Business Insider: If anyone tells you there are objective standards, they're full of s--t. This is a matter of personal taste. There are trends. There are many people who loved Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting. But if you don't, you're not wrong. At worst, you're eccentric.
21 comments:
This article rubbed me the wrong way. Even though Marcus Geduld started this article stating that we all have our own opinions I still felt that this article had no foundation in it. I feel that it was very feathery and just fluff. There is no meat in this article. It sounded like a junior high paper in my opinion. Acting is a hard area to judge because everyone has their own opinions and there aren’t dos and don’ts in the business. Every actors success in the film industry is based on if people like them and most of the time people only like them because of how they look and act when off camera rarely does it have to do with their actual talent on screen. I also feel like we shouldn’t be guidelines on what makes a good actor because everyone approaches the job differently and has a different approach about it, no one will ever have the same acting style.
I would like to expand the foundation of the article a little. It says that good acting and bad actin is just an opinion. That extends to movies. No matter how many people say a movie, or an actor, is a certain way, that does not make it so. There are extremes where its easy to tell, but there is a vast middle ground of argument. But anyway, I wanted to extend the sentiment because of the Star Wars movies. When I was growing up I saw them in order; no not that order. I saw the phantom menace first, the return of the jedi last, and you know what, I loved all of them. My whole life everyone has whined that the prequels are terrible but honestly I have always suspected that is just a cultural unwillingness to change. Everyone was so upset about many small details, but its not like the originals were different. A lot of the dialogue and acting in the originals is just as absurd as in the prequels. But I digress, my point is that I have the right to enjoy all 6 of the Star Wars movies, and the next 10 that come out during my life time.
Before I discuss this article's contents, I feel like I should just address pronoun usage so that it isn't looked over. All of the pronouns were 'he' or a certain type with masculine implication. The examples were fairly split throughout the 2nd 3rd and 4th points, but the 1st and fifth especially consisted of mostly men. Just thought that that shouldn't go unnoticed, although it doesn't have to do much with the article's content.
This author isn't wrong. But, it is clear that they have not gone through extensive acting training, and are unaware of the language that actors use. It is also notable that they are commenting on the world of film acting, which is heavily influenced by Stanislavski's early work on emotional recall and affective memory, and the Meisner technique based in listen and response. Stanislavski, as he continued his research, denounced his early work that has come to shape so much of acting in the film industry in the US. Now to discuss the ways in which the author thinks acting can be judged, because they are not specific enough, and are not discussed at the route. When they say that the actor must be vulnerable, they mean an emotional availability, when they say be surprising, they mean follow their impulses, when they say 'make you believe they are actually going through the journey' they mean understanding the arc of the scene. These are tangible things that can be observed about the actor's craft, and therefore differentiate from the earlier claims of the article, that say that the interpretation of the work is highly subjective.
The even deeper issue here with this article is that it proves again that our craft does not have a common enough language among its people, particularly in actors and directors. This is constantly annoying to me, mostly because it requires everybody to figure out what each other's language is, and alter or change their's to fit the work. This can be solved in two ways. 1: we can have directors that simply ask for a product, and actors who translate that request into their own language and come to create that product (I don't like this particular method, as it assumes that all actors are trained enough to know what they are doing, and that the work of the actor is as simple as a product. 2: every company has to create their own language for working (I do like this, as it allows for constant malleability and discovery in the way we communicate as a company. However, because it is essentially required at every new project or group of people, it is also time wasted in the process). Ideally, everyone spoke the same language, or chose not to do so intentionally, in the effort to create new language that brings a different result. Then we will not have article-writers claiming to understand the actor's craft, without understanding the work necessary for that craft to exist.
This article does fell very opinionated. I know the author brought that up beforehand, but I feel like it could be more objective. That being said, some of the aspects that he brought up, in a broader sense, are actually signs of good acting. This is most important in stage acting. Even though the quality of acting is often subjective, it is mostly universally accepted that if the actor sounds like the words are their own, it does have a greater impact on the audience. Sometimes that can be harder to achieve when the character is a TV or movie actor because of the distance between the audience and the actors, but when the actor is with you live, and they successfully connect themselves to the characters in a way that they actually move the audience and allow them to believe it, the results can be incredible.
