Character Build Series (Part 2: OBSERVATION)
At the end of the day, a character is fully created when it is no longer seen as a character, but a person. But how do we make this change? Where do we get the necessary information and tools to make this possible?
A)from our own experience.
B)from observation.
C)from research.
D)from our imagination.
This is the 2nd of a four week series in which we will look at all these tools: today we look at observation.
OBSERVATION:
When experience is not enough, observation comes into play. The main problem though, is that we see, but we don’t really look. This routine has made us superficial. Since seeing is an activity that requires no effort, its results are passive and blurry, but looking requires an effort to appropriate oneself with a reality through a voluntary act. To look to really look, gives us a part of that reality; and with that fragment we can make the whole reality, assimilating it as if we had lived it. For example, observing prostitutes in their walks, pregnant women and their difficulties to move, blind in their hesitant walk, crazy people in psychiatric hospitals, are means to grasp a part of their circumstances and from that, as much as possible, deduce their entire personality.
When we speak about the necessity for actors to have an intense life, we try to make them understand that their body should be very sensitized to absorb what happens around them, and that this sensitivity absorbs and is stimulated when you visit museums, when you read good books, even listening to good music…
Next week we look at our next tool; Research.
Posted on June 12th, 2009 under Actors Training • Tags: ACTING, LEARNING, OBSERVATION, TOOLS, TRAINING. • 
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