Stage Acting vs. Film Acting (Part Second)

Before you start reading this article, it is very important to read the first part of this article. This is the continuation of the first article…

CAMERA AND PROSCENIUM ARCH : Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

The camera can take your audience anywhere. It can present a panoramic view or an extreme close-up. It can range from the spectacle of Braveheart and Gone with the Wind to the simplicity of Strangers in Paradise or Clerks. Film has the ability to take us visually from distant galaxies to the microscopic world of neurosurgery, from an aerial shot of a lake to a close-up of
the lily pad. The size and design of a theater dictate what the set will look like and how the audience sees the play. Most theaters have a proscenium arch through which the audience sees the play from a single point of view as if through a transparent fourth wall. In some theaters, the stage thrusts out into the audience, and in-arena theaters, the audience completely surrounds the acting area. The location of your seat in a theater determines how you see the play. Your point of view is different from that of any other position in the house, except that everyone in the audience can see the whole stage and the whole set. At a play you may watch the entire action or any part of it you choose. You may study the set, look at any actor on the stage, or watch the actors who are speaking—whatever you choose to look at.

On the film or TV screen, you may only see what the director wants you to see. She dictates what each image will be, how much of the screen it will fill, and from what distance and point of view you see it. If the picture is a big-head close-up of an actor, that’s all there is for you to look at. If it’s a wide shot, the camera shows you only as much as the director wants you to see. Though the stage audience sees the entire set, it does not have the ability to move closer or farther away. The film audience sees an assortment of close-ups and wide shots created and selected by the director. She, in effect, moves the audience closer to or farther away from the action in the movie.

PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER : Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

In both film and theater, there are two kinds of roles: personality and character. Your personality is who you are mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Almost all the roles in film are personality roles in which you play yourself as if you were actually the character called for by the script. Jimmy Stewart, for one, was a personality actor who always played himself in someone else’s shoes. Most stars are personality actors and do not try to transform themselves into someone else. In most film roles, actors let their individual selves filter through the role to exploit their respective personalities. Milos Forman, who directed great films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, was once asked what it means to be professional in films; his answer was that what is important are the talent and the personality.

In a Character role, you play the fictional personality of someone else. Character roles are traditional in the theater, and we read about the great actors of the past who transformed themselves into the famous roles of characters who were completely different from themselves. When you play a character role, you have to hide your personality so that you are perceived as someone who is different from you both physically, psychologically, and mentally. The great Michael Chekhov, a character actor in both stage and film, transformed himself so completely in many roles that the real Chekhov disappeared.

Film is a personality medium, but character roles have been created by some film actors like Chekhov and others. In the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets, Alec Guinness plays the eight character roles of the people his main character has to eliminate to gain a royal title. Each character is completely different from the others and is not just Guinness in a different costume. Paul Muni transforms himself as Zola in the film The Life of Emile Zola. More recently, there was Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot; Tom Hanks in Forest Gump; Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Little Big Man, and Midnight Cowboy; Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; Billy Bob Thornton in Swingblade and U-Turn; Gary Oldman in Hannibal; Judy Dench in Shakespeare in Love; all create wonderful film character roles in which they are not recognizable as their own personalities. Jon Voight is such a great character actor that no matter what his role, he always seems to be someone other that Jon Voight. His Howard Cosell in Ali is virtually unrecognizable as Voight.

There are a number of leading men and women who have done or could do character roles: Anne Bancroft, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Meryl Streep, Helen Bonham Carter, Cicely Tyson, Jodie Foster, Marlon Brando, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Duvall, Tim Roth, and a few others. They have the ability to filter the assumed character through themselves and make it believable. There are many women actors who could do character parts brilliantly, but such parts are hardly ever written for them.

READ MORE: How To Become An Actor?

“You make use of your personality. That’s why some have lasted such a long time. They have something you can use.”

-Howard Hawks

A few of the prominent personality actors who have lasted a long time are Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, John Wayne, Danny Glover, James Caan, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Harrison Ford, Sidney Poitier, Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, and Kathy Bates.
A leading actor who fits a role playing his or her own personality is more efficient for film than hiring an actor who doesn’t look the part and having him transform himself into the character. We still have character actors in film, but they are mostly personality actors who themselves are interesting or unusual characters. The Academy Award for best supporting actor was originally created for the character actor, the type of actor who would never be a leading man but who did an excellent job in a lesser part. Character actors for film, both men and women, usually differ from leading actors by a wide range of traits and characteristics that are physical: fat, thin, bald, specific accent, tall, short, unusual facial features, odd physical build, unusual voice. Each is usually cast for his or her respective characteristic physical traits, but the true character actors transform themselves into a character having any one or more of such specific traits. The Academy categories for men and women, as distinct from the categories Leading Men and Leading Women, are Character Men and Character Women.

