Over Acting
How can we tell if a scene we are animated is overdone? Are the gestures to big? Is the scene upstaging another character? Is that character to broad or not giving enough? This topic came up at a talk I was at. Its fascinating how closely animators and actors think about the same problems. When I asked the actor what over acting was, she commented that its when the character does too much or does not know there place is within the scene. It can be many things such as pulling attention away from the other characters. It can be as simple as a character over doing something as simple as picking up a glass. When we animate, we are usually going bigger and making things read more. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to watch out if the character is doing too much. We always need to look at the character throughout a sequence. Steven Spielberg once said to George Clooney ” You could be a star if you stop moving your head.” Or it was something close to that I believe.
So how do you know if a scene is over acted? Ask yourself some questions: How would it look if you acted the same way as your character? Is your character taking away from the general idea of the scene? Did you bring in an extra set of eyes to look at it? What is the emotional center of the character and scene? What really drives that character and would your character do that? Is the style of acting you are doing fit the project you are working on? Think about a film like Amadeus or Pirates of the Carribean. These are roles that require a bit of an exaggerated character. It fits the style of the film. I’d love to hear what you think and for others to pass along any tips or comments.
-Andrew
Mahesh
For animators , it’s dialouges r dubbed , so most of d times it’s possibilty of overacting in body language, also I recall Wayen Gilbert saying , ” Pantomime is different type of acting, ders huge difference Mime n performance without any words” , and d best one fr balancing between Overacting and Dialogues ..Eric Goldberge quoted dat “if u turn off d Visuals n still can tell wats going on dat’s radio”
In live action , overpronouncing things is common denominator in all languges ,
I think If we just noted d diff between stage acting and on screen acting ..we could learn even more abt acting as fr stage actors eyes are really far frm audience so he has to use his body and tone bt fr screen, camera helps to get deeper look in eyes fr same scene ..
Michael Sporn
Eric Goldberg’s quote “if u turn off the visuals and still can tell what’s going on that’s radio” was paraphrasing Chuck Jone’s quote about all TV animation being “illustrated radio.” And that quote has little to do with overacting.
Animators are usually handed the voice track and XSheets and told to animate from there. They don’t often have anything to do with how much dialogue there is or how the voice acting was done. They simply have the audio and have to animate to it. Sometimes they are illustrating radio because the writing is bad or the VO is overacted, and it’s not their doing. The visuals they put to that track IS their responsibility and that’s where they have the chance to overact.
Herman G.
Interesting, I love how you can control where to look at any shot. a concerto of visual.
jemst
Scenes with dialogue I think already have the “intensity” of the acting there so should still strive to match the “intensity” in their movements. You can exaggerate or tone the movements down quite a bit and still make it feel like the characters are saying the dialog but in a way so that the audience is not aware that they are two separate performances.
But you’d have to hope that the dialogue isn’t overacted or underacted for that matter. I don;t think you can have a discussion of overacting without also discussing underacting. Movies and scenes have fallen flat because of that too but I guess it’s not as noticeable.
Frank Abney
This was a big struggle for me when I began learning animation. I always felt like I wasn’t doing “enough” because I’d see other animation, and the characters’ actions would be pretty large and all over the place. Growing up on Looney Tunes, I really loved the really subtle gestures that communicated a thought! I feel like Overacting is trying to make the audience SEE what you’re trying to communicate to them, rather than giving them the chance to FEEL it.