This week at Backstage, we turn our attention to acting techniques and how to choose them. No two actors are the same, and we want to help you find the personalized methods that works best for you. In that vein, the medium in which you work will definitely mandate distinctly different techniques. Below, Backstage Experts provide advice for how to tailor your performances for the stage or screen.
The difference is straightforward.
“For my money, the only difference between acting for film and stage is venue. Just as an intimate black box calls for a different size performance than an amphitheater, film presents your performance to viewers at closer range. There’s nothing ‘deep’ about the difference; it’s just like moving from outdoor Shakespeare to 99-seat contemporary: Different, yes, but not mysterious.” —Jackie Apodaca, head of performance at Southern Oregon University
The difference lies in finding your choices.
“Your choices for the camera are just as big as for the stage. If they’re not, you’re not going to connect to the other characters or to the camera with any real intensity and life. As a matter of fact, the stronger the choice, the less you have to do. The honesty and power of the choice resonates in your stillness, and needs no physical help or punctuation to be effective. The difference in the mediums isn’t one of big versus small; it’s the difference of where you look for and discover your truth and the way in which that truth is expressed.” —Craig Wallace, acting teacher and Backstage Expert
Yes, your volume should be adjusted.
“Don’t roll your eyes – anyone that’s been doing eight shows a week can start their audition a bit too loud for the camera! You’ve learned a skill – how to be heard at the back of the house – and now you have to leave that outside the door. The volume for the camera is whatever the circumstances in the scene dictate. When you bring your volume down to a more intimate, real place in a scene that requires normal conversation, your performance instantly becomes more honest.” — Marci Phillips, Executive Director of ABC Casting
Thought processes differ onstage and screen.
“Stage training can get us into a habit of always externalizing and physically expressing what we normally feel just inside so that the audience can see and perceive how we’re feeling and what we’re thinking. I think Damian Lewis said it well: ‘Onstage, you have to in some small nuanced way give a demonstration of what you’re thinking so that the people at the back can see it, whereas on camera you just quite literally have to think it. I realized that you could actually have a whole range of thoughts in a short space of time and the camera would see them all.’” —Shaan Sharma, co-founder of the Westside On-Camera Acting Studio, actor, casting session director, and acting teacher
The control you have over your performance will vary.
“In film and on TV, actors don’t create their own performances, editors and directors do. That’s one major difference between stage and screen acting. In the rehearsal process for the theater, it is not uncommon for an actor who is in control of their performance to sense something has gone ‘wrong,’ stop, go back, and fix it to get it ‘right.’ On a film set that’s someone else’s job. Actors don’t call cut... In transitioning from stage to screen, actors need to practice letting go of control.” —Rob Adler, on-set coach, actor, director, teacher, and founder of AdlerImprov Studio
The camera will see you—all of you.
“The camera is, in fact, your biggest fan. Because it stands very close to you, it doesn’t require you to use any of your well-honed theatrical skills like precise diction, vocal projection, or any indication of where the jokes lie. If you want to do something extremely subtle, the camera will be there to see, understand, and record it.” —David Dean Bottrell, veteran television actor and New York-based acting teacher
Check out our film audition listings here, or head over to our theater casting calls!