What is scare acting?
Scare acting is a type of performance where actors scare and entertain people at spooky events such as haunted houses and theme parks. It’s aim is to bring nightmare to life.
What skills do you need to do scare acting ?
Skills that actors require are :
.Voice Acting- Actors need to be able to manipulate the voice in different ways, like tone, volume, accent and breath. This allows the character to be more believable and scary towards the audience.
.Body movement- Body movement adds to the characterisation, if an actor just walks normally toward the audience it takes away from the scarceness.
.Facial Expressions – Same with body movement facial expressions adds to the character and creates more tension
.Improvisation- Improvisation is important as they don’t have a script to read from, so they need to.
Improvisation is used by actors whilst interacting with the visitors, this allows the scares to keep coming and feel more natural. Another good skill to have is confidence, if you don’t have confidence then it’s not going to be very entertaining or scary for the participants.
This is all needed to explicit strong responses from the audience.
Acting does and don’t:
Do’s :
- Learn set and props so you don’t make mistakes
- Jump infront of people from an angle
- Be aware of your surroundings
- Enjoy your self
- Pace yourself
Doing this will create a more real and believeable experience for the audience, rather than someone jumping put and shouting boo.
Don’ts
- Don’t say ‘boo’ or ‘get out’
- Don’t break character
- Don’t jump infront of a group of people
- Don’t touch people
- Follow some behind your area
This is unprofessional and unbelievable toward the audience. Not following these rules could be dangerous and could cause injuries, unbelievability to the audience and the actor.
How will this help me? – This will allow me to understand how to be an improved scare actor the more that I learn the more of an advantage I will be at, when it’s my turn to perform. It also ensures that I will remain professional throughout, which will help me with future projects.
Different companies that use scare acting:
- Light cinema bradford
- Zombie infection
- Alton Towers resort
- Merlin Entertainment
Zombie uprising : Zombie uprising is a company, with a live action zombie survival experience, where the audience will have to find a way to survive a zombie apocalypse. They use various of different scenarios that guests can choose from, such as The lab, The woods, Containment and the Circus. The scare actors are used to bring the experiences to life.
Reveiws:
“It’s truly terrifying and scarily realistic.”
“The zombie part of the experience was great, the actors were brilliant.”
“It’s terrifying in a good way.”
These reviews, express the audiences point of view of the experience and how the actors were.
Sfx Makeup :
What is it ? Sfx other wise known as special effects makeup, is the art of using makeup and prosthetics and other materials to create realistic and non realistic illusions that will appear on camera or stage.
History: The art of sfx makeup took of in the 1930’s, with the black an dwhite film Frankinstien. Jack peirce, the head makeup artist on set, used cotton and spirit gum to make prosthetics and used green makeup so it would appear whiter on the camera.
Now a days the film sfx industries do life casting. This is wear the actors head is covered in silicone and then plaster to make a 3d replica of their face. This way makeup artists can create custom prosthetics to properly fit the actors face.
The imprtance of sfx: Special effects and makeup are important as they bring visions of the character to life, it adds realism and authenticity, with males the actors feel more like their character’s and less like themselves. It creates a realism for the audience. It also gives the characters a specific feature that is easily recognisable for the audience.
Sfx and makeup in Hocus pocus:
Billy Butcherson – Artist Tony Gardener used homemade prosthetics, used from liquid latex, tissue nad a spatula, to create Billy’s zombie look.
Thachery Binks- The movie used around eight black cats in total aswell as using a animotronic puppet, to make him talk.
Winifred Sanderson- Winnie had teeth made from cold cure dental acrylic, which was stained by hand. And her eyebrows where coverd in concealer and setting powder to give the effect that she has no eyebrows. The rest of her makeup is quite bold.
Mary Sanderson- Mary doesn’t have any prosthetics or a lot of make up on, it’s a lot more nateural and earthy makeup, without browns, but she does have a bright red lip.
Sarah Sanderson- Same as Mary, she doesn’t wear prosthetics, but her make up is a bit bolder, she has pale skin with a dark smokey eye and lipstick.
How is this relevant ? Its relevant because learning about the different way that makeup is for each of our characters, not only make us easily recognisable to the audience, but also allows us to really feel like or characters. And they all have different looks/ prosthetics, so we stand out from each other, which will help with our chacterisation.
Costumes : In hocus pocus the witches wear 17th century style dresses, boots and capes, each with a signature colour.
Winifred Sanderson: Winifred wears a green dress covered in mystical symbols, each one different, they don’t particularly mean anything though.
Mary Sanderson: Mary has a talent for potion making so her dress can be interpretated into looking like historical baking clothing. She wears earthy colours, like brown and orange.
Sarah Sanderson: Sarah wears pretty colours like pink and purple, inspired by sleeping beauty as she considered to be the pretty sister.
The Sanderson sisters
The three main characters in the movie are the witches Winifred, Mary and Sarah. They were created by producer David Kirschner and written Mick Garris. The Disney film bases the sisters on inspiration from the real life salem witch trials. Each sister has their own unique personality and power. Winifred is the oldest and the ‘leader’s the girls, she has electrokinesis and can shoot green lightning from her finger tips. Mary is the middle sister and her power is enhanced smell, so she can smell where the children are they need to get, and finally Sarah has the power is that she has a siren like voice, so she can lure the kids of salem. Together they all worship Satan and set out to take kids souls to remain young for eternity.
How does this help me? After watching the movie, I can see how my character is and how she will react with her sisters. Mary and Winifred have that bond were Mary looks up and wants admiration from her older sister, so that is something that I will hopefully interpret when I’m performing. By sticking close to them, and looking for reassurance from Winnie. They all have a special bond but they do bicker sometimes in a funny way, so that is something that I’m also looking forward to doing.
Mary Sanderson
For my character I am playing Mary Sanderson. Mary is the middle sister and Winifred’s right hand women who often calms her down and compliments her and she can track children through her sense of smell.
Her personality makes her evil and greedy, but also sensible and observant of everything around her, not to mention funny. She has a unique look to her, with a witches hat like hair, crooked mouth and various different sounds that she makes. In the movie she has a specific character trait, a crooked mouth, this makes her easily recognisable and known for. The actor Kathy Nijimy Improvised this on set and its something that the kept in, later on in the sequel the actor changed sides of her mouth as it was harder for her to do. She also improvies the calming circle that the do on the movie.
In an interview from the Today show in 1993, Kathy explained how she originally didn’t want to do the role and was hesitant as the was worried that by doing the film it would offend real life witches.
“I didn’t want to offended or stereotype real witches”
“I just feel supportive of all groups, whether they’re women’s groups or gay groups or racial groups”
She wanted to be respectful to the spiritual groups and wrote letters to the producers about her concerns and spoke to a feminist Gloria Steinem about it on set. However she told her that ut was midwives and health care professionals who were accused of being witches in the past as they would sometimes preform abortions.
How does this help me? This is important as it helps me understand how I need to use characterisation and body language to convey the role. Knowing that Kathy was respectful and used a lot of improv will allow me to really get into the role of my character. It helps me understand her motives and actions, and gives me an idea of who Mary is, and how she will react to things. It also helps interacting with the audience more easier and believable.