Film Actor

Definition

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An Actor or Actress is a person who portrays a character in a film production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or modern media such as film, radio, and television. The actor's interpretation of a role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or a fictional character. This can also be considered an "actor's role," which was called this due to scrolls being used in the theatres. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art.

History of Acting

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The first recorded case of a performing actor occurred in 534 BC when the Greek performer Thespis stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Before Thespis' act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, dance, and third-person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are commonly called Thespians. The exclusively male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and satyr play.  This developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of situation comedies, to high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies.

Film Actors in the 19^th Century:

In the 19th century, the negative reputation of actors was largely reversed, and acting became an honored, popular profession and art.  The rise of the actor as a celebrity provided the transition, as audiences flocked to their favorite "stars". A new role emerged for the actor-managers, who formed their own companies and controlled the actors, the film productions, and the financing.  When successful, they built up a permanent clientele that flocked to their film productions. They could enlarge their audience by going on tour across the country, performing a repertoire of well-known plays, such as those by Shakespeare. The newspapers, private clubs, pubs, and coffee shops rang with lively debates evaluating the relative merits of the stars and the productions. Henry Irving (1838–1905) was the most successful of the British actor-managers.  Irving was renowned for his Shakespearean roles, and for such innovations as turning out the house lights so that attention could focus more on the stage and less on the audience. His company toured across Britain, as well as Europe and the United States, demonstrating the power of star actors and celebrated roles to attract enthusiastic audiences. His knighthood in 1895 indicated full acceptance into the higher circles of British society.

Film Actors in 20^th century:

By the early 20th century, the economics of large-scale movie productions displaced the actor-manager model. It was too hard to find people who combined a genius at acting as well as management, so specialization divided the roles as stage managers and later theatre directors emerged. Financially, much larger capital was required to operate out of a major city. The solution was corporate ownership of chains of theatres, such as by the Theatrical Syndicate, Edward Laurillard, and especially The Shubert Organization. By catering to tourists, theatres in large cities increasingly favored long runs of highly popular plays, especially musicals. Big-name stars became even more essential.

Different Screen Acting

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Actors working in theatre, film, television, and radio have to learn specific skills. Techniques that work well in one type of acting may not work well in another type of acting.

Actors in Silent Films:

From 1894 to the late 1920s, movies were Silent Films. Silent Film Actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy. The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville theatre was an especially popular origin for many American Silent Film Actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917. Directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen.

Pioneering Film Directors in Europe and the United States recognized the different limitations and freedoms of the mediums of stage and screen by the early 1910s. Silent films became less vaudevillian in the mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D W Griffith, cinematography became less stage-like, and the then-revolutionary close-up shot allowed subtle and naturalistic acting. In America, D.W. Griffith's company Biograph Studios, became known for its innovative direction and acting, conducted to suit the cinema rather than the stage. Griffith realized that theatrical acting did not look good on film and required his actors and actresses to go through weeks of film acting training.

Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing the crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles.

According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of Wisconsin, American silent cinema beganto see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic, including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses.

The Advent of Sound in Film:

Film Actors have to learn to get used to and be comfortable with a camera being in front of them. Movie Actors need to learn to find and stay on their "mark." This is a position on the floor marked with tape. This position is where the lights and camera focus are optimized. Cinema Actors also need to learn how to prepare well and perform well on-screen tests. Screen tests are a filmed audition of part of the script.

Unlike theatre actors, who develop characters for repeat performances, film actors lack continuity, forcing them to come to all scenes, sometimes shot in reverse of the order in which they ultimately appear with a fully developed character already.

Since film captures even the smallest gesture and magnifies it..., cinema demands a less flamboyant and stylized bodily performance from the screen actor than does the theatre. The performance of emotion is the most difficult aspect of film acting to master: ...the film actor must rely on subtle facial tics, quivers, and tiny lifts of the eyebrow to create a believable character.  Some theatre stars ...have made the theatre-to-cinema transition quite successfully (Laurence Olivier, Glenn Close, and Julie Andrews, for instance).

Television Actors:

On a television set, there are typically several cameras angled at the set. Actors who are new to on-screen acting can get confused about which camera to look into. TV actors need to learn to use lav mics (Lavaliere microphones). Television actors need to understand the concept of "frame". "The term frame refers to the area that the camera's lens is capturing." Within the acting industry, there are four types of television roles one could land on a show. Each type varies in prominence, frequency of appearance, and pay. The first is known as a series regular—the main actors on the show as part of the permanent cast. Film Actors in recurring roles are under contract to appear in multiple episodes of a series. A co-star in a film role is a small speaking role that usually only appears in one episode. A guest star is a larger role than a co-star role, and the character is often the central focus of the episode or integral to the plot.