Online Acting School of Feel, Think, Do

(A normal view of people in dramatic situations.) Main thrust of Drama is to move people.

(A normal view of people in comedic situations.) Main thrust of Comedy is to amuse people.

Feel, think, do technique.
Who am I? What is the reality of this: what kind of human being am I? Never ask yourself what I would do, think "who am I", who the character thinks he is. Acting is 'being' other people.
What do I feel? Feel: emotion has to be strong, but reduced, must not look like acting. Emotions are the life's blood of acting.
What do I want? Think: objective is not just what you think, it's what you do. Objective is the conscious intent of the character. It all becomes subliminal in your acting.
Wire going between the two actors. Do: talk or act, memorize your lines so that you don't have to think about them. Just really see and hear other actor, you will react.

The future of acting now is the value to camera. When they roll the camera, it is the actor's world. When you act for the camera, keep it simple:

Now, it is all very strange to beginning actors on this technique, but follow exactly what I am teaching. Start with the emotion, work it up to the peak of exercise, and don't recover. Let it effect your breathing, let it go through your whole body, and now only think one thing, like an obsession, your objective and don't move, don't change, don't get ready to act and don't think any words at all. Words should not come out like saying them aloud. Don't learn how they sound. I don't want that, I want actors to get away from doing dialogue like a song, I want you only to think your objective and the words will come out different.

The first thing an actor must learn is getting into imaginary world.
An actor must accept the world of illusion, and on entering a dream, an actor must stay in the dream.
If I were teaching a person how to swim and if they right off feared the water I would make him or her eventually get into the pool and teach them how to swim until it was second home to them. It is the same with acting, people start out not wanting to leave reality to do scenes in the imaginary world. So, having them do scene after scene after scene, the imaginary world will eventually become like a second home to them. Tiny Ron Taylor

The second thing an actor must learn is how to talk to somebody with the wire (the little electrodes) between the two actors.
Do not try to reach other actor by leaning or distortion of yourself, just reach other actor with will, brain and feeling,

Chose emotion and objective, your body will behave in the character.
It is about true feelings and true objectives: do not to be artificial, but be real.

How to find emotions?
Emotion is a feeling large enough to change your life or destroy it.
1. Always start with emotion first... feel, think, do.
2. Don't act. Just feel. Stay honest.
3. We know what words mean: anger, envy, horror, anxiety, joy, etc.
4. The emotion like "anger" is all the times you had this emotion in life, not just one instance in your life.
5. Acting is having the emotion that best fits the scene.
6. Emotion no matter how tense cannot effect muscles. Stay loose.
7. Approach your work with body relaxed so the emotion can take over.
8. Science fact: all emotions are all the same in physical signs with heart rate and electrical impulses.
9. An emotion isn't a constant, an emotion goes up and down, it goes all different ways.
10. Avoid compassion or pity as your character's emotion.
11. An actor can not try to play effects of scene. If actor works without emotion, it will look like acting. An actor can't lie or do it without passion.
12. The whole idea is to see how much emotion and inner life actors can give their characters. The actors must give themselves over to the moment, they must soak themselves to be real.
13. Actor can't pretend things, it has to be emotional experience.
14. A State of Being: enormous things going on inside an actor. The state an actor must be in by working up an emotion.
15. Don't act without an emotion, more important than words, even the objective.

Definition of an objective:
Objective is the conscious intent of the character. (he needs a woman to give him trouble.)
1. Objective should be simple, active phrase, starting with the word "to"... to win his confidence, to get the girl, to keep the money, etc.
2. Objectives must always be difficult to attain. Difficulty is the fuel that lights our acting fires.
3. Objective must always be in the language of the character, limited to his own background and education.
4. There's no one correct answer when you're looking for the objective. Pick the one that seems best for the character and one that 'turns you on' as the actor.
5. Human will is great, you can hypnotize yourself by just mesmerize yourself with thinking of one thing your objective.
6. Actor must think of character's objective over and over to be oblivious of everybody; crew, director, etc.
7. When you act you should concentrate on your character's objective and nothing else. Your discipline has to be complete, that is how you stay in character.
8. The discipline in your mind is not to think, 'how am I doing' or the words, because you'll forget. Instead, it is to concentrate on the character's objective. Thinking just that is controlled obsession.
9. Objective is not just what you think, but what you do.
10. Think objective - the body knows what to do!
11. People tell you to focus, but never tell you what to focus on. Focus on your objective.

