Saturday, 3-19-11

Saturday, 3-19-11

So, yesterday Matt was in New York, so for Acting class we began by going to the Motion Capture Lab and watching our recordings from the week before break. No models had been attached to our recordings, but a rough skeleton had been drawn using the marks to make it easier to see how we were moving.

It was pretty damn cool. We could slow down or speed up the recording to hone in on particular moments, and it was neat to see the moments that most clearly captured the movement of the animal, such as when I twitched my head back and forth on its side or when I stretched out on one leg and spread my 'wings.' Zanny's recording was also really neat because you could so clearly see how her shoulders were thrown back and moved with an undulation that was unmistakeably that of a big cat's.

After this, we returned to Purnell to get some coaching on the Queens dialect from Natalie. That'll be a challenge--but I'm looking forward to it. One thing that came up though was the way we pitch our voices based on a character's age. Taylor, who plays 15 year-old sister, Jeanann, was talking to me about how she has to raise the pitch of her voice to play younger. This is something that I've thought about considerably, though in my case, I often feel as if for most parts I should be raising the pitch of my voice.

My natural speaking voice is unusually low, and I sometimes feel like that is... well, inappropriate for many characters. In high school I got cast as villains and fathers a lot, but as I look to the future, I'm not sure that's the shape I want my career to take. Should I be practicing putting my voice in a different place for characters my age? Frankly, any male ingenue is expected to have a higher voice too. Taylor said that actors all have signatures, and mine is my voice, but I worry that while, yes, it's certainly a signature, it may also be a limitation.

I was talking to Sam French about this and he was saying that he, as a director, is very conflicted about actors changing their voices for a part. He says that with the exception of clearly stylized pieces, he feels that a dramatic vocal adjustment always sounds forced or alien to him--though he also admitted that this may just be because he is usually familiar with how the actor normally talks.

This is one of the things in my growing understanding of personal acting technique that I am still very unsure about. I should talk to Professor Feindel about it, probably.



As for Jason's animal work, I've been watching videos of stags and I find this one (though very simple) quite telling. The stag notices the camera and positions itself to face it, and then lifts its neck and head to make itself taller and more imposing. When it finally turns and walks away, the head drops. I think that could be a very useful thing to incorporate into Jason's physicality. It strikes me as appropriate because of the power-play he's constantly engaged in with Jack.

Another stag video:


Another animal that could work and I might play with is a big dog, like a German Shepherd. I'm just worried about choosing a domesticated animal because "domesticated" is really not the best word to describe anyone in this family. But there's lots of animal imagery in the show and specifically concerning dogs (the family has a long history with Jack brutally mistreating one pet after another), so I like the idea of tying back to that with a dog.

This is a fascinating guard dog attack-training video with a German Shepherd.



For Icons I think I've found a monologue from "Man and Superman" by George Bernard Shaw. We present our Icons for the first time on Thursday, the first of three rounds of presentations.