I approached the character development process by doing my research into my characters background and time era, I used my characters background as a baseline to develop my interpretation of how I thought the character I played should act such as facial expressions and body language.
The strategies and or techniques that I employed to effectively convey my emotions on screen are to know my own emotions for example what makes me sad, cry, happy or angry etc and how to convey that or imitate that emotion, using my own experiences to relate to an emotion of feeling my character may be feeling, by studying what was making my character feel the way he did, for example ‘what ground his gears’ and time era and how people acted in society during that era.
I ensured authenticity and believability in my screen acting performance by making sure that my facial expressions and body language mimicked my lines and tied into how it may be interpreted from the script my character would act. I also studied and watched the scene my group was working with to give me a better idea of how I could give the perception of believability and authenticity through my performance.
The role of physicality and body language in enhancing my screen presence is to make my performance more realistic and believable to give my performance more emphasis and to give an audience a clearer perception of my character. Body language and physicality also gives an audience the impression of confidence in a character, and a cleared insight into my characters thoughts, desires and emotions.
I think that i handled the challenges of working with different camera angles and shot compositions quite well considering i’m not entirely comfortable being in front of a camera due to confidence issues however I tried to work as effectively and professionally as i could under the circumstances, to take direction and listen to instruction from our ‘director’, being aware of where the camera angle was going to be positioned while trying to be as natural and realistic in front of the camera while pretending it was not really there.
I tried to recreate a Birmingham accent as effectively as i could regardless to the fact that i don’t think it sounded very ‘brummy’ however i tried to give my voice a deeper tone to give the impression of me being a male character despite me obviously not being. In our script there was a moment where myself and the other main character who my character has a conversation with brung our tones down quite low and almost in a whispered hush which in turn gave the scene more tension and mystery to our characters.
I prepared for a managed memorizing my script by going over and over the lines until they stuck in my head part by part for example i took the first 4 lines and went over them repeatedly until they stuck in my head then i added another couple and went through them from the start of my script and repeated until I had memorized the whole script, In my group I had the most lines and this did pose as a issue in one perspective as it felt as if I was more or less having a one sided conversation and when it came to rehearsing it with my cast mates it got confusing as i kept forgetting the other characters lines in between mine however with more rehearsals this problem became less of a challenge.
The importance of rehearsal and collaboration in improving my screen acting is to allow myself and others to voice their ideas, give more thought into how a character/s could say something or give body language or facial language to reflect that to an audience, it is also important to collaborate in order to improve a scene by taking peer feedback and taking direction and working as a team.
I adapted my acting style in regards to screen versus stage acting by toning tone my projection, body language and facial expressions while screen acting as within screen acting facial expressions and body language are a lot more subtle as you do not need to over exaggerate like on stage actors do while performing to reflect that to their audience. although screen actors audience will be watching from the comfort of their own homes, screen actors are a lot more up close and personal in regards to the fact that they will be quite close to the camera while recording a scene where as stage actors have a certain space/ boundary from their audience hence having to over exaggerate their tones, body language and facial expression in order to be able to convey this to their audiences.
Below is a link to our finished film.
https://bradfordcollegeac.sharepoint.com/:v:/s/TEAMTEAMUALLevelTwoandThreeDiplomainPerformingArts2324/ES1Z75Az-3VDtTKTZHxAyp4BemTyO1m6BZkrbn-2HDURaw
Above is some pictures taken during the recording of our film.
AUTHENTICATION
I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself.
Candidate’s full name: AMBER DREWERY