Day 11. How are Emotional Scenes Created, Method Acting, Scriptwriting Plus What Actors Talk About On Set.

Our fans reached out to us with some questions, and we answered them. Tina Adams is an award-winning filmmaker and producer. Her latest documentary Concealed Identity is about an unbelievable story of survival, identity, and mystery. 

Dr. Emil Skamene's unbelievable life story teaches us about his journey as one of the most renowned geneticists and immunologists. He devoted his entire life to uncovering the secrets of genes while being unaware of his own Identity for many decades. 

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It would be a dream to film everything in the same order as it is written. But because in the movie, we have to return multiple times to the same location, those scenes are usually put together on the schedule at the same time. This means that a film is not shot in the same order as they are made on screen. Logistically, it's crazy to shoot in one location, go to the next location, and return to the same previous place. It's like moving your entire apartment every time you go somewhere. So if you try to do that just to maintain continuity in your life, it's just impossible. 

These are very old rules established during the first known human experience with theater in ancient Greece. People were writing theatrical performances given under the open sky of an amphitheater. They realized that storytelling has to have three parts. The opening where everything is set and where the conflict is exposed. Then a second phase where established characters struggle with the established conflict. Then finally, the resolution at the end. So if the resolution was tragic, it used to be called a tragedy, and if it was happy, it would be called a comedy. 

But this structure of storytelling still prevails. When you watch a film, you still need to find out who the characters are and what conflict they have, and then if you are interested, only then do you continue to watch. 

Ultimately we have a point at the end, called the catharsis, the third act. 

As a scriptwriter, you study these structures, and you will learn that, for example, the first act needs to happen within the first 7 minutes, the tone, mood, characters need to be set. 

A scene is just part of the act. For example, if you look at a set of Lego, each piece is like a scene that builds a larger structure which is the act. Similarly, this same structure scales to create a series of episodes.

The end of each episode does not have a full catharsis in a series. There is no ending between each episode. Similarly, each episode does not need to constantly establish characters during every opening scene because it was already done during the first 7 minutes of the first episode.

So if you skip the first act in the first episode, you will miss what's happening because you missed act 1.

Therefore, during the broadcast of old-style TV, the broadcaster would run a recap of the previous episodes because most people could not go back in time and watch the episode they missed. This was helpful for viewers that joined in later during a season. Today, this practice has been abandoned because you can watch any episode from a series and go back whenever you want.

Sometimes the scriptwriters surprise us by inventing a new story after the catharsis. Still, they have to introduce new characters and conflicts to continue building the new narrative. For example, we were all sure it was done at the end of the first season of The Walking Dead. The story was closed. Instead, that iconic Netflix series introduced season 2 by creating new characters and built on the idea that the main character had changed and became the evil devil he used to fight in season 1. He became the most wanted criminal in the series. The conflict then shifted into his family between him and his brother-in-law. 

I love this one; it's funny! Thank you for the question.

We probably all know that the actors in the background are just moving their mouths without making any sound during the take. The main reason is to not interfere with the dialogue of the main characters being recorded. The sound needs to be clean so that the sound editors can work and edit the file. That's why they just move their mouths and pretend to speak. 

Of course, it creates so many funny situations between them, and sometimes they begin to engage in all kinds of real silent conversations. And then when they are allowed to actually speak, the conversations are even meaningful. 

Sometimes there are also logistic reasons for silence. How do you establish the difference between the extras and the actors? The unions created a simple rule, if you speak during the recording, i.e., you have a line, you would be considered a talent and not an extra. Then the producer must include your name in the credits. As a result, you are upgraded in your role and paid more. For this reason, film productions prefer silence in the case of extras because it's a headache to establish someone within a union if they are not already part of one. 

Some productions avoid these situations by engaging the extras in silence while moving their mouths without speaking. 

It happened to me on the set of a movie my friend Lydia Amor participated in. She was in the background and entered a scene with the leading actor where she spoke just one line. Then after the film came out, she watched the movie and heard herself speak. So she contacted her Union, Actra, and was able to go back and get a bonus for that line. 

There was another story, where a young woman was cast during a film. She was recorded as a young woman dropping some of her travel documents on a train. Unfortunately, the producers cut that scene out from the final film during post-production. So imagine her shock during the premiere. She was in utter tears and devastated. No amount of money can cover that feeling. 

Indeed, this is the world of acting. You never know if your scene will be used or eliminated. 

One of those heartbreaking tales I remember was about Quebec Actress Sophie Lorain. She had a major role in the Oscar film, The Barbarian Invasions by Denys Arcand. The film won over 50 awards, including Best Writing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film, among many. But unfortunately, she was cut out from the international edit and was only included in the French one that aired primarily in Canada. So she did not win the Oscar, even though the international version did win those Oscar awards. So imagine her grief and turmoil; I can say it's strange and traumatizing. 

It happened to me in the movie Polytechnique by Denis Villeneuve. I was still mentioned in the final credits and still receive royalties. You can check my name there, Tina Adams, but I am not in the movie; my scene was cut out.  

Why would an actor use method acting?

Method acting is a technique that allows you to become a character.

As an actor, you do not play yourself; you need to find the expressive tools within you to convince the people watching to believe that you are indeed that character in everyday life. For that reason, actors are going through training to prepare themselves to make others believe in their performances.

For example, the most important thing is that you change yourself into the character and personalize the personality you are playing. The idea is that you are doing it from the inside, so the method refers to a technique you use to change your own expressions that create a new character.

It is a very interesting training system developed originally in Russia and used almost 100 years ago by actors. In 1937 when Stalin began the genocide of his people, a Russian named Mikhail (Michael) Checkov escaped to the US and took with him this methodology, which he then introduced to the American film scene. 

How do filmmakers create compelling emotional scenes?

There is a short film made by Hitchcock that I like. It is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It's all about editing. 

Imagine a picture of a beautiful young woman by a tree as she turns her eyes toward the camera and smiles. Then cut to an old man standing further away from her behind another tree gazing at her with a creepy ill-intentioned smile. You feel that something bad is about to happen to the young women. 

Now,

Imagine the same scene of the young lady, but instead of a creeping old man, you have an older gentleman, well dressed, walking towards her with loving eyes, ice cream in his hands, and a sun umbrella coming to join her because he is her grandfather.

The first scene of the young lady is exactly the same, but the reactions are completely different.

This sequencing phenomenon to create different emotions in the viewer was first explored 120 years ago by Eisenstein using black and white film. It was based on Pavlov's experiment in psychology that showed how learning and conditioning worked. From that study, film, and editing slowly began implementing certain conditioning on creating specific emotional responses. Before Eisenstein employed this tool, he made all kinds of trail tests to find how it really worked. He realized it all depended on the scene you put after that first scene and how you build the sequence of images. It's pure psychology.