Is developing actors just to be trying to do it well? If you can live with the humiliation of being in something where it's pretty funny, you know? My years of fascination with cinema sometimes make me ask a really simple question. What is the goal of a good actor? To act naturally? Yes, acting naturally requires acting that their skills are invisible. Good quality, complex acting, must always come down to an invisible naturalism. That makes the challenging components of it far less obvious than every other art form. Acting isn't just memorizing lines and talking in conversational reality with intermittent emotion. It is to make a script come to life in a believable way. So yes, a great actor should make the scene believable. The actor must make active choices to do so. These actions and the clarity of their execution in emotionally local sequences creates the character much more than simply saying lines. Everything I've ever done in a film requires this getting to some sort of emotional reality that is contrary to the actual setting that you're in. Seeming real is a requirement, but a second requirement is that we can't predict their every reaction before they have them. And great actors just know that. Actors, when put a layer of start on one line said with unnecessary aggression, might get praised from their true fans, but when an actor keeps aside their ego and do all into the skin of the character, then they create art or in my opinion, they become one. When I paid more attention on their qualities, I realized that all skill actors understand how to listen for more than just the words, sounds and tonality, but also with an emptiness inside that needs to be filled by the other character. When they listen to others, I am quite sure they ask themselves what they are really listening for. And what is their character listening for? I really think listening is the first real obligation required to carry out a believable trickfulness in the moment. It creates an honest connection between scene partners. The actor has to surrender the planned response to allow a true response that can only come when they are really listening. All I want to see from an actor to me is the intensity and accuracy of their listening. And then what you have to say will become automatic. In order to have these job-getting moments of reaction, the need of way of working that allows them to have the confidence to take the moments and to live in them. Average actors speak through their piece believing that it's only their words that matter. But the truth is, it's the reactions that are the actions of the scene. Watching someone talk is not half as interesting as watching how those words are affecting other human being. Good actors, even if they are performing solo or in the case of monologue, they are listening and reacting to their characters' own words and feelings. Their lines are always a fraction of their role. It's the living breathing moment that makes acting dynamic and it's fascinating to watch actors when they are not speaking. Some are too caught up in their own egos or technicalities that is trying to remember the next line. And others seem to register everything they hear. You can see whatever is being said to them, physically affect them. As if the words are touching their face and to make the character convincing, good actors spend time to understand how they sound. Let me demonstrate it to you by showing you two voice clips of Gary Oldman from his movies and how he really sounds. You could listen to the voice modulation and see Gary Oldman was fully aware about the pitch and tone and it surprises me that good actors hold the range even if they have to do loud scene. And if an actor just wants to mimic a character, then it becomes unconvincing in some cases comedic as well. There are times when some scenes have surprised me so much so that I was tempted to read about the making of them. And you know what, most of the times I found that the lines were not even in this script rather than they were just improvised. And yes, it stretches the imagination as sparks its spontaneity and can lead to unfogatable performances. To the dismay of script writers everywhere, it has also been responsible for some of the best moment in the cinema history. Improvisation is really an example of heightened communication, relying on an actor's ability to engage completely with their fellow performers as well as their own character. We did the scene, Diana and I, and Marlon Brando was watching me doing the scene. And it was one take when a leaf fell from the tree on my shoulder. And I just took the leaf and I did something with it. Then Marlon came over to me at the end of it and he just leaned in and said that I like what you did with the leaf. So what plays a great role in making a scene believable and helps in improvisation? That is body language and good actors are masters in this trade. They use psychological gesture as their tool. One of the bold ideas of this tool is that the images of the story, the characters, situations already exist independently in the collective unconscious. So conveying these images to audience becomes the actor's greatest task. When an image arises but does not come out right, it means there is a disconnection between their imagination and the body's ability to express it. And when actors establish a connection between their instrument and inner body, it creates something remarkable. It is truly said that action speaks louder than words and great actors, not only know how the characters talk but they know how the character moves. So if they are playing a villain, they know how the character will dominate using his power or historical characters. They use slouch movements to show the burden of society. So until now we talked about believability, listening, improvisation, body language and ultimately. The most important thing is understanding the subtext. So what is subtext? It is the contrast of what is said and what is done. The character is always ever evolving. Just like we evolve based on circumstances that happen to us. There could be things that happen that we absolutely know how it's going to affect you, but you really don't know how it's going to affect you and how it will make you veer off course at any given time. But we have to consider that two voices combine in the performance of text. The voice of the writer with the inner voice of the actor and then an unconscious duality affect us as an audience. Good actors understand all the emotional layers, but when actors animate their lines to make them sound meaningful, they miss the depth that the duality brings. They deny bringing more to the line by trying to make the line sound real or meaningful, which is not needed. Great actors are like great chefs. They know how to make delicious cuisine. To have these skills to break down the scene to interpret and express the words in an original and interesting way and to find the wonderful spontaneous moment between the lines. It's about understanding what happening in the scene, peeling away the layers of the character, understanding the behavior, the thoughts and having a strong point of view in the scene. I know guys, this video was a little longer and different from my usual lists. But I hope this video will help you as an audience do. Better understand the next time you watch a good piece of acting or maybe to practice it if you are at your early stage of acting career. You can join the family of Flash 5 list by clicking on the subscribe button and let me know if you want me to work on any other topic in future. So see you guys in the next list. Till then, have a good one.