Acting for Animators : by Ed Hooks

Ed Hooks' text "Acting for Animators", is by far the most informative source I have found on my subject. Most importantly, its causing me to rethink my use of the term "intersubjectivity" and change it to "empathy". I'm finding that intersubjectivity is too big a topic to wrap my head around, when empathy seems more direct and as Hooks demonstrates in his book, is also connected to emotion.

Below are notes from the most information chapters that will help to shape my thinking about the subject.

7 Essential Acting Concepts:

• Thinking leads to Movement & Emotion
• Acting is reacting, acting is doing
• The character needs to have an objectiv
• The character must play an action until something happens for him to play a different action.
• All action begins with movement.
• Empathy is key. Audiences empathize with emotion.
• A scene is a negotion

The Audience

• "Let's pretend together" is the agreed contract. (20)
• Performance varies depending on audience. (21)
• An animator must lead the audience, its not enough to make an character move, he must move for a purpose. (21)
• Confidence on stage manifests into centeredness. (22)
• "It is not enough to merely animate a character, to make him move believably. A character must be animated with theatrical intention, theatrical purpose".(22)

Theatre is more than real life. (22)
Reflect reality by being aware of it. (23)
We learn through imitation. (23)

Chapter 3 : Character
Personality:

• The key to personality is action. "Personality is inherent in action, and action is inherent in life". (25)
• "When you animate a character, you are expressing its thoughts and emotions through the illusion of movement, or action". (25)
• The driving force behind the action is mood, the perosnoality, attitute of the character or all three. - Walt Disney (25).
• "Movement is an effort to survive in the world" (25)

Character Analysis:
Audiences expect much more. Which town? East or West, uptown or downtown? Be specific. (28)

Things to consider for human characters:

• Male, female
• Age
• Physical Health
• Hygiene
• Intelligence
• Diet
• Culture
• History
• Religion
• Income
• Occupation
• Education
• Sex
• Family
• Friends
• Inner Rhyth? (Good One).
• Psychology (introver, extrovert)
• Goals
• Name

For nonhuman characters. Include all of the above plus the following;

• Defense Mechanism
• Diet
• Life Span
• Relatives
• Sense of Humor
• Goals
• Relationship to others in the story.

"80% of what is happening to a character is under the surface, tied up in context, character background and given circumstances". (32)

Primal Analysis
"A primal analysis will help you tap into a a commonly shared stream of human values, leading you more toward empathetic acting choices."(32)
The reasons for actions must be specific. Cruella De Ville and the Wicked Witch in Snow White are compelled to do what they do. They cannot help themselves. Find the primal motivation and you find the emotion and driving force behind all human behavior. This technique has worked for Ed Hooks, the author of this text. Doing this creates nice starting points to create empathy with the character.

"All humans act to survive". (36)

"When you feel empathy, you identify with him." (37)

Emotion and Empathy:
"Our goal...is to make the audience feel the emotions of the characters, rather than appreciate them intellectually. We want our viewers not merely to enjoy the situation with a murmered "isn't he cute?". but really to feel something of what the characater is feeling. If we succed in this, the audience will now care about the character and about the what happens to him, and that is audience involvement. Without it, a cartoon feature will never hold that attention of its his viewers.

- Frank Thomas ad Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.

The Six Basic Emotions:

• Happiness
• Surprise
• Fear
• Anger
• Disgust
• Sadness

Emotion affects the way you move, and how you move affects the way you feel. (46)

"When Wile E. Coyote is chasing Road Runner, he is driven by emotion. If he stopped to think about it, he'd probably give up the chase because it surely must be clear by now thathe is not ever going to catch that bird. We in the audience empathasize with his campaign, however, because we have all, at one time or another, been obsessed with something or someone." (47)

- Ed Hooks, Acting for Animators

Examples of "Empathy" (47)

• King Kong in a cage - fear and sadness
• A winner at the Academy Awards - happiness and elation
• "I feel your pain" - Bill Clinton

Charlie Chaplin and Empathy
"All of acting rests on the search for the positive motivation, the survival mechanism, in the characters". (51)

Bugs Bunny was an optimist like Chaplin. A strong character trait that is carried on scene after scene.

A Process of Exposing Not Hiding
I am not you and you are not me, but we know of vengeance, therefore you or I could play Hamlet (52).

Not creating a character, but releasing a character. Shows our understanding of the character.


Adrenaline Moments
Times that a character would remember 50 years later. (55).
Adrenaline is what marks our brains. It forced us to remember bad things in order for us to survive.

MOVEMENT and BODY LANGUAGE

Movement
"Animation is movement. Movement is animation." (61)
"Movement is a result of thinking and emotion. An animator really should have profound understanding of the connections between thoughts and movement, emotion and movement, how movement impacts on the audience and how it impacts on other actors in the scene." (63).

Body Language
There is no generic universal way to do anything. This is done through the artist's interpretation of details, this "has everything to do with the artist's perceptions of and attitudes about the world around him, coupled with the understanding of his character's value structure, physical attributes, and situational context". (64)

Movement and body language precedes words. (64)

"The purpose of movement is destination....In general, sometimes you pause, sometimes you don't. Depends on the moment and your objectives and, most often, an actor is as surprised as everybody else when he pauses on stage." ( 65)

Disney discovered that character animation involves the whole body and not just the face.

Body language is more important than facial expressions, half of the time. Get the body first and then animate the face later (65).

• Body Movement Generalities
• Arms folded = closed
• Hands behind back = I won't defend myself
• Confidence = weight centeredness
• Cerebrals lead with the forehead
• Throat exposed = vulnerablity (Gomer)
• A beer belly man is off balance and therefore will use his hands to brace himself.
• In an interrupted conversation, a person turns towards the disruption before his head.
• Embarrassment = low status. Shrivelling.
• Anxiety = Energy above the chest and seen in the head.
• Movements above the waist = lightness.
• Below the waist = heaviness
• Elderly people take little steps for comfort. Their head and spine is usually connected as the spine experiences pressure. There mouths are open more to get more oxygen in.

Power Centers
The power center of Woody Allen is in his head. He leads with it. It is shaky and not stable. Bogart's in Casablanca is low and therefore more stable.

Physcological Gesture
"My heart is broken" is not as effective as a saying it with a hand gesture, such as that of breaking a stick. (69)

More on psychological gesture:
On the Technique of Acting by Michael Checkhov (1991).

Speech
"Since the audience expects to hear dialogue once the impulse t speak is evident, there is comedy to be found in putting a delay between the impulse and the actual audible sound. The audience will hang on with great expectency...Try it yourself. You can hold an audience on the tip of your fingers for a very long time this way. If you they feel youar eabout to say something, they'l hang in thee iwth you. 've never seen aan animator use thise lesson, but thes is not reason why it would not work there too." ( 80)

The Look of Memory
Understand how memory works. If I'm asked to remember something distant, my eyes will shift.

Active Listenting = Reflective Listening
Character 2 knods to let character 1 know that he is listening. He doesn't have to knod, he can do any movement.

CLASSROOM EXERCISES (106 - 109)
Each was designed and kitchen tested by Hooks to teach something to animators. More on the topic can be found in a book by Viola Spolin "Improvisation for theatre".

• Animal Exercises
• What is my profession, what is my age?
• Given Circumstances Game
• Gibberish
• Opera
• Status Transaction Game
• Boss and Workers Game

Citation:
Hooks, Ed. "Acting for Animators". Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 2000.