James Stewart
"In a career of extraordinary range and depth, Jimmy Stewart has come to embody on screen the very image of the typical American.... His idealism, his determination, his vulnerability, and above all, his basic decency shine through every role he plays..."--
The American Film Institute.
The Nature of Film and Acting
When film was young, acting was overdone. Low quality cameras could only record large movements; posing and enunciation were overstated as a result of theater acting; the development of the character was limited to a script. Starting in the 1930's film acting became more natural. Actors could interpret scripts to find emotion and motivation in their characters.
Good acting relies on a kinesthetic, an intrapersonal, and an interpersonal intelligence, all of which work together to form a creative expression. There exist limitless styles of acting; there is always something to learn.
The physicality of the actor is the most important part of the creation of the character. Since all experiences are interpreted through a physical means (i.e. our senses), the kinesthetic actor can evoke a response from his audience by connecting his actions to their lives, memories, or emotions. By having distinct facial features or a certain body build, the actor's mere physical presence can convey some detail of his character. However, the most important part of the kinesthetic intelligence in acting is the knowledge of one's body, where it is, what it's doing, and what message it's conveying. This is more than just muscle movement. It includes physique, timing, rhythm, voice and mannerisms.
When we watch movies, we notice emotion and characterization mainly in the eyes and mouth. However, a man can not just act from the neck up. What his body tells us is just as important as what his face tells.
Try It! Make your body tense. Tighten every muscle you can. Now, smile. How do you feel? How would you appear to feel?
For the actor, the hands are a good place to release energy, but conveying meaningful messages through the hands is hard to do. Also, overuse of gestures can be dizzying to a viewer. Voice is another excellent means of communicating the unstated. From sincerity to sarcasm, we can tell as much from the way something is said as from the words themselves.
Underneath the physical lies the actor's presence. The intrapersonal unconsciously comes through in the form of a persona that the audience can further relate to.
Homeostasis, what is it? Homeostasis is the balance between systems to keep living organisms alive and healthy. For an organism to maintain homeostasis its body systems must react and respond to changes in both its internal and external environments. Majority of body systems in organisms, like a respiratory or circulatory system in animals, are part of their internal environment. One body system that is very important for maintaining homeostasis and is common among many organisms is a respiratory system. The respiratory system is responsible for disposing of carbon dioxide and in taking oxygen (vice versa for plants). Some parts that make up a respiratory system are the lungs, windpipe, and cilia in animals. Another body system important to homeostasis and common among animals is a circulatory system, used for bringing nutrients like glucose and oxygen to body cells. Some parts that make up a circulatory system are a heart, blood, and tubes for the blood to travel through (veins, arteries, and capillaries) in animals. There are many more body systems important to homeostasis, but if one is disrupted it’s vital for it to be restored to normal.
Solitary Confinement is a type of isolation in prison which a prisoner is segregated from the general population of the prison and any human contact besides the prison employees. These prisons are separated from the general population to protect others and themselves from hurting anyone in the prison. These prisoners are deprived of social interaction, treatments, psychologist, family visits, education, job training, work, religious programming and many other services prisoners might need during the sentence of their imprisonment. There are roughly 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement but 25,000 are in long term and supermax prisons. According to the Constitution, “The Eighth Amendment [...] prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment”(US Const. amend. VIII). Solitary confinement is suppose to be the last straw for inmates to be in. If they don 't follow it, they can be on death row. Taxpayers pay roughly $75,000 to $85,000 to keep prisoners in solitary confinement. That is 3 times higher than the normal prisons that taxpayers pay for them to be in prison. Solitary confinement was established in 1829 in Philadelphia for experimentation because officials believed it was a way for
Solitary confinement is a mandated arrangement set up by courts or prisons which seek to punish inmates by the use of isolated confinement. Specifically, solitary confinement can be defined as confinement in which inmates that are held in a single cell for up to twenty-three hours a day without any contact with the exception of prison staff (Shalev, 2011). There are several other terms which refer to solitary confinement such as, administrative segregation, supermax facilities (this is due to the fact that supermax facilities only have solitary confinement), the hotbox, the hole, and the security housing unit (SHU). Solitary confinement is a place where most inmates would prefer not to go. There are many reasons for this.
