Unique acting choices Part 1

A few years back I was fortunate enough to attend an animation masterclass by Andrew Gordon of Pixar. As part of the masterclass he was kind enough to take a look at some of my old animation tests and gave me some useful feedback on my work.
One of the main points he made (among many others) was about unique acting choices.Whenever we create performances and bring characters to life, we must be very specific and try to avoid the cliche. We need to know why the character is doing what he/ she is doing, or where she/ he come from, what’s their status, where are they going to etc, etc.

It took me a few years, a lot of animation tests and watching a lot of movies of all kind to digest this note, but lately I feel like I am starting to realise what he meant by “being more specific” with your acting choices.

When watching films with my animator’s hat on, I often ask myself:

• What is it about the performance that makes me respond to it the way I do?
• What makes it so special, so unique that certain moments of the film are just ingrained in my head?
• What is it that the actor/actress does or embraces  that completely transforms them from who they really are into someone completely different?
• How do they do it? how do they avoid cliche acting?
• Did they have to create a range of movement, body language for this specific role?

Not every film is like that, sometimes I just like to be a spectator and enjoy whatever is infront of me, but if something intrigues me, I often go back to dig deeper.

There are a few examples I want to share over the next few days about interesting acting choices by some wonderful actresses/ actors such as Meryl Streep, Russel Crow and Dustin Hoffman.

Stay tuned….