There are good reasons why character-transformation roles are not common in film acting. Most important is that it takes a long time for an actor to create a great character. It took Dustin Hoffman nine months to work on his character Dorothy for the movie Tootsie. Eddie Murphy creates a whole family in The Nutty Professor. He plays the Mother, Father, Grandmother, Uncle, and Brother. When I saw the picture, I thought each was a different actor until my daughter told me he was playing all the parts. The time spent creating a character for film costs a lot of money that producers are unwilling to spend. It is cheaper and easier to hire personality actors that fit the role. There are exceptions, like the two above, because where would you find ready-made personality actors like Dustin Hoffman or Eddie Murphy? They don’t exist and have to be created. The time it takes for character transformation costs lots of money, so only leading actors with marquee value get a chance to do it. To the accountants, the expense of creating a transformed character other than a star would not be cost-effective. You are reading “Stage Acting vs. Film Acting” do comment about that below in this article.

Film is all about personality. Robert Duvall has been around for years andhis character work is exceptional, but we still see the Robert Duvall personality with an accent and changed mannerisms. James Woods was brilliant in The Ghost of Mississippi, but he was still James Woods, the person. Character acting takes a skill many actors do not have, and producers are wary about hiring an actor who tries to get too far away from his type.

The stage is more suitable for creating character roles. A thirty-five-year-old actor may have the chance to play a twenty-year-old young adult or a man of sixty-five. During the relatively long stage rehearsal, he discovers the character’s traits that are different from his personal characteristics and has the time to blend these into his performance. The actor may have a month of rehearsal to find the different ways the character reacts, and how to bring these traits closer to himself. Immersion into a character is a challenge; it is also part of the satisfaction and fun of working on the stage.

Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

It is physically demanding to rehearse a play and then perform the lead role night after night. I don’t think Henry Fonda, or any man at his age, could have made it through rehearsals and a run of the play. To get the play rehearsed and performed, it is more practical to cast a younger actor for the role of an eightyyear-old.

DIALOGUE | Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

Film is mainly visual, and a film script usually contains about onetenth the dialogue of a stage play. Compare a stage play to most screenplays. You can immediately see the difference. A leading actor might have a hundred lines in an entire movie. In a play, he may have a hundred lines in four pages.

Dialogue is the essence of a play, and actors tell the story through the playwright’s words and instructions. The story is advanced in words. The audience comes to hear what the playwright has written. In a good film, the story advances through the subtext created by the actors’ emotions.

“I try to avoid talk at all cost. You lose that spontaneity when you realize somebody’s thinking the hell out of their part.”

-James Bridges

MONOLOGUES | Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

Monologues are rarely used on film because the camera can take the audience into a character’s mind through flashbacks and voice-overs and in close-ups that reveal what is going on inside the character. Film can present scenes that enact what in a play would be offstage action and have to be explained in words. The monologue is a device for the audience to understand what can only be communicated by words of explanation, such as the back story or a character’s thoughts and feelings. A monologue in a film is most often a misguided attempt by an inept writer or director to solve a dramatic problem. There are exceptions. In the film On Golden Pond, Hepburn sends Henry Fonda out to pick strawberries. We see shots of Fonda wandering around the woods. He can’t find his way. He turns and runs in the opposite direction. He is out of shape. He sits on a log to catch his breath. We can see that he is confused, lost, and frightened. In this scene, the camera shows us Fonda’s experience, but in the stage play, it has to be explained later in a monologue or expository dialogue.

On stage, monologues can be used for exposition, back story, or for understanding a character’s thoughts. In modern theater, they also need some reasonable motivation. In a film, a monologue needs a strong dramatic motivation. Katharine Hepburn has a monologue in the film version of On Golden Pond. She delivers her monologue to a doll her character has had since she was a little girl. She is alone in the cottage.

(She takes her doll, Elmer, down from the mantel and hugs him to her.)

HEPBURN
Oh, Elmer, isn’t he awful?
Elmer, Elmer, Elmer.

(She stands for a moment, lost in thought. The sound of a
motorboat on the lake interrupts her. She turns and walks to
the window. She waves to it and sits on the steps.)

HEPBURN
(to Elmer)
They say the lake is dying,
but I don’t believe it. They
say all those houses along
Koochakiyi Shores are killing
Golden Pond.

See, Elmer, no more yellow
tents in the trees, no more
bell calling the girls to supper. 
I left you in this window, Elmer, 
sitting on the sill, so you could look 
out at Camp Koochakiyi, when I was
eight and nine and ten.

And I’d stand on the bank,
across the cove at sunset, and
I’d wave. And you always waved
back, didn’t you Elmer?

This monologue allows Hepburn to reminisce about her life as a child on the lake and what she shared with her imaginary playmate, Elmer. The monologue gives the audience insight into Ethel’s character, thoughts, and feelings. You might say that it is not a monologue because she is talking to someone: her doll. But the doll is really not a participant and serves the same purpose for her as did Wilson, the basketball, for Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Cast Away. The basketball and Elmer are pretty good excuses to allow the actors to speak monologues when there is no other live person to talk to.

“What I’m looking for instead of actors is behaviors, somebody who will bring me more.”