The first question is why use "commedia dell' arte" as a training tool for modern actors at all, since drama and the business of acting has hopefully moved on since the Italian Comedians finally left Paris. The fact remains, however, that the dominant form of acting today that both exists as the aspiring young actor's performance role model and as a category of performance in itself is T.V. naturalism. We are lucky in that something both inspirational and technical has survived from those heady times. When contemporary acting technique does not provide all the answers that actors may be looking for, it is not surprising that they look towards the past for inspiration. It is in this grey area between researching historical certainties and reconstructing guessed at acting technique that we must look. These Martinellis and Andreinis were the superstars of their day and the question that most often gets asked is "how did they do it?"(Oliver Crick).
After playing a convincing role as an action hero in a new film, a movie star exits the stage, leaving his character behind, and attends a press conference claiming that he did all his own stunts, becoming both an actor and a liar. When it comes to the difference between these two characters, clear differentiations are not immediately apparent. In this example, in order to impress his audience, both the actor and the liar are untruthful regarding their accomplishments. Both require a skilled performer who is well versed in the various protocols. A good liar must display flawless body language, careful not to reveal the truth. At the same time a good actor must abandon the habits of his true-life and replace with them with the inclinations of his specific character. Overall, the practices of acting and lying share countless similarities and many people view them as synonymous with one another.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has deemed solitary confinement as an unconstitutional form of punishment. It expresses that solitary confinement should be classified as torture because it inflicts potential physical and mental damage on inmates. Being confined to a cell for over 22 hours a day with absolutely no human contact is an inhumane practice and cannot be beneficial enough to overcome the consequences that an inmate must face upon release. Solitary confinement clearly violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” Solitary confinement is the epitome of torture. Inmates often recall not being able to distinguish the time they spend in confinement; hours feel like days, and days feel like months. Certain prisons use solitary confinement differently than others. The Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) is known as the “most restrictive prison in California.” It is one of the harshest “super-maximum” prisons in the country, meaning that inmates may be subjected to solitary confinement for a set amount of time or an indefinite duration. This is known as the ‘supe...
The acting itself is seen as both exaggerated and over-the-top, by which past and present actors try to employ in carrying out Shakespeare’s plays (Britannica). Shakespeare meant for his audience to be engaged throughout the entirety of the play. The uniqueness and shear passion of the plays have helped in the continuum of their success.
help the actor find hidden tension in all muscles of the body, most importantly the face, where most mental tension manifests itself. The exercise begins with the actor sitting in a straight backed, armless chair. First, the actor must find the position that he or she
Al Pacino better known, as Sonny has not only changed the way that I view actors. He has taught me what a true actor is. He is a brilliant man who has mastered Stanislavsky 's method. Pacino also has a sense of humor and there is never a dull moment on the set…"I was in a play once in Boston. It's a long play, about three hours and I'm on the stage a lot during it. And I caught... I got this feeling from the audience. These eyes were sort of looking at me. And I got a sense that there was a kind of rapport and I was relating and it was working, somehow it was giving me something back and. Well, I went through the entire play sort of gearing the performance in the part of the audience that I felt those eyes. So I had to see at curtain call who that was. Right? It came curtain call, I looked over in the direction of those eyes - it was Seeing Eye dogs. (The Today Show, NBC)
Homer’s literature served as a moral messenger to the people of ancient Greece. The Odyssey by Homer demonstrates the character development of Odysseus, the epic hero, and his journey of self-discovery. Odysseus was a great, wise, noble, and well respected war hero to his people. Odysseus had one tragic flaw that was demonstrated by his actions throughout the book. The author Homer continued to strip Odysseus of his arrogance throughout the story, by throwing challenges his way, making him pay for his mistakes, and allowing him to continue to overcome obstacles. The main purpose of Odysseus journey also to reach his home a more humble man. Reading Odysseus’ journey also served as a way to look at morals. The
