Published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, Meet the Art of Film and Television is one of the volumes in the "Meet art" series. This is a comprehensive discussion of film and television art, from the perspective of film and television art overview, screenwriter and script, director and film and television creation, film and television and literature and drama, film and television appreciation and commentary, etc., in concise and vivid language, systematically sorts out the development history of film and television art and important works and genres, suitable for readers interested in film and television art. This article is a wonderful excerpt of the book, which is now to be shared for the benefit of readers.
Book Introduction
Click on the cover page to buy directly
"Meet the Art of Film and Television"
Editor: Tianyun Wu Zhi
ISBN：978-7-313-25010-0
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press
What is "ExperientialIsm"
"Experiential" performance is one of the most representative performance systems in the world, and its originator is the Soviet theater master Stanislavsky. His famous treatise "The Self-Cultivation of Actors" expounds the theory and practice of exercising actors' ability to create roles in the form of classroom dialogues of drama students. It not only explains in detail the various skills and qualities that actors should have in terms of performance skills, but also a masterpiece about the combination of actors and society to enhance and improve the artistic accomplishment and moral standards of actors. Stanislavsky proposed to release nature, imitate animals, concentrate attention, observe things to no physical practice, improvisational reaction exercises, character shaping exercises and other methods, advocating that actors should be immersed in the emotions of the characters, requiring actors to go all out, have faith and realism in the role, pay attention to emotional memory and communication, understand the internal driving force of the character's actions, and finally express it through the actor's external actions. This is to require actors to always establish the creative concept of "I am that one" and even self-confidence in the process of playing the role, so that whoever plays is who, which is collectively referred to as "experientialism".
(The movie "The King of Comedy", Yin Tianqiu, played by Stephen Chow, is learning "The Self-Cultivation of Actors")
Born in the mid-1980s, the TV series Journey to the West was broadcast and caused a sensation throughout the country and received rave reviews. Among them, there is a scene about Tang Monk and Sun Wukong exchanging physical identities, Chi Zhongrui perfectly concealed his Tang monk role in Sun Wukong, in addition to realistically grasping Sun Wukong's daily demeanor and habitual small actions, even Sun Wukong's inner judgment and entanglement in the face of people and things were also delicately "monkeyized", a reversal of Tang Monk's dignified and stable signature style, suddenly making the audience really think that the master and apprentice exchanged bodies. The subversive performance that is fascinating, derived from the careful role experience and solid performance skills, has become another good story in the performing arts. The play has been repeated repeatedly, the audience is tireless, and it is recognized as a classic that is difficult to surpass, bringing childhood happiness to generations of people, and precipitating into our collective memory, and the outstanding performances of a group of actors "who is like whom" are indispensable.
(In Journey to the West, the "monkeyized" Tang monk and the "Tang monkified" Wukong)
Wu Jing starred as the captain of the Chinese mountaineering team in the Blockbuster Film "Climber" filmed by Shanghai Film Studio to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China. In order to gain his own personal experience of the real snowy plateau living environment, in January 2019, before the filming began, he made a special trip to Gangshika Snow Peak in Menyuan Hui Autonomous County, Qinghai Province, where the altitude is more than 5 000 meters. In order to adapt to the role of captain as soon as possible, he also hired professional climbers to guide him, learning and familiarizing himself with the skills and skills necessary for mountaineering. In more than half a month of field training, he has not only gained the experience of "actual combat" of mountaineering, but also the feeling and understanding of the relationship between man and nature, on the plateau, the smallness of man and the vastness of nature make him involuntarily shed tears. This is the inner experience and character portrayal of the captain of the mountaineering team: cold, desert, lonely and hot-blooded, perseverance, fearlessness, the opponent facing is not the mountain but himself, only by defeating himself, can he truly climb to the top. Wu Jing's experience of "experiencing life" has helped him to integrate into the character image from the inner world, prompting him to successfully "merge into one" with the role he plays.
(The Climber poster)
What is "Expressionism"
Different from the "experiential school", as another major school of performing arts, the "expressionist" performance does not emphasize that the actor starts from the self, but emphasizes that the actor must first construct the "image of the role" in his heart, and has the ability to accurately reproduce this image in each performance, so that the audience can identify with the character and be touched by it, rather than the actor himself moved and indulged in the role played.
