Screen Acting #3 - High Necks are a No-Go
- Emily Jade
- Oct 18, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 23, 2020
In this session, we played around with speaking and reacting for the camera. It was a bit frustrating to begin with, as Covid-19 regulations made it quite difficult to use the mic as it was a clip on, and it meant after every use we had to wipe it down and disinfect it, and it made for a very long exercise.
We were each given monologues randomly based on the things and types of characterization everyone else had seen through each lesson, but all the monologues were insulting in some way or another. It was interesting to go into a sight read without doing no previous research into the character I was reading, or the play/movie it was from, and not knowing whether they were English or not. Some monologues were more recognizable than others, like Joe for example had one from The Notebook, and Lisa had one from The Devil Wears Prada, two both really big movies. I had a monologue from the 2004 movie, Before Sunset, a movie I hadn’t really heard of, the original monologue is linked below.
I was originally going to read my monologue, linked below, to Joe.
as I felt like he was the perfect fit to be on the receiving end of it, however as it turned out I read it to Maisie O’Leary, and she ended up reacting really well to it. I thought it would’ve been performed much more aggressively, and I think had it been with the boom microphone instead of the clip-on, I could have performed it that way. Listening back to my speech in this, I think I had a really good volume and speech pattern. I wasn’t too fast, but I also wasn’t too slow. It was obvious that it was a sight reading due to the breathy tone of my voice, however I tried to make it sound as natural as I could even as I was reading from a script. In the film, the actress who says the monologue is American, however I was too anxious to attempt the American accent through the fear of getting it wrong.
I was listening to Lisa’s monologue, once again, linked below,
which was one from The Devil Wears Prada, and I had to be the character who was insulted. I think I tried my best, but I know it could’ve gone better. I didn’t really react as much as I wanted, because I didn’t have a microphone on so if I scoffed or whined, for example, it wouldn’t have been picked up. I think this reaction didn’t work as well as the others because I was already in shot as opposed to walking in like everybody else, and it felt a bit stiff.
After watching back my footage and taking in everyone’s feedback, I now understand why you don’t see screen acting footage of people in high neck collars and turtlenecks. It is very distracting for the audience, and it can be quite restrictive for the actor. It doesn‘t give the same affect that a lower cut top would do, as it engulfs the actor and makes them look much stiffer and uncomfortable than what they probably are. I will not be wearing a turtleneck in Screen Acting anytime soon.
When it came to the monologue we got the week prior about the girl who was visiting her dad’s grave, I will admit it was a very hard task for me to even sit through everyone else's. I am unable to provide footage of the monologue because I was unable to do it due to the emotional onset. While rehearsing the monologue, I had almost trained myself to reign in the emotion until at least ‘the things we learned together’, and to channel the emotion in a healthy enough way that I wouldn’t get over-emotional enough that I couldn’t perform, however, I was unable to portray that in the session.
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