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TonnyBarr Acting For The Camera Book Notes PDF
TonnyBarr Acting For The Camera Book Notes PDF
by Tony Barr
The Basics
Tools
Dynamics
1. Find the levels/layers that CHANGE the dynamics. If it's intense, don't make it ALL
intense.
2. The shifting and changing command audience attention and cause them to be
affected. They also give the material a sense of motion and thrust.
3. Search for the dynamics, the stimuli that makes those small changes in character.
4. Adds dimension, excitement, interest, drama and keeps it from sitting on a boring
plateau.
5. Always make sure your rhythm and dynamics are your own, never let a star
overpower you
6. Look for CHANGES in thought, emotion, plot, anything that alters the current state.
7. Organic and Fluid, Ebbs and Flows, Ups and Downs, Highs and Lows
Movement
1. Should be driven by what is happening in the scene. There should be a reason, even
a subtle reason. But actors should not just move arbitrary without cause.
The Need
1. Need, Intention, Objective, Goal
2. Major Needs - Ultimate, Big Need - THE main objective you are trying to get.
3. Minor Needs - Moment to moment, these are what you focus on in the scene.
4. Be aware of your need from instant to instant. It will give you purpose, it will give
every scene an emotional thrust.
5. How strongly will you play the need and how important is it that the need be
fulfilled? What's at stake?
6. You might want to break down every role and every scene into needs/objectives.
Such intellectualization should be put aside though, once performing. Analyze and
forget.
Selectivity
1. Selections, decisions, alternatives, choices.
2. Find interesting, unexpected things to do
3. Rehearsals - stretch, and try new things. Change the character, emotion, thoughts,
ideas, goals, pacing. Be fresh and free.
4. Don't rehearse the same thing over and over again - Don't 'lock down' rehearsals.
5. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse - DON'T BE LAZY!
6. Try playing AGAINST the dialog - play the opposite.
7. You bring up the past for reasons related to the present and not simply to have a
chance to spend a few moments in reverie or sentimentality.
8. Find humor in drama and drama in humor.
9. "If I can't laugh and cry in the same evening, it's not a good show"
10. You can't play the subconscious (?) You can only play moment to moment.
11. Avoid self pity. This emotional indulgence weakens the character and the audience
doesn't fall for it. Play the need to solve the problem instead of being overwhelmed
by it.
-So, it's not a drowning... "oh my god, oh no!" (victim), it's a "I'm going to fucking
get through this goddammit".
12. Communicate through props and actors.
13. What you DO tells us what your feeling much better than words.
14. We lie with words, we tell the truth with body language.
15. Dialog interruptions can be done as one person's monologue with the other actor
cutting in properly instead of preplanned cuts.
16. Physical Contact. Exercise - ask the actors personal questions while one actor
uses their finger tips and eyes on the other actor's hands, face, neck, arms and hair.
Then run your scene.
Personalization
1. Reliving personal trauma to get to an emotion can take the actor away from
listening.
2. This should be done in exercises but not in actual scenes
3. The actor's instrument needs to be free enough to respond to the stimuli presented
by the material and the other actor.
4. Transference is taking an emotion that you know that's close the the emotion that
needs to be played and using that. ie, the feeling of wanting to kill someone
transferring into actually killing someone in the scene.
5. Personalizing is a stepping stone that's a bit of a cheat to launch us into how to play
an emotion.
Monologues
1. Monologues lack the listening and responding to another person
2. You are talking to another person and must relate to what they are hearing from
them as they speak
3. The monologue is speech in context
Summary
1. Stop acting, start listening
2. Play the bottom line for each moment or scene
3. Play one moment at a time and keep it simple, without loss of passion (less is not
more)
4. Commit yourself fully
5. Have fun! You don't have to suffer to be great!
6. What is the truth about how I would speak and behave in these circumstances?
7. All the answers are found in "the truth" (of the scene, of the character, of the
objectives)
Stunts
1. Learn how to fall, take a blow, give a blow, punched or shot, hit in the head, etc.
2. Practice the motions over and over
3. It's the person who takes the blow that will make it look real.
The Star
1. Good actor:
Film Crew
1. The Camera Crew
1. The Cinematographer - You're movements and physicality is tied to what he
does.
2. The Camera Operator - operates that camera
3. The focus operator
4. The dolly pusher
5. The film loader or camera assistant - slate operator
2. The Sound Crew
1. The mixer - the chief
2. The Boom Operator
3. Cablemen
3. The Lighting Crew
4. The Gaffer - Crew chief. Aids the cinematographer.
5. The "best boy" - assistant to the crew chief
6. Operators
7. General operator - runs the generator on location
8. The Grips
1. Head grip - crew chief. Responsible for sets, carpentry, reflectors & camera
dollies
2. Grips
9. The Prop Dept
1. Property master
2. property assistants
10. The Wardrobe Dept
11. The Makeup Dept
12. Drivers, photographers, animal handlers, etc.
13. The first assistant director - keeps order on the set and keeps production moving.
14. The second assistant director - sets up actors' calls, find actors, take care of small
details
Emotional Exercise
1. One person stands in front of a group of people and says:
1. "I have a right to cry"
2. "I have a right to get angry"
3. "I have a right to be happy"
4. "I have a right to stand here"
5. "I take full responsibility for everything I say"
6. "I take full responsibility for everything I do"
2. We often have difficulty expressing emotion since our culture has taught us that it is
bad. This also exhibits our expression of authority. The actor must fully believe in
the words and say them with conviction.