One of the cardinal rules is you stay with one emotion and one objective until something occurs to change it. (You don't drift off because of the dialogue.) You only change because of new information or a new event.

How to do instant acting on the set with the
feel, think, do technique.

Start with the three steps shown below in getting ready to act in front of a camera, because you only have about three seconds to get into character as the clap board is put in front of you.

Step one:
Who am I?

Who the character thinks they are.

Give 'Who am I?' a triggering tag name to the history you have given your character... "doctor, policeman, nurse, lawyer, housewife, killer, etc."

So, when you say who am I? "a doctor", it triggers the life history you have planned for your character... "he is married, is a great lover, but is unhappy at his job, etc."

Step two:
What do I feel?

Then start body with emotion.

Breathe in, then out with emotion you have picked for the character, "desire, grief, joy, greed, regret, awe, anixety, disgust, horror, etc."

So, you say to yourself, what do I feel? "grief." You only do the emotion once, don't keep repeating the emotion to yourself. You have trained the body, it will take over.

Step three:
What do I want?

With emotion going, next comes objective.

Start thinking only the objective over and over. Always think of a selfish objective for the character, "to keep the money, to get the girl, to win his confidence, to stop the pain, etc."

Then you say, what do I want? to win his confidence, to win his confidence, to win his confidence, to win his confidence, to win his confidence, to win his confidence, to win his confidence...Exclusion to everything else.

ACTION !!!

Acting is eighty percent feeling (emotion) and twenty percent all the rest.

The objective repeated will blur in the actor's mind and become almost subliminal.

When you do things like feeling emotion and thinking objective you don't even have to think about doing it. It all becomes subliminal in your acting. Don't be conscious of all the principles of acting once you learn them. Trust your body, your body can do many things for you. Your body remembers.

Act correctly you become the character.

No matter how natural an actor is, how believable they are, they have to go beyond it. An actor has to be fascinating, interesting, entertaining and to have their lights on. And to turn on an actors' lights also means to turn on all their awareness. Actors have to explore every moment with all their energy and play all the values in a scene.

The principle of acting is to make the audience believe it is real, even though it isn't real.

When the Director yells C-U-T!, you are no longer the character.

Just the most important note:
Learn how to juggle only three things when acting:
1. feel:::::::::emotion
2. think:::::::objecive
3. the~~~~~wire
and not the umpteen things an actor has to try to juggle in Method acting with each line being a beat with a new objective and with each emotion having the actor trying to think up past events in the their life's to achieve that emotion. In Method acting an actor is trying to juggle so many things, that he or she is concentrating on everything except the characters own thoughts and feelings. The Method actor is only creating a solo performance with no connection to the other actor and not being real to the audience. It leads to actors who love complexity and can't seem to get out of character instantly.

Don't think the story. Think what we want for the moment, make it all spontaneous. We don't know what's next. Every moment of life is unpredictable.

A way to react is to react as if you are saying something, like keeping your objective. Don't stand waiting for a cue.

Actors are in the business of creating illusion, so it's behavior more than what actors say.

An actor can only control their conscience for acting purposes, they can not control their sub-conscience. What the sub-conscience does is it does things to the actor.

Remember, half of your performance comes from the other person.

People go "to see a movie", they don't go "to listen to a movie".

An actor has talent, see what it can do!
Underplay doesn't make actors look natural, let the audience decide if actors look natural.

It's telling the story in movement by finding what I call the pattern of behavior.

Acting has to look like life.
Life is off the wall, can't be predictable.

No ultimate truth in theater. Theater is a series of effects. Audience will make their own truths. Make the right choices as the actor, can it be accepted as true. Audience believe the character.

Every part is not what the actor does easily. If acting is being other people, an actor doesn't carry from part to part whatever worked for them the last time. An actor has to make a human being, and that would be to make a character recognizable and acceptable to an exact person.

