Acting MM project

Hi, there I am, Ella.

And here is my multimedia presentation on Chapter seven.

Chapter seven revolved around the topic of acting and specifically

acting for film, Um, and also how these different types

of acting played out in the movie Dr Strangelove or

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Before we can get into the movie, though I think

it's important to talk about film acting and what that

means and the different kinds of film acting.

Yeah, no, There are four different types of actors that

we are talking about in class.

The first is persona.

Actors persona actors, actors themselves.

They are what we expect them to be.

They tend to play the same types of roles because

that is true to who they are.

Um, the person I think of is Amy Poehler.

She is always playing the witty, funny, lovable um, girl,

and I think that will probably see her be doing

that for a while.

The second type of actor is a chameleon actor.

Now a comedian actor is the complete opposite of a

persona actor, So a comedian actor is somebody who disappears

into each new role that they play and the new

roles that they play tend to have a different type.

Person I think of first is Leonardo DiCaprio.

We have seen him as a young lover and movies

like Romeo and Juliet and the Titanic, But we also

see him in completely different roles in movies like Inception

and the Revenant.

The next type of actor is going to be an

against type actor, so this is someone who usually plays

a pretty specific type.

But they branch out and do something that is kind

of unexpected and different than the audience has ever seen.

Steve Carell is a great example of this.

For a good majority of the beginning of his career,

he was doing, um, he was playing the funny guy,

whether that was the dumb, funny or the funny guy

who always went a little too far with his jokes

or something like that.

As he's gotten older, he has started to take on

roles that aren't really comedic at all.

There are more, um, Deep and um, retrospective type roles,

and I think it's been really cool to watch, and

the last type of actor that we're going to talk

about is a non actor.

Now this is someone who simply just has a cameo

in a movie or, um, they just play themselves in

the movie.

So David Bowie and Zoo Lander is what comes to

mind for me or Ellen Mosque in Iron Man three.

The next thing that I want to talk about is

the difference between film and theater acting now.

A lot of times I think that acting can just

be thrown together as one big thing.

But there is a huge difference between film acting in

theater acting, so film acting is going to be a

little more subtle.

There's going to be a lot more small, small details

that are going to matter.

Um, and the acting tends to be a little more

natural or even smaller than what we know is natural

theater. Acting, on the other hand, is going to be

bigger, more presentational, still detail oriented.

But it has to be big enough to read to

an audience of 6000.

You know, lots and lots of people.

It's very important to be able to get that story

across to the person in the front row as well

as the person all the way in the back.

So this is where they're a little bit different.

Film acting is definitely going to be a little more

subtle, and theater acting is definitely still detail oriented, but

it is a little more presentational and a little bigger.

Now. This does, um, ask the question.

How are these two styles?

Um similar?

Well, they are both rooted in storytelling and being honest.

Um, if an actor is not being honest and telling

a truthful story, um, it is immediately apparent to the

audience, and that makes it really difficult to watch.

Actually, as an audience member, film and theater actors really

have the same goal, and that's to tell a story

and to have the audience to believe it and to

have an audience to be completely engulfed in a story.

The next thing to discuss is going to be how

all of the things we've just discussed relate to the

movie Dr Strangelove.

So Peter Sellers I have deemed him to be the

ultimate chameleon.

Actor Peter Sellers plays three separate roles in this film.

He plays Lionel Mandrake, Merkin, roughly the President and Dr

Strangelove, and all of these roles are completely different roles

now. This is going to bring up a lot of

challenges almost too many to count.

Um, and I think one of the main challenges that

I'm sure that he experienced as an actor was how

can you make each of these roles different enough so

that people understand that you're not playing the same role

your three completely separate people?

And I think that it is incredibly important for him

to have channeled.

Yeah, a chameleon style of acting Or it just wouldn't

read to an audience.

Um, and also, you know, a challenge that I'm sure

that he had was.

How hard was this on Peter Sellers mind to keep

all of the roles straight to go from these three

different rules that were so different, How did he keep

everything straight?

And, um, how did that affect his mental state during

the filming of the film?

While there were a lot of challenges, I am sure

Peter Sellers did a brilliant job at distinguishing these roles

from one another.

Um, when Robin Williams was talking about this Peter Sellers

performance in this movie.

In an interview, he said that what he admired so

much about Peter Sellers performance was the amount of commitment.

He brought so much commitment to each role that he

played. And this showed in so many different ways.

It showed in the vocal variation that he had from

role to role.

Each role had a different accent.

Atrial spoke in a very specific way, and there was

a specific rhythm to how each of these three roles

spoke. And that made it really easy for the audience

to be able to identify what person we were watching.

And, um, what part of the story we were in

and, of course, costumes, hair, makeup that absolutely help distinguish

these roles from one another.

And in addition to, um, things like costume, parent makeup,

physicality of it.

All three of these roles, um, and people that Peter

Sellers was portraying they all had different physicality is I

mean, Dr Strangelove.

He's in a wheelchair so that one kind of speaks

for itself.

Um, but the other two, they had different mannerisms, and

I have no doubt that that's something Peter Sellers was

really careful about making choices with, um And then, of

course, there is improvisation in each and every character um,

in a lot of the articles that I read about

the movie, Um, it said that Peter Sellers would just

improv and Stanley Kubrick would pick his favorite moments of

improv that Peter Sellers had given.

And a lot of it wasn't even scripted.

So it was just Peter Sellers living in these characters,

finding how they talked, how they moved and then just

kind of rolling with it.

And I think that's pretty cool.

Mm. With all of that being said, um, I really

do think that this movie was a great example for,

um this subject for talking about film acting in the

different kinds of actors that we see.

Um, so why Dr Strangelove?

There are so many different styles of acting that are

used in this movie to convey the comedy and the

satire of this film and without these styles of acting,

um, the satirical spin that Stanley Kubrick so brilliantly put

on the film would not come across to the audience

at all.

And so I think it was absolutely essential to have

the different kinds of actors to have Peter Sellers being

this comedian actor and then to have your persona actors

who are what the audience is going to expect.

Um, I think that that was really important to the

production of this film.

Thank you for watching.

Acting MM project

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