Vocal Levels
Watch the shift in power. Generally on film, quieter is more powerful.
1. Shoot a short scene and try the following
2. As rehearsed (default)
3. with both actor's shouting
4. with one actor speaking loudly, the other softly
5. with one actor speaking softly, the other loudly
6. both actors talking across "read distance"
Tape record a conversation you have with a friend in a relaxed atmosphere, like home or at
a bar. Then transcribe it into a scene and act it out. See how strong of a character you are.
Listening/Sensing: Presence
On screen is played at normal, or less than normal distances. So, intimacy is increased.
Take a very intimate scene and try:
1. As you've rehearsed it, but standing very far apart, at least 6-10 feet.
2. Standing as close as you can without touching and move very slowly, so the other
person's physical presence begins to dominate your attention. Makes sensing each
other much more sensitive.
Watch the playback and see what happens. Take 1 usually derives from the words, take 2
usually derives more from what is NOT being said.
Take a monologue from a scene in which both characters have strong needs.
1. Do the scene once your way, with your partner talking and you listening silently.
2. Do the scene again, this time turning the monologue into a dialogue by improvising
your responses to the other actor's lines. Don't intellectualize, don't edit, don't make
up character-based lines, just go on impulse from your gut. Don't be grammatical.
You don't have to wait for a pause, or the end of a sentence to speak, just jump in
whenever you feel the urge.
3. Have the other actor stop when you interrupt, let your responses affect him, and
then go on with his lines. Under no circumstances should he begin to improvise. It is
very important that he stay with his lines.
4. Do the scene again, with your partner talking and you listening silently. Just let your
responses happen, Don't attempt to act them out for the audience.
The listening actor's involvement should be far greater now. A far more effective reaction
shot.
Take 2 should be hotter emotionally because you are now hearing the resistance implicit in
your partner's silences. You're always in a dialogue, even though this time you have all the
lines. You're never getting "nothing" from your partner. Even his silence can be a stimulus;
you can 'hear' it as resistance, or you can 'hear ' it as agreement.
1. "Listen, you know I love you. I've loved you for a long, long time. This thing that's
come between us, we can't afford to let that destroy what we had. It's your
decision. I know that now. What do you think?"
So, think about this differently. It's actually five separate attempts to get your lover to stay,
followed by 5 rejections.
1. "Listen, you know I love you.
2. I've loved you for a long, long time.
3. This thing that's come between us, we can't afford to let that destroy what we had.
4. It's your decision. I know that now.
5. What do you think?"
Interrupted Dialog
Look for lines of dialog that are not stimuli-response driven. They are broken up paragraphs
of a single thought/reaction. Therefore they are probably said differently. First, try this
normally, with pauses. Then, try it again as interrupted dialog.
Example
Janine - I want out of this marriage
Robert - You want out of the marriage?
Janine - Don't act so surprised.
Robert - You want out of our marriage?
Janine - You must've known it was coming.
Robert - This is incredible.
Janine - You're being so dramatic.
Robert - I can't believe this.
Janine - Look, we can work this out.
Robert - I hate you for doing this.
Robert - You want out of the marriage? You want out of our marriage? This is incredible. I
can't believe this. I hate you for doing this.
The Subconscious
You can't technically play the subconscious. Try playing a scene twice. Once as it is. And the
second, attribute deep psychological meanings/memories to the people in your scene. Make
them extreme. Is there a difference? Which does the audience prefer?
Unorthodoxy
Run through the scene doing crazy, completely nonsensical things. Be wild and free.
Contact - Try touching the other actor whenever you have a big line. Touch them
someplace different every time. This engages listening and also makes the 1st actor not
'play' to the camera. Makes the physical movements more real.
Props - Run the scene again but with a good amount of props. Interact with all the props,
the entire time to get used to using them. Then run your scene normal again.
Comedy
1. Thinking Funny - Consequences are social, not physical. The other person is
annoyed, never seriously hurt. Drama is the opposite. Immaturity of responses.
2. Funny - Deception - A guy playing a woman, or dressed as a FBI agent to fool
someone.
3. Consequences of comedy are never final, like they are in drama. Always on the
superficial side.
Alternatives/Adjustments:
1. Try changing the beginning of the scene to contrast more with what happens at the
end of the scene.
2. Try acting out what happened just before the scene starts to launch you into the
scene.
3. Change or increase the intensity of the objective.
4. Change the rhythm of your movements and of your speech.
5. Find a dynamic change/shift and increase the contrast between before and after.
6. Have one character affect the other more, be the stimuli. (antagonize, laugh,
ignore)
7. What was the range of emotion during the scene?
8. Is the scene layered with interesting emotion, doings, surprises and changes.
9. Are you playing AGAINST your instinctual emotion? Typically we try to suppress our
emotions. They bubble up and grow, we struggle to keep them under control.
10. Do you personally identify with the needs/objectives and character?
11. When playing the 'bad guy'
1. play needs/qualities that are positive, that you can fully believe in.
2. judge other people as being ignorant and that they don't know what they're
doing. They are in the dark and you're saving them.
12. Ask about your partner, in what way to they make the achievement of my need
difficult? This will get your attention off yourself and onto your partner.
The two don't really connect on the surface. It takes internal thought to get from one
to the other. So, internally, you have to make the following connections:
(Mary is thinking after john's stimulus...)
1. You got a job.
2. Now you'll be working all the time.
3. You won't have time for me.
4. So we'll gradually drift apart
5. and eventually we'll break up
6. and so we'll never get married
7. and so I guess,
8. I'll never get married.