Drawing on Emotions

I recently completed a short course for Acting on Screen at Pinewood Studios. I have to say that I wholeheartedly recommend the course to anyone in England even remotely interested in acting on TV or Film. In just 5 days it feels like so much has been covered, and I shall soon be finished with a professional quality showreel. I have met some wonderful and absolutely talented people, who I know will soon be seen on the big screen (or little. Netflix and TV are so big now and seen in such a better light that they could so easily get major roles in this medium).

On the course, I learnt about drawing on past experiences in order to bring out emotions. Obviously very important in the film industry, with an actor / actress being entirely judged on how convincingly they can pull off a certain emotion at the right time. One part of the training required twelve people staring directly at my face as I aimed to tell a traumatic childhood story through just my eyes, no words at all. Traumatic in the sense of when you are 8 that dropping your ice cream was traumatic, so nothing life changing or that intense. My story of choice was when my best friend spoiled a major plot point in the (then) recently released Harry Potter book. Order of the Phoenix to be precise, so those who have seen the film / read the book probably can pick up which incredibly important part this was. I was indeed traumatised, and apparently I managed to show those emotions that I was drawing up through just my eyes.

Now what makes this any different that writing a book? Characters on the page need to portray emotions just as much as a character on the screen. So use what you know, draw on your own personal experiences and use it for your characters. Everyone has been through something, terrible and great, and you can use this. You don’t have to directly relate to the exact same situation, I’m sure Robert Downey Jr has never been kidnapped by terrorists after a bomb almost killed him. But he has likely been in severe pain, maybe breaking a bone. Has he been scared before? Very likely, maybe not recently but perhaps he was bullied, or in a rough neighbourhood? All experience is good experience (for emotional exposition at least, perhaps not always your mental well-being), so use it. You’ve been happy, sad, angry, scared, in love, in pain, hungry, sleepy and everything else in-between, but of course there are times where some characters may experience something you (hopefully) have never experienced. This is tricky, as you can still draw out your own version of that emotion, but you may need to do your own research on other people’s experience. This was also something I learnt on the Acting Course, if you don’t know it, learn it. You don’t want to be writing a story about an Astronaut if you don’t know the nitty-gritty details of what an Astronaut does, so do your research. I can’t stress this enough, DO YOUR RESEARCH. People will read it and see you don’t know, and how embarrassing would it be to be called out by an actual Astronaut?

So please. Research.