The Scene in Cinema | Week 7

In this week’s class, we mainly looked at acting and screen performance. Performance is an important element of filmmaking, which can adjust the final quality of the film. I understand that the actors are chosen not only because they are actors but also because of their physical skills. For example, a horse riding scene needs the actor’s ability to ride a horse. When choosing the actor, the director can either choose people who have the particular ability or leave time for the actor to learn particular skills. During the discussion, I learned that driving and acting at the same time is a very dangerous thing. I thought it’s a very natural thing before the class. In order to reduce the dangerousness, the director can either shut down the street or hire a trailer that can carry the pop car so that the actor can only concentrate on acting.

I know a famous actor called Eddie Peng, he is the type of actor that learns specific abilities for the character he performs. In the film “Jump Ashin!”, in order to act as a professional gymnast, he trained for 2 month to get the perfect reproduction of the figure of a professional athlete and learned 6 gymnastics items. Except for a few difficult actions, the rest in the film are played by himself.

Further, I understand there will be a camera test to choose the actor because there are people who are preferred by camera. Their actions like running, walking and dancing on camera have more aesthetic feelings than others. The relationship between actor and filmmaker is also important. A good director is able to guide the actor to inspire his largest potential and get the perfect shot. The famous Chinese director Yimou Zhang likes to find actors who are in line with the character’s temperament and likes to use people who have never acted before. As he said, new actor is like a piece of white paper, which can paint whatever he wants.

Thank you very much!