On 2011-05-23 22:44, Michaelmystic2003 wrote:
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You seem to be a strong advocate of realist drama, while I simply am not. I also do not believe in acting method. David Mamet's writings are what I have primarily studied, though dogmatic and idealistic. I do happen to agree with his theory on acting and his desire to abolish the so-called "method". The character is a magician having a bad morning... your interpretation of a bad mood may differ from another. Some may be more aggressive and animated while other's may be reserved and isolated. I displayed the former. It is an acting choice, not necessarily based on what is "real".
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On 2011-05-24 13:05, Thomas Wayne wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-05-23 22:44, Michaelmystic2003 wrote:
[...]
You seem to be a strong advocate of realist drama, while I simply am not. I also do not believe in acting method. David Mamet's writings are what I have primarily studied, though dogmatic and idealistic. I do happen to agree with his theory on acting and his desire to abolish the so-called "method". The character is a magician having a bad morning... your interpretation of a bad mood may differ from another. Some may be more aggressive and animated while other's may be reserved and isolated. I displayed the former. It is an acting choice, not necessarily based on what is "real".
[...]

That's fine; I certainly agree that an actor must be free to choose his own method of conveying the story to his audience. However, unless part of your story is how certain physical limitations - which constrain the rest of us - are somehow non-existent on your planet, you may want to rethink how you handle your "coffee".

Here on earth, no one - and I mean NO ONE - would reach into the mouth of a cup of coffee with their fingertips to move it across a table. They would rotate the cup around until the handle was easy to grasp, or they would encompass the rim the their fingertips and lift the cup from above, or they would use some other normal way (common to the human experience) that would NOT entail apparently nearly dipping their fingers into hot coffee.

Similarly, no coffee drinker would pick up a cup of hot coffee and swirl it around to mix in sugar and cream - ESPECIALLY if they had just stirred it with a spoon. If there had actually been coffee in the cup you would have swirled it all over the table, and everyone watching that video knows this.

So, in spite of your disdain for "realism" in acting, you'll do better to embrace the fact that your audience lives in the real world - so they have every reason to expect you to handle an everyday item in a logical reasonable manner. When you fail to do so, they're forced to question the very nature of what you're actually doing. That's why most viewers (as mentioned by another poster above) probably wondered why you were stirring cream and sugar into an otherwise empty cup.

You say that you don't care "entirely" about deceiving your audience, but is it fair to say you want to fool them a little? Hopefully, since you're posting this on a MAGIC forum, such deception should at least be a partial goal. Now, if you could convince your audience from the very beginning that the cup had coffee in it you might have a much better routine on your hands. But you can't - or at least you certainly don't with what you've currently got going.

And THAT is where your "acting choice" argument fails. No matter how much you want to disagree with "realistic" acting, if you hope to convince an average audience that a false condition is true you might want to consider constraining yourself to THEIR understanding of the real world, rather than just assuming they'll follow you down your little rabbit hole with nary a thought of how real people handle real coffee in their real world.

Set up your camera, pour yourself a cup of hot coffee, and stir some real cream and sugar into it. Now study that video and compare it to the video of your "trick". If you don't see the difference and/or don't think it matters, then you've got bigger problems than can be helped in this forum.

TW