-Robert Altman

FILM EXPERIENCE VERSUS STAGE EXPERIENCE

The close-up offers emotional exposure. It reveals your inner feelings through your eyes and face. It uncovers your personality by revealing your deepest thoughts. In the climax of On Golden Pond, Jane Fonda confronts her father, Henry Fonda:

J. FONDA
. . . it occurred to me that
maybe you and I should have
the kind of relationship we’re
supposed to have.

H. FONDA
What kind of relationship is
that?

J. FONDA
Well, you know, like a father
and a daughter.

H. FONDA
Oh, just in the nick of time,
huh? Worried about the will,
are you? I’m leaving everything 
to you except what I’m
taking with me.

J. FONDA
Oh, stop it, I don’t want anything. 
It just seems like you
and I have been mad at each
other for too long.

H. FONDA
Oh? I didn’t know we were mad.
I thought we just didn’t like
each other.

(This hits J. Fonda hard. She starts to cry.)
EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON J. FONDA’s FACE.

J. FONDA
I want to be your friend.

The intimacy of this close-up on Jane Fonda as she says the last line brings the audience in to where it is standing next to her and participating in her feelings. Finally, Henry Fonda lets her in, not much but a little bit. We know their relationship will improve.
The stage actor has to project the dialogue and use larger-than-life movements to reach the back row. The experience of an actress on stage may be as deep as Jane Fonda’s in the close-up, but the distance from the stage to the audience makes that experience less visible and intimate. Onstage intimacy has to be heightened to convey its meaning to the audience. Paradoxically, however, when you heighten intimacy, it diminishes. Intimacy is close, personal, and quiet. The back row is not close or personal, and it cannot be reached with quietness. So on the stage, some of the intimacy, maybe most of it, is lost.

“An actor who is truly heroic reveals the divine that passes through him, that aspect of himself that he does not own and cannot control.”

-John Patrick Shanley

REACTING | Stage Acting vs. Film Acting

One interesting and important characteristic of film is its use of the reaction shot, which is just that—a close-up of an actor reacting, with or without words, to something that has been said or done. It is a valuable shot that is intimate, revealing, and fascinating. There is nothing like it0 in a stage play. In editing, the director and the film editor select scenes and bits of scenes and assemble them in the order they think makes the best final film. To acquire all these bits and pieces, a conventional and safe way to direct a scene is by “coverage” shooting, which refers to blocking and shooting every scene in such a way that there are sufficient shots and angles of every line for the editor to assemble the final film creatively and in continuity.

Let’s say you are at a table with another actor in a dialogue scene. The director first shoots the scene in an establishing shot, generally a wide shot that shows most of the table and the two actors. She follows this with a medium shot of the two of you. Then she has you repeat the dialogue while she shoots “over-shoulders” (OS), which are close shots of each of you with the camera looking at your face from behind and over the other actor’s shoulder. Then she shoots individual close-ups of each of you as you speak and listen to the other actor who is off-camera. The director ends up with a group of shots that allows her and the editor to edit the scene in many different ways. This is not the only way to shoot a scene, but I refer to it here to point out the nature of the reaction shot.

Of these shots, several will be close-ups and over-shoulders of you just listening and reacting to the other actor. These reaction shots are very important to the editor and especially to you. Editors love good reaction shots because they can put them anywhere in a scene to change the pace or set a mood, or use them to get over an awkward or unusable cut. The point for you, the actor, is to always be participating in the scene and to not be out to lunch during the other actor’s lines. Concentrate and listen. If you are interesting and involved, you may get a lot of screen time in reaction shots. There are times when the reacting actor is on screen longer than the actor speaking. It depends on who is the most interesting.

An Emmy-Award-winning film editor told me of the time she was editing an episode of one of the biggest prime-time TV dramas whose guest star was one of film’s biggest stars. (For obvious reasons, I can’t name the star or the show.) His performance was so bad that after she had edited out his bad scenes, the guest star ended up with a minute and a half of screen time on an hour show. You can be sure that there were a lot of reaction shots in this episode.

Stay with it. Be totally involved in your scene even if you do not have a single line of dialogue. You will be surprised at how many of your silent reaction shots make it into a film when you keep concentrating on the other actor and stay in the moment. You are reading “Stage Acting vs. Film Acting” do comment about that below in this article.

Acting in film requires a different orientation and training than for acting in theater, not that one is better or more valuable than the other. Some assume that the tricks of acting for the camera alone distinguish film acting from stage acting. These include tricks such as not blinking your eyes, hitting your marks, looking steadfastly at the actors’ eye nearest the lens, matching your movements, and so on. You do have to learn these things, but the distinguishing essence of film acting is that you have to bring up your emotions not through psychological or physical gimmicks but through the concentration of your attention on the other actor’s emotions and the circumstances (see Chapter 5, The Art of Concentration). All significant acting in film takes place in close-up, and learning film acting is the task of learning how to successfully meet the“awesome trial” of the close-up. This is what I teach.