I also hate that the article was focusing so much on male actors, like Jack said. I would love to see great examples of acting done by women. But that gets into the bigger conversation about how women do not have the best roles to act in.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I frequently find myself lost in the world of “was that good acting?” I find it very hard to tell sometimes, but great acting seems to always be readily apparent. This article also reminds me that what the actors in our industry have to do is equally difficult to what we do as technicians. It’s not the same kind of difficult but it is certainly equal. I think that when actors don’t express their gratitude for what we do it can feel like we are getting ignored by the face of our industry. The first thought is to say “they don’t do anything nearly as difficult as we do!” But in reality many of us would turn and run from a situation in which we had to bare your soul to anyone more than your best friend. Actors do that everyday in front of complete strangers.
I really do not like to think about acting as something is either good or bad. I say this because it is something that is very subjective and not objective. Certain styles of acting fit certain characters way better than others. What I think this article really does is heighten the importance of casting in the live storytelling process. You can have the most amazing actor in the history of the world play a part, and they will do a decent job. However, if they are not right for the part the character will just not come through. They can be doing the best acting ever, and still the character will not shine through. Everyone has their own type that really comes through and makes certain characters seem larger than life. It is then when you get the right actor in the right role that truly incredible entertainment acting occurs.
I'd say the best part of this article was the part that pointed out that a good actor needs to surprise us. I've hardly considered how many average emotions we're used to seeing, and how that can affect how we feel about the actor's ability to act. I agree that it's all simply a matter of preference, of course, but it is interesting to see how these opinions seem to be based, and I really thing that is such a large part of it. We, as audience members, usually love to be surprised. Every criticism I hear about movies is typically something along the lines of "I liked it, but it was just so predictable." I guess that is why people like Johnny Depp are so popular. They're so weird, and it's like a breath of fresh air in movieland.
I agree that deciding whether an actor is good or not is subjective. There are some basic requirements to being a good actor though. The five that were stated in the article are very accurate and easy to base talent off of. An actor needs to be believable or there is no way the audience is able to get into the story. If I do not think the actor is actually going through what they say they are then I am not going to be interested. Actors need to be very open and adapt to change quickly and well. They need to be able to take notes and fix problems and improve. Knowing how to listen is very important and not always thought about. They cannot just wait for their next line and then say it. They need to be reacting and listening to the other actors and what they are actually saying, not just the words that are coming out of the script.
I cannot tell good acting from bad acting that well. I’m not going to lie about that at all. Whenever an actor comes up to me and asks if their monologue or scene is believable I just smile and wave. I don’t know if it is because I cannot believe anyone becoming someone else, or I just am not invested, but I always see the actor behind the character. If I do not personally know the actor, I can enjoy the show and believe that they are the character, but once I know them, the magic is gone. That’s probably why I hate most of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama shows; I look at the actors and laugh because I know that they’re often nothing like their characters on stage. If I went on stage in my typical punk outfit and started talking in Shakespearean, you would laugh. That’s exactly how I feel about acting.
I had some problems with this article because, despite the fact that the author mentioned that opinions on acting are subjective, he did not really take any of the subjectivity out of it; in fact, he just put more of his own bias into the situation. The only point that I felt would resonate with every audience member was the idea of surprise. Surprise hints at the concepts of newness. The actor is experiencing the content for the first time every night so that the audience member can experience it with them.
I wish the article had taken some objective fundamentals of acting and created benchmarks for deciding if the actor was good or not, and then described how we can use those benchmarks with our own personal bias and careful casting choices create the concept of “good” and “bad” acting. That is what I thought the article was going to address.
