Timing and Spacing

I've been reading "Audition" by Michael Shurtleff. It's technically a book for actors who have to prepare for an audition in a short period of time. The techniques he describes helps the actor give a rich non-obvious performance. I'm finding this book extremely useful in doing my animation exercises.

Shurtleff lists 12 Guideposts that you should work through to understand your character and the scene. The one I'm finding most useful right now is "The Moment Before". Every scene starts in the middle, and what happened to your character in the moments before your scene took place. You may have to go back years in the character's life to recreate the moment before.

When picking the moment before and what leads up to it, most people tend to stay too general. As Shurtleff says, "The more specific, the more focused the moment before, the better the entire scene will be."

Specificity drives better acting choices. If you're doing an exercise to lift a heavy weight, you can have a dry exercise of a character lifting a box, or you can have him struggling to lift a box off his foot or from in front of a door he desperately neeeds to open. The second is far more interesting to watch and turns a simple exercise into a performance.

Right now I have to do a short exercise that shows two contrasting emotions. I've picked a scene where someone goes from despondent to happy. My character is despondent, finds a large amount of money on the ground and is happy. That's pretty general. Of course, everybody likes finding money, but making some more specific choices can give a richer foundation to build the acting on.

He's not just despondent because he's broke, he's actually on his way home from a failed job interview, and his landlady has said if he doesn't bring the rent money, he's out on his ass. That's more specific and gives me more to work with. The money is the difference between him sleeping in bed that night and sleeping on a park bench. I also need to flesh out his character more. Why is he broke? Was he fired from his job? Was it a long fall from grace? Or has he always struggled for money?

"The moment before must be strong, meaty and full." It needs to propel an entire scene.

This may seem like a lot of preparation for a fifteen second pantomime exercise, but I think this type of preparation will show in the performance. That makes it all worthwhile.