you ever would in life (even to a crowd at a distance!), and it will be acceptable and wonderful.

  “When two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids.” —The I Ching

  20.ONLY MOVE YOUR MOUTH

  Often in extreme close-ups, and some wider shots of high intensity, you may be served by assuming a condition such that your entire body is totally unmoving (not frozen) except for your mouth. Nothing about you should animate except the basic mechanics of speaking and the activity of your internal desire to project your will.

  “The Great Way has no gate. Clear water has no taste. The tongue has no bone. In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.” —Seung Sahn

  21.BE YOUR PURE SELF OR FIND A HOOK

  Call it a hook or a thread or “a way in,” but with the limited rehearsal time you’re likely to have working on camera, if you’re going to do a character different from yourself, you should find a specific behavior you can hold onto all the way through. It might be a way of walking or speaking or placing your tongue in your mouth. It could be you’re always looking for a mysterious clue or one perfect soul. Find it and stay close to it and be open to whatever else it brings.

  “All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness, and opacity.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  22.THINK LOUDLY