Well, for screen, most of your expressions are going to be in a closeup on your face. For stage actors, no one can see them all that well, and some people don't get to see much more than stick figures, so their experessions have to be done with their entire bodies.

Verbal instructions simply don't translate to body stuff

Don't forget I'm talking about situations in which I've already moved your body into the desired position. From then on, can't you tell that when I say "pivot" I mean "recreate that kinaesthetic feeling"?

I need to be clear -- I'm not talking about standing up and telling people to do things. I'm demonstrating, pointing at my own body, and putting their bodies in position.

I don't know, other than verbal, visual, and kinaesthetic, how to communicate a desired position. If there are other ways -- please to explain.

I wonder if, when you talk about your former ring blackouts, you had the same problem and got past it unconsciously

I think it was an adrenaline/endorphin thing. It would also happen if I hit someone by mistake (struggling for a bowl, say, that cracks in half and cuts the other person -- no clear memory of the second it took for crack and cut).

I learn best by mimicking while the instructor's both talking and doing (this drives some of the teachers insane, but fuck 'em). Then I can lock together look, words, and feel, and try and reproduce on demand.

As a teacher, I also have to take my feel and make it into words, which is fun, especially when I have to take out a teensy bit of a motion and get the right visual/metaphor for it. Some people click when you say "wrecking ball" or "putting out a cigarette." Others look at you moo-cowishly.

I was watching a woman I know in a Noel Coward play yesterday, and she kept ending up having to keep her face in these really exaggerated reaction poses for way too long. It was kind of funny, but I wasn't sure if it was funny on purpose. I mean, the reaction was, clearly, but holding it for a long time while other stuff happened, nsm.

Since the camera is so good at capturing everything that plays across your face and body, you don't have to learn the precise control it takes to display an emotion that can be read from the third balcony and still look good to the people in the orchestra.

I don't want to act, but my God, would I love to do this training.

Or doesn't draw focus,

Absolutely. And, if you're working with a poopiehead actor who does this on purpose, hopefully your director will help with that.

I don't want to act, but my God, would I love to do this training.

Take a stage movement class.

This distinction between stage acting and movie acting is interesting. I remember when I was a kid -- or, I guess probably 14-15 -- I saw a talk show where, on a lark, some soap actor stood up and pulled a stranger out of the audience ad did an improv scene with this person. The cameras played along, and then he sat down and went through the footage with the host and explained everything he'd done as he did it. And as he was going along, saying, "I approached her right then to make it more intense, but also to make her back up because she was casting a shadow where she was standing," I realized that I did not have enough active brain cells at any given moment to do that.

I just can't fire that many cylinders at once, you know?

(Soap actors, for the record, don't tend to get retakes or retouching, but do get closeups, so they're sort of a weird hybrid of stage acting and movie acting.)

Soap actors, for the record, don't tend to get retakes or retouching, but do get closeups, so they're sort of a weird hybrid of stage acting and movie acting.

Which probably explains SMG's described gift for finding the light.

This is an interestong discussion. For me, I can usually feel the difference between A and B, but it's sometimes hard for me to get the in-between stuff Betsy was talking about. And there are some things that are just hard for me, full stop -- in yoga, I have a terrible time telling if my back is arched enough.

Matt Damon looked like a truly pathetic overactor in Mystic Pizza, but really it was just the first time he was in a movie, and he didn't get it yet.