In order to control an audience an actor must first learn to master themself.

An actor is always in control, and keep their skills. It is about great feelings, but stay in control of their instrument (their body). An actor has to learn to play the violin, figuratively. It's all about emotion.

BREAKING THE BARRIER TO ACTING

The acting experience is what we are trying to accomplish, what it feels like to act. We are trying to BREAK THE BARRIER that is made up of the actor being clever and thinking it through as they act. This all leads up to looking like acting, it has no resemblance to life.

We're here to study acting, and in the end, it can't look like acting.

Principles of Acting
An actors choice of material can be unusual and startling, but then they must go at the acting obeying all the best principles of acting.

Acting on the stage and for the camera are the same, the difference is proportions.

Modern acting begins with honesty.
Once an actor decides what their character is doing and what he or she is feeling, an actor has got to stay on it, because the moment an actor is dishonest, it is apparent. Audience know when people are lying, just be honest as an actor.

Actors are humans reacting to reality and dancers try to be esthetic. So, don't make pretty pictures as actors.

The secret: Give up the controls, hardest thing to learn in acting.
In acting in the movies a lot of big star actors are always there, they are a pain in the side. They are all over the place. But rich good acting, that is not what happens. The actor disappears, and that is what the actor should do, you work up closely to your character and then you step back, step back, step back and leave the character alone. You give the character your mind, your body and you buzz off. All you do is collect the check.

AN ACTOR NEEDS TO LIGHT THE FILM AND STAGE WITH THOUGHT AND FEELING.
Author gives the words and as an artist the actor can do things by inventing all that happens. An actor can't do words literally, but they must make the words visual.

Watch good acting that is dramatic, just stand still and maintain emotion. Try not to act, just react. Audience will read all kind of things into it.

It has nothing to do with you, the actor is not the character.
Idea of who your character is, not just using yourself.

Acting is 'being' other people.

The actor starts with a clean canvas.
The actor is the material in creating another person with the character's who am I, what do I feel, what do I want, attitude and mask.

No awareness of self is good acting.

Every moment has value. Forget real.

Acting is the work of the imagination.
The place in the character's body where most of their life activity takes place would be in the stomach and chest area of the actor for our acting purposes.

Simple, simple, simple.

You don't have to work at what you are.
You are already good at it.

Forget armchair psychology used by many actors and directors. To the actor a director says, 'I want this result, do it however you do it', is a better way instead of all that psycho therapy stuff in Method acting.

An actor can only control their conscience for acting purposes, they can not control their sub-conscience. What the sub-conscience does is it does things to the actor.

The fundamentals of acting is not to flounder around, but look at the resources of principles. Principles never change. It's not, "I have a great idea".

Resemble life: don't answer all answers all up front, feel emotion and do objective. Let talent take over, less the better.

Acting is self-illusion, not just costume, has to come from inside.

Don't make bad choices. If the choices are wrong, scene won't work.

It's not just about objective and emotion as the above note states. It is knowing all of the tricks of holding the interest of the audience, telling the story well and making the right choices. An actor has got to know all that. The audience is extremely sentimental, so play the value, not the dialogue. Approach a part with humility, not black and white. Don't make a direct appeal to audience, they won't go for it, what an actor has to do is lead them into it.

Turn your acting into something to watch. Recognize the moments, they are the lifeblood of drama.

Go to Don Richardson's
Scene Analysis List
as the starting point in doing any scene in a workshop or a film.

