The job of a lead actor in a feature film is…
To deliver a physical and emotional interpretation of a screenwriter’s work, in line with a director’s vision, while maintaining long-term physical and emotional continuity.
Feature film acting is the most difficult because of four things:
1- Feature films are long.
2- They are generally shot single camera.
3- They are shot ‘4-wall’, which means all four walls of a set can or will appear.
4- The environment in which the audience sees the final product is very controlled and unforgiving.
Allow me to elaborate. The average film shoot for a major motion picture takes 60 days. Each day a film crew captures enough material to equate to about 60 to 90 seconds of screen time. You read that right; out of a 12-hour (usually longer) day they cover a minute’s worth of material.
The level of precise physical and emotional continuity required by the actor is extraordinary and it has to remain consistent. You will do scenes over and over and over again in rehearsal, blocking rehearsal, camera rehearsal, during photography and all the associated resets and ‘coverage’ that that entails. Not to mention the fact that most scenes are shot out of sequence and many locations will require multiple emotional and physical states that will need to blend seamlessly with footage that could be shot a month later.
It takes an actor of exceptional dedication, skill and most importantly experience under those specific filming environments to pull that job off well. That experience takes years to accumulate, which is why nearly all of the young ‘stars’ of today have been acting since they were kids.
By comparison, television simplifies the matter greatly for actors, although it adds it’s own complications. Things that make television less demanding are:
1- The shows are generally shorter.
2- They are generally shot multi-camera.
3- They are generally ‘3-wall’ sets.
4- The story lines generally run to completion week to week.
5- The environment in which the audience views the final product is much more forgiving.
I say ‘generally’ for most of these examples, because truth be told, television is much more sophisticated than it was even 10 years ago. There are many more shows that are shot ‘single-camera style’, usually two-cameras on Steadi-cams (a mobile camera platform attached to an operator that allows stable photography while in motion) and many are doing ‘4-wall’ style production. As far as physical and emotional continuity are concerned, television is far more forgiving and there is almost never a need to maintain that continuity over great lengths of time and through many disparate and incongruous shooting conditions. That is primarily the reason that most feature film actors can work easily in television, while many television actors struggle to go the other way. Don’t get me wrong, television folk are working hard, but it’s a different kind of work.
Recent Comments