A street car named desire.

She stood at the top of the stairs standing slightly with her shoulders held back and her hip pressed forward, arms extended, as if she was holding an invisible weight in front of her. She is pregnant which the film audience knows from earlier in the screenplay; Marlon Brando’s lead character knows nothing of this fact. Brando’s character was simply annoyed with his wife. She has spent the night upstairs in her sister’s apartment. His body stance is that of a lumbering ox as he walks from the bedroom of the lower apartment to the outside garden and shouts her name repeatedly “Stella, Stella”. We can see from her stance that she holds a secret and from his, anger and confusion.

A short scene from “A streetcar named desire” a good example of ‘Method acting’ and how to actors can translate body actions and movement into words.

Marlon Brando (Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Robert DeNiro ) great actors who have used the method acting techniques and employing body movement and body language to tell a story. Animator can learn much from this type of actors. A simple walk cycle can mean something completely different, simply based on the positioning of the shoulders and my head of the character. Shoulders held back, walking with long strides could be a very strong or proud man. Slumped forward with a much slower stride with his head held down a very sad man or another man looking from side to side and over his shoulder as he walks with your shoulders bent forward slightly, this might be a nervous man hiding something. The slightest change of position to your character can tell a completely different story ever time.

By looking at acting techniques we can learn how to use the body langue of our character to tell our story to a larger audience without using large lumbering pieces of dialogue that only further confuse the audience from what should be a simple story.

Definition of Acting. Your character should be playing an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle. To Act is to do something!

“What action is the character pursuing, in pursuit of this objective?

What is the obstacle in the way?

Scenes begin in the middle, not at the start. A character enters a room, where did he come from? Where is he going? What is the obstacle? Is it himself with a situation or an obstacle with another character?

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola “Godfather part 11” again with Brando, now playing the part of the old Godfather towards the end of his life is in the garden with his grandson. The little boy picks up a stick and shoots at his grandfather, the Godfather is reluctant to play at first, but after a short time he turns around grabbing a corn cob growing in the garden he puts it into his mouth and quickly turning around brandishing a yellow corn smile, he raises his arms to make like a scary monster frightening the little boy.

The old mans act frightens the little boy too much and he runs