1. What is the story?
a. What is the author trying to tell us?
b. What is he getting at?
c. What's the deeper meaning underneath the plot and all the words?
d. What's the main statement he's making to the audience?
2. What is the time period?
3. What is the location?
4. Where is the scene in the story?
a. Always see the whole project divided into three separate parts: beginning, middle, and end.
b. You'll learn that if everything is a climax, nothing is a climax.
5. What is the style?
6. Each scene is there for a purpose.
a. Where does the scene fit into the entire plan of the script?
b. What effect should it have on the audience?
c. They come to be entertained.
7. Don't become a great thinker.
a. Decide what the scene is supposed to say, from the author's point of view, not your own.
8. What should the scene look like?
a. Who is doing what to whom?
9. What's the conflict?
a. A casual conversation is not a scene.
b. A scene is a struggle of wills, a contest, a kind of combat.
c. The secret of drama is "difficulty".
10. Don't make negative choices.
a. Audiences lose interest in characters who give up.
11. Who's the protagonist?
a. The person the audience is rooting for.
12. Who's the antagonist?
a. The person they are against.
13. Who is the aggressor?
a. That's the question that decides the staging.
b. Same as what should the scene look like?
14. The pattern of behavior.
a. It's telling the story in movement.
b. If the behavior is correct, even a deaf audience will understand.
c. Carry out the objectives in behavior.
15. The story is told by what we see; the dialogue has become secondary.
An actor or a director should definitely follow and learn the above list on scene analysis.

Scene analysis is taken directly from Don Richardson's book:

Click on book to order.

Theater is never life.
Art is not reality, art is selective reality.

If an actor present reality as reality, it doesn't entertain.

Storytelling and reveal character, that is what it is all about.
We are storytellers. I'm not talking about logic, I am talking about the skill of telling a story. We all try to act with our intellect, you can't do it, acting is an emotional experience. It's only a partial mental experience. Don't look for psychological conclusion as an actor. A good actor knows when to do it, how to do it and make the right choices. Use all the resources you've learned from life and then you say, this can work in terms of the audience. You have to be theatrical. It won't work if you don't have no smarts. Consider the material in depth. What is the reading in it that will interest an audience. That is what they are looking for when they hire you.

Drama is difficulty, that's the secret.

Don't love your performance, love...

The acting experience is what it feels like to act in the imaginary world.
The World of Imagination is also known as having the actor stay inside the imaginary fourth wall of illusion.
Actors are spell binders and entertainers. To act we are talking about skills, actor just can't throw themself into it.

An actor must be trained in the skill of acting. It is a craft with a toolkit full of tools.
The individual tools are acquired through the learning of the art.

Work as an actor is to be an entertainer in the
House of Entertainment.

For the audience: they are there just not to listen, but watch. Give them moments, so they can use their imagination.
For the actor: the more normal place for actor is inside the imaginary world, than outside in the real world.

Outside in the Real World

Great Performance
1. I am good.
2. It feels like giving a great performance.

Judgmental
1. God, I look awful.
2. What happen to my talent?
3. What does the director think of this?
4. Did the audience love me?
5. I'm so stiff, that sounded terrible.
6. What the hell am I doing?

Inside the Imaginary World

Experience of Acting
1. Not knowing what is going to happen next.
2. If feels like not being there.
3. You come off and you don't know exactly where you were.

When you are very good in a scene and you come off and you're not sure exactly where you were, that is when you are good. When you come off and say, "oh, was I terrible," you weren't in the scene. If you come off and you say, "boy, was I great," you weren't in the scene. If you can step off into space and not know where you are for a moment and trust your talent to take over and everything you have learned to date and allow that to propel you, then you come off in doubt, you come off like, "where was I?" That is when you are very good in the scene. That is what really acting has to feel like. It is like taking a trip. It is being somewhere else and being someone else. As long as you stay you, it is never going to happen. That is the trick you try to achieve.

Teach your body the discipline of being other people in a world of illusion.

Obey a natural law: keep thinking objective.
Beautiful acting is when the actor isn't there, just the character is there.

Learning How to Listen in a Scene
An actor can't try to make their own mind a 'blank' in trying to listen to another actor, because 'mother nature' hates a vacuum and will try to fill the void. Therefore, an actor must keep thinking an objective and stay with the emotion of the character, then the actor will hear the way we do in life.

When you act, you have to act not just with your will, not just with your thoughts and feelings, you have to act with your whole body.

In life, we have no idea what's going to happen in the next instant,

The Moment Between the Trapezes

\ /

state of disconnected

Audience goes 'aw'...

that's what makes your acting resemble life.

Don't get ready for the next moment.

