Hello!! Welcome to Actor's Training Pt. 2! Today, we're going to be reviewing in more precise detail the work that we did this week. So, let's get right to it.
Actor's training, now up on YouTube.
Also, just to let you know, I've started a YouTube channel, which contains a companion series to this as well. I'll be posting the review in video form and keeping it pretty extemporaneous. This first video is an introduction into YouTube, and then the actual scene itself with the critiques, very general, but decided I'd jump into the YouTube game! Here's the link to that.
Within "the power of the actor"
Generally, with only two weeks on this assignment, I'm noticing that I am grasping the tools at a quicker rate/being able to put them to application at a greater capacity. I feel as if the current rate that is being increased in the amount of tools I take on per week is at the right point, so I'll continue as such. These last tools added were INNER OBJECTS and BEATS and ACTIONS. My favorite tool that I feel helped me a lot was beats and actions, I felt it started to connect the entirety of the Ivana Chubbuck technique for me, rounding it out, once getting to that point I was feeling a lack of intensity, in which that technique absolutely handed that to me. As always, there will be much room for improvement, I don't know if there will ever be a 100. For the next section I'll repeat what I did for "Actor's Training Pt. 1" and label my scores on a scale of 1 - 100.
#1 Overall objective
[70]
The overall Objective was very apparent in my mind, I think the biggest help for me this week was that I realized that Robert Graysmith and I are incredibly close in character. In terms of where I was at specifically. I've been working on these items, YouTube, my Blog, my Actor's Training, my Insta, my reading, and then also being sick on top of all of that, but not really actually taking a break like I should be, instead I just kept going, staying up late at times to finish and do less the next day. But overall that objective was close in detail to that of the objective that I chose for Graysmith. So I felt that I was able to let that go, not think about it too much, and then when you peel back the layers, as if going through a past fight, you realize why you were doing something. It's not at the top of your mind, but you realize why it's in your body. That's the goal I usually want to get to, delving into subconscious work as an actor, but I'm happy with the work that was done here with my OVERALL OBJECTIVE.
#2 Scene Objective
[78]
SCENE OBJECTIVE was also pretty good, and even more relevant in terms of being matched up with my OBSTACLES and the stakes. Happy to have found something that worked well for me in terms of the SCENE OBJECTIVE. I was thinking that "I want to get you on my side" which was to get Toschi to regain a sense of urgency for this case, where my obstacles which will be stated below, allowed me my sense of urgency as a character to chase after this.
#3 Obstacles
[57]
Built off of my OVERALL/SCENE OBJECTIVES I built obstacles that if I as Matt didn't have I would fight for them much harder, then I crafted them in the world of Graysmith's language. Felt ok about my obstacles, looking back on it, I felt I wasn't thinking much about the stakes. I feel that I absolutely could have grasped this concept quite a bit more in terms of setting it more. I think what I'm learning from all of these is that it's not just about writing this stuff down onto paper and thinking that that's going to come up in the performance. It's a lot of review and study. Eventually you have to let it go, as if you're going to be thinking about each one of these things then your brain is just going to be foggy and the performance will be muddled. So I think when the score is low like this, I think I see a need for more review within this area. Before I work on anything new, in the sense of tools, I think I need to go back and study each one of my past efforts.
#4 Substitution
[30]
I honestly didn't really use substitution, I had one set up, but I realized that it just wasn't strong enough, then my dad was my reader, and that was already strong enough, so I just used my dad as Toschi, and that actually made things quite easy. Maybe I was spoiled in that sense since I skipped out on this assignment, but I don't feel I lost anything, I think a lot of work was still important before hand. I'd like to see what happens next week with this in mind.
#5 Inner Objects
[35]
"The images and pictures you see in your mind when speaking or hearing about a person, place, thing, or event." (Chubbuck) Don't feel I quite understood this one, and may need to take a second to reread the chapter on this. I get it in principle, but in terms of practice, I think the thing that I got hung up on was if there was a right or wrong answer, and no there never is, and Ivana Chubbuck says, "There are no right or wrong choices, just more effective or less effective ones." So I'll have to practice on this one.
#6 Beats and Actions
[60]
Yea, loved this one actually, still think I could've applied more study and more subconscious work. I felt this absolutely activated my scene, the fact that the amount of choices within this, the amount of options that I could choose to get what I wanted was really fun for me. Trying out all the different ways of this. I'll post a picture of what this looked like on the script.
We also separate dialogue into beats, and also make sure to continue your actions or create new actions based off of what your scene partner is saying to you.
Best part is you can change these up however you want, which now creates no two performances to ever be alike, because your understanding is based off of circumstances, if I was to do it again, a lot would change even if I kept these actions. If someone else were to use these same actions they would find something entirely new as well, as they've quite simply lived through different circumstances. Loved it!
And that's everything that I have for this blog! Hope this was helpful! I'll be back this Friday with another write up on the next piece, which I'm gonna get started on right now! Much love today!