Did you ever hear of the “five-second rule”? The premise is that if you drop food on the ground, it receives less bacterial contamination if you scoop it up within five seconds. Therefore, it is still safe to consume. Right! I’m not so sure about the scientific support behind this theory.
Well, I have a little rule I use in my acting classes that I call the “three-second rule.” (It has nothing to do with licking food off of the floor, you’ll be happy to hear!) Especially when students are first starting out, they tend to get stuck just doing the same thing throughout the whole scene. They don’t change or grow. There are no dynamics. It’s boring and I don’t care about their characters because they seem unreal and flat.
But the character should actually be just like a real, flesh and blood human being, and should be affected by people and the environment and all of the tiny nuances that are teeming in the life energy around them.
Thus, the three-second rule.
As an exercise, I ask them to decide that every three seconds something must change. In order to encourage students to stay alive and to be affected by the scene constantly, I tell them, “Just stamp on your forehead for the rest of your acting life: ‘Do a lot of weird stuff.’ ” It sounds like they would just do arbitrary things that are chaotic and that don't make sense, but what happens is that they end up setting themselves free to stay in the moment and really start reacting spontaneously as a very specific character to everything around them.
Obviously, they still have to make acting choices to create a backstory, to have an objective, and to use their imaginations to feel as if they are really there, but the three-second rule helps to breathe life energy into their characters. They look and feel much more organic and real as characters. They start to have fun and become more entertaining. The scene becomes more dynamic, their characters begin to evolve, and the conflicts intensify.
Why does it work? This exercise tends to give you something real to do. It triggers specific, interesting ideas that are not your same old, boring acting choices. It starts to push buttons that cause real reactions in the actors and their scene partners. It helps to keep them in the moment. It makes the experience fun so the students start to get “lost in it.” And that helps to create a reality. It adds the flesh and blood that makes them become more specific and, therefore, more human (and humans shift and change constantly).
Think of orchestrating a scene. Songs would be quite boring if they were not orchestrated to change the tone, feeling, and dynamics frequently. If they didn’t, they would just be “la la la la la la la la.” Boring! It would be much more interesting to change it up: “la la la” (beat) “la la” (louder) “la la” (softer).” I ask my students to make their scenes more musical and dynamic by orchestrating them. Also, using your objective beats (what you want to do in the scene) helps to add dynamics to a scene.
(Make sure you watch the accompanying video to see how insane I actually get!)
How does it work?
1. Try just changing things physically: coming closer or backing away, doing something with a prop or your clothes, touching the other actor. Play with simply doing something and then stopping.
2. Try changing the rhythm of the scene: talking fast and then slowing down.
3. Try talking a lot and then being silent. Or try moving a lot and then being still.
4. Try being very loud and then quiet.
5. Try getting very intense and build it more and more and then back off.
Just do the opposite of whatever you were just doing! Change directions!
Adding dynamics to a scene allows the character to shift and grow, and makes the process more real and fun for the actor—and much more entertaining for the audience! A quick way to stimulate this is to do the three-second rule. Try it!
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