Actors must learn the scene, then they don't know what is going to happen, the lines and staging are almost like amnesia. You are in a state of disconnected from what is rehearsed. There is a sense of urgency between the two trapezes. There is no recall, everything is unknown after rehearsal.

The actor's brain is limited, their impulse is unlimited.

In thinking the OBJECTIVE of the character creates the staging.
And feeling the EMOTION of the character creates the imagination.

To make acting look real through the quality of the accidental.

Walk
to the
edge
of the
diving
board and step off into space...

Acting natural won't get you anywhere. You have to be above the mob. You have to have fire in the belly. If you carry dullness, you're doomed. Stand up there and vibrate. Forget reality and just look for the theatrical.

talent will take over.

Your talent will work, how advanced you are will show.
Leave your body (talent) alone, it will do all the right things.
Things you find come out from your talent, not your brain.

Feel, think, do technique is the way the actor wants to act in the imaginary world.

The difference between reality and theater is that we are making a mirror image, a painting of something.

Stay with the truth of the story.

The actor follows the truth of the author

The answer is you have to make everything that happens meaningful; an attention getter. You have to keep the audience awake. Your first job is to keep them interested. You're not teaching them about humanity, you're entertaining them. You must keep them interested. So, if the director says to you, O.K., sit down over there and you sit down over there and there is nothing going on... make something go on that is important to the story and the character. That is your creative job. That is what you get hired for. If I'm a director and I hire De Niro, I know that he isn't just going to bog down. He is going to do something interesting. That is why he is worth all that money. That is why they hire him, they don't like him. Nobody likes anybody in this industry. They hire you because you are necessary, because you do something that is interesting that will sell tickets. Do you know why your basketball player makes so much money? People pay a lot of money to see him. That is why he makes more money than a brain surgeon. Brain surgeon only has one client that needs him at a time. Right? But a basketball player has a multitude that need him at a time, that's why he makes more money. And the Stars that make more money are the ones who can do something interesting. The way to be interesting is to find out what is going on in the story, who is your character, what does he want, what does he feel and dramatize it. Don't just think about it, but do it. Your objective is not just what you think, it's what you do. And you have to do it physically. It is not just a question of finding a place to settle yourself where you are the least target. An actor doesn't sit down because a character sits down, an actor sits down because he is half the target seated than he is standing. You fight your heart out to get in front of the camera, you want to be hidden when you get up there? It doesn't make sense, it is illogical. Why be an ostrich?

Order of Importance

Descriptions

1. author

Author is the star: play of words. Author gives story, character and dialogue. Actor gives it life.
_____________________

Truth of the author. Remember not to act dialogue.

____________________

2. audience

Entertain the audience. Key to play. Most important character is the audience.

_____________________

The wonder of acting is to present a human being to other human beings, so the audience get glimpses of themselves.
_____________________

3. actor

What does it have to do to the audience, what should it accomplish? Actor has all the judgment, not the director.

____________________

The actor must be simple, honest, and vocal: you will learn how to do it and then you will trust that you know how to do it and leave it alone and just do it.
____________________

4. director

Does scene do what the story requires? Director is an observer. A series of variations from actor. Director picks one.

The director turn actors loose on set, then lock it in for camera. Director's job is to make a scene work. If it works, it works, don't worry about the logic.

Theatrical sense, not psychological conclusions.
Don't think up clever things.

Do all acting on impulse.
Use your sensitivity from your heart.
Body vibrating with feeling.
Acting brain to brain.

Tiny Ron as Lothar in "The Rocketeer".

The Purpose of film today
is to play each moment fully. Don't over simplify in just dealing with plot.
First reading of screenplay is to enjoy the story. Second reading is the time to think of an individual character and to start making choices.

You do the best you know how to do and you learn the best way to do it, then it's possible to have a career in the best light.

Acting is the only art you cannot be caught doing.

Everything I have written at this site on acting came out of the mouth of my late drama coach Don Richardson.

Yes, this Online Acting School of Feel, Think, Do website and the other website of Acting a Better Way w/ Actors Globally www.abwag.com are from the same acting teacher Tiny Ron Taylor. Both websites delve into the same lists of

principles of acting.

ABWAGTV.com has acting videos on learning how to act a better way.