The nonverbal communication and our body language play an important role in our social interactions. Gestures and facial expressions can be sometimes even more important than our words and they definitely influence the way other people perceive us. Handshake, eye contact or the specific poses we tend to use tell a lot about how we feel at the moment and also express our attitude towards the other person. In fact, the nonverbal communication can reveal much more than what we actually say. Sometimes we control the body language and we are aware of the message we want to share by our gestures or mimic, but there are situations when our body language operates on the unconscious level as well. It can support the verbal language; however, in many cases it does not match our speech, but creates a contradiction as it goes again it. The interesting and important situation where body language plays a significant role is the first impression: a short time period when we are forming the impression of others by analyzing their physical appearance as well as their behavior. Several studies have proven the importance of first impression as we tend to hold on to that first picture we created about someone, even though he or she might behave completely differently in other interactions. Job interview, oral exam, admission process… those are some of the situation where the first impression can be the ultimate key to success and where the nonverbal communication is often even more evaluated than the verbal one. My aim is to describe the role of body language and its relation to the first impression in social interactions and also discuss if it is possible to learn a specific gestures or facial expressions so they would work in our favor when we need...
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina shows the fall of a high societal woman as she gives up everything for love. She resists society’s expectation of women to submissively dismiss their passions and live for raising a family. Anna and her lover Vronsky attempt to create their own life, separate and independent from society, believing that their love alone will sustain each other. However, they tragically discover that isolation is not a life that they can endure. Vronsky’s love does not mature; he does not know how to develop it beyond passion. He needs ambitions, accomplishments, and admiration, and Anna longs either for Vronsky entirely, or for approbation: at least enough courtesy or civility to not be openly scorned and humiliated in public. Unable to empathize and appreciate what each other need and what each other have given up for one another, hostility and resentment stockpile. Anna’s suicide is as much a punishment intended for Vronsky as it is as an escape from here own despair as it is way of securing his love for her eternally. The ultimate irony then is that Levin and Kitty achieve what Anna and Vronsky so desperately sought, a fulfilling and happy life, free from society.
According to Quintanilla (2014) “…since many nonverbal gestures are unconscious or unintentional, it is important to be aware of your nonverbal communication at all times and to understand that different gestures carry different meanings to people” (p. 26). The way people perceive others and are perceived can be because of their non-verbal communication. A person may have excellent content to their message but they may be carrying themselves in a way that others can not connect with. They may seem too hurried, overly proud, rude, or disconnected because of their tone in their voice. This can all be because of their body movements or facial expression. Our behaviors, body movements, facial expressions, voice, and how we look all play into our nonverbal communication.
According to Argyle (1978), more than 700,000 forms of body language are expressed by human from head to toes. Also known as Kinesics, body language form can happen through posture, gesture, stance, and movement (Birdwhistell, 1952). Posture refers to how we control our body that can show the information about a person’s feeling as the hints of personality characteristic such as confident or unassertive, and gestures is the movement that made by our body parts such as hand, eyes, arms, and fingers. Kinesics can be used to support or accentuate what people saying and content information about the feeling and personality of people through their expression (Martin & Remland, 2009). Its include how we approach and greet each other, body posture while we sit and stand, facial expressions, our appearance, tone of voices, eye movements, stand distance between each other, and how we touch others (Rugsaken, 2006). Refer to Ekman and Friesen (1969), there are five types of Kinesics consist of emblem - the signal make by hand movement such as the signal that mean ‘OK’ and ‘Good’, illustrators – the movement come
The way the body moves and how others interpret it make up an extensive part of communication (Bolton 326). Facial expressions, gestures, and movements made with any part of the body greatly influence what someone is communicating with another person. Someone’s perception of another person’s s body language is affecting what is being communicated is also a key factor in non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication can make up 70% of the communicative interaction, while the verbal communication makes up the other 30% (History Channel). This means that humans communicate more with the...