I think the arts in general is just inevitably subjective - this article reminds me of how often in Project Runway one judge would hate a piece of garment and another judge would absolutely love it. Disagreement is not rare, and often even constructive. However, when something is actually bad, there is a line. I think the bottom line is, as the article mentions, that the actor's portrayal of the character is actually believable. If all an actor does is make the audience aware of the fact that s/he is acting and fails to engage the audience's willing suspension of disbelief, then the actor is not so good at what s/he's doing. Like others have mentioned, I only found the first three paragraphs to be useful. As for the points that the author listed out as his definition of a "good actor", I didn't even get pass the third point because he already established that everyone has different opinions of what good acting means, and this is his; which doesn't really matter to me. I can see where the author is coming from, but I don't think this is a very successful article.
This article was very interesting to read, but it also kind of annoyed me. The author discusses the subjectivity involved in determining whether or not acting is good, but the article itself completely disregards that statement. Two people can see the same thing and have enormously different opinions on it. For example, a year or two ago I saw a show Off Broadway called Fly By Night. For me, it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had in a theatre, if not the most incredible. I was completely engaged in every chatscter's story throughout the show, and every plot twist or story development tore at my heart. However, as I was leaving the show, I overheard some people next to me talking about how they couldn't really get into the story and how it was actually pretty boring. To this day, I will never fully comprehend how anyone could have seen that show and not been absolutely floored by it, but those people, and many others, did not like it. In theatre, and in all art, everything is subjective. There are definitely certain conventions in each field that make a piece more widely appreciated, like the article discusses, but there will never be a unanimous opinion on anything, especially art.
I have always considered the defining line for what makes acting good or bad is if I can see the actor make a decision in front of me. At the core that what it means to be human because every day we are faced with choices and we just decide how we are going to handle them. So like the article stated an actor is believable when they are one hundred percent present in the moment and are actively listening to the other actors because that is sometime how and when we are making choices. This also allows for us the audience to better believe what is happening in front of us and connect to because the actors are taking an active role in immersing themselves in the world of the story. I was happy to see that the author added in the part about how our personal bias can often time affect and detract from our ability to gauge whether or not someone is a good actor. It just makes sense because as human beings we like to form attachments to character and we also are noisy gossip creatures that if we learn something that leaves a lasting impression in our minds its sometimes too difficult to unattach it to everything that actor says or does.
I am hugely critical about acting- coming from an acting background. But this does highlight some of the key points to convincing and audience, and moreover to being a real, human character. I'd say of these, listening is the most important one. I often look around onstage during a scene, and if an actor is not listening, or isn't totally invested in the other one I think that it is totally obivous.
when it comes to Phillip Seymour Hoffman specifically, I think it has to do with, how you know in no matter what cahracter he's playing, there's something to empathize with. For instance, I recently watched Boogie Nights for the first time, where he plays this low-level worker for the porn company the film centers around. He's kind of scuzzy and is obsessed with Mark Wahlberg's character- not exactly a likeable guy. But he in his small role is remmebered more than many of the other actors, for how he made this chracter who could've been a charicature and a gay joke on that, into a chracter I had sympathy for and understood, while still finding comedy in him. I found comedy in his line delivery and nuances, rather than at the character himself- something I find to be the mark of a truly well-played role.
This article touches a very subjective and relative subject. "How can you tell good acting from bad acting?" That's something I couldn't answer. I could watch a performance and think it was the best piece of theatre I have ever seen, but the person sitting next to me might hate it. This article touches some points or "guidelines" to decide whether or not the acting is real. Yes, these are all things I look for when I watch a performance but if I don't see these things, I don't automatically assume that the acting is bad, I just try to stay in the moment and try to relate to the character in a different way. Maybe the actor is playing it differently than seen before. This is aomethinf to take into account. Also, if I am watching a professional show, odds are, the actor had to audition and go through screenings to get this role, they're good.
I’m very glad that people recognize that acting is not a concrete medium to judge. Because I feel like sometimes people treat art as though it were a math problem; with only one correct answer. There’s a lot of pressure on the artistic community (and actors in specific) to satisfy every audience member, to have every review be glowing. But the reality is sometimes you just can’t please everyone. Having people dislike or disagree with your art isn’t a sign of failure; it’s a sign of individuality. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some standards though, like what the author was talking about. It’s a really flexible matter, and I wish people would treat it as such. For me, it isn’t as much about the delivery that makes a good actor, it’s about the passion and the dedication. It could be the worst performance in the world, but if you can tell the actor was passionate about what they are doing and really tried their hardest, then that’s good enough for me.
So like anything, evaluating the “goodness” of acting is an extremely subjective thing to do. Good means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and good acting in some cultures is bad acting in other cultures. Though the article does admit this, it doesn’t exactly truly listen to the fact that nontraditional opinions are valid. It lists a bunch of common reasons to like actors and then justifies them all, but it doesn’t really give way to valid reasons not to like these qualities in an actor.
For the purposes of making an argument, let’s all look at the acting of William Shatner, particularly in his role as Captain Kirk in ‘Star Trek’. He certainly doesn’t make me actually believe that he’s going through what the character is actually going through, Shatner is almost famous the ridiculousness of his acting style. But, it fits his role in the tv show, so we accept it as good in context of the performance. He absolutely has trouble listening, if you’ve watched the original series then you know what I’m talking about. But all these things doesn’t make him a bad actor, or the character less relatable. I’m not trying to argue that Shatner’s performances as Kirk are models of the best acting ever, but the duality of good and bad is a little to restrictive when judging art sometimes.
While the author is fairly annoying in telling us that acting is subjective and then going on to give us a list of criteria for what makes a good actor... He has some fair points.
The most important thing for me that was also on the author's list is that I feel the actor is truly going through what the character is going through. In high school, I was a captain of the speech team, which is essentially competitive acting. I had to coach several students on their 10-minute pieces, and it was definitely an exercise in figuring out what exactly makes a strong performance and when exactly an actor has understood his or her character. For me, it has always been in the eyes. I can always tell whether an actor's eyes belong to him or to his character, and one of the most common things I called my speech competitors out on was their eyes. When you're acting as another person, you have to truly see what they see. You have to put yourself inside of their mind. What I would often say is, "I still see Sarah. There's too much Sarah here for me to believe that you're Jill. What do you see? How do you feel? Abandon Sarah, it's Jill's turn to see and feel."
Yay I love this article! I totally clicked on it thinking that it was going to be some kind of shallow Buzzfeed guide that just has a handy list of tips and tricks that can help an idiot spot some stupid little thing on the screen so that he can feel special and smart and important. But the article had some good insights and ideas! My favorite thing he talked about was how actor needs to have the ability to surprise us, this is probably the hardest thing for a bad actor to understand, but it is so so incredibly important. When an actor does all their research and character development, that is great and it helps the audience understand whats going on. But when an actor makes an interesting choice that comes from a truthful place, that is when the audience really becomes part of the piece and that is when the piece goes from just basic entertainment to real-life, breathing theatre.
This article was interesting. The author made some valid points, provided platforms for dissent, and wrote well. But he essentially undermined his entire article within the introduction he provided, where he emphasized that this was only *his* definition. Okay, yes, it is only *your* definition, and it likely will not match mine because we are examining something that necessitates subjectivity. So why should I continue reading a definition that is proclaimed by its author to be potentially irrelevant to me? Like Dick tells us all the time, we should never undermine or disclaim our work before presenting. This article is a great example of how the initial disclaimer degrades and devalues all the content following, despite much of it being valid, or at the very least, thought provoking. The liberal sprinkling of "in my opinions" that dapple the essay also serves to undercut the strength of the author's writing and thoughts.
Many of these factors listed resonate with me as a performer--I think this analysis of "good acting" is fairly accurate as these are qualities that many actors are taught to investigate when rehearsing and honing their craft.
Listening and being vulnerable are two that are unsurprisingly the most difficult for actors including myself--when you merely learn lines and conjure up facial expressions to correlate with dialogue, the result is a rigid character and an actor who is putting themselves on auto-pilot. Breathing exercises are usually the most successful method in learning to stay connected to oneself while performing--it allows you to retain a key part of yourself while speaking someone else's lines. Staying in the moment can lead to many more exciting discoveries of a character and better respond to the environment around you, organically creating tone and reactions to moments that would otherwise appear stagnant.
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