The most important and prominent proposition of the "expressionist" theory in the relationship between actors, roles and audiences is "separation": actors should be higher than roles, control roles, and perform roles, actors should show the characters in the play rather than melting into the roles, actors should be able to enter the role at any time and jump out of the role at any time, and actors should be able to leave and run freely when facing the audience. In this way, the actor will keep a distance from the role and form a "double image": the actor is both the actor himself and the character in the play, and the actor uses his superb acting skills to represent the characters in the play. This means that the "expressionist" does not advocate that actors subconsciously live in the prescribed situation of the story, but emphasizes the need to "jump out" to grasp and design characters. This requires the actor to pay attention to the study of the character's inner activities and life basis in the preparation stage of the role, the purpose of which is to find the most appropriate and appropriate external expression when the emotion is expressed, including facial expressions, physical movements, and language expressions.
(Poster of the TV series "An Jia")
The hit drama "An Jia" has a high enough hot topic degree in life, and there are enough roles that people like and complain about, regardless of the acting strength of Sun Li, Luo Jin and other starring actors, the performance of multiple supporting roles in the play, but also makes the audience extremely surprised and convinced. Among them, The national first-class actor Wei Qing, who plays the grandmother of the cousin in the series, is one of the "professional households" played by the old lady, and she was already in her year of flower armor when she debuted on the screen, and she was nearly eighty years old when she participated in the filming of "An Jia". She performs the change in the character's eyes when facing the police, the bravado when facing Mr. Gong, and the lack of people in the eyes when facing Fang Xiangjin and others, and vividly shows the ridiculous and annoying characteristics of the character due to the habits of the long-dyed city, and although the time of appearance is not much, it is impressive.
As we all know, watching TV series and watching movies, the size of the screen and the screen faced by the audience is relatively large, the viewing place is also very different, in order to be able to stabilize the home viewers with great arbitrariness, their eyeballs are firmly attracted to the screen, the TV series In addition to the plot from time to time to have large and small flashpoints, the actor's performance also needs to be more open than the movie, the strength of the performance needs to be increased, and the composition of "performance performance" can naturally be more or less enhanced. Especially when some characters are needed to shape and prescribe situations, the distance between the actor and the role is a little wider, the contrast is clearer, and the audience's perception and acceptance will be more direct and strong. Or this "old drama bone" Teacher Wei Qing, in recent years, on the big screen, has starred in films such as "Wolf Warrior 2" and "I Am Not a Medicine God", all of which are supporting roles, but in terms of character shaping, they have all abandoned the paradigm of being closer to the "expressionist" to enlarge life a little to perform, basically just a few minutes of drama, but because of the introverted and calm "walking the heart" interpretation, the character image of each of them has been established, which makes people unforgettable. In the performance system of "experience" and "performance", freely switch between the screen and the screen character shaping, the best embodiment of acting skills and the supreme state of performance is this!
(Wei Qing's performance in "I Am Not a Medicine God")
In summary, the "separation method" of performance advocated and practiced by the "expressionist" performance advocates and representatives of the "expressionist" performance, and the German playwright, theater theorist, director and poet Brecht, is actually a form choice and overall effect of performance, and some also need to be achieved by means of screenwriters and directors, not just a performance form of actors. In fact, in his own acting practice, brecht although he hopes that the actual effect of the performance can be separated from the audience, but for the role of the actor, he still has the requirement of finding an experiential feeling, and he also has a positive attitude towards Stanislavsky's "experiential" system, and has repeatedly talked about the contribution of this system to the realist performing arts.
Incidentally, some people have a misconception about the two major schools of performance, believing that "experientialism" is Stanislavsky and "expressionism" is Brecht. This sentence, the first half of the sentence can be said to be correct, the second half of the sentence is not comprehensive and accurate. Because the "expressionist" performance is actually an important theatrical school in the history of French theater, representative figures include the French actor Benoa Constan Goglan, the French literary theorist Diderot, etc., but Brecht is the integrator of theatrical practice and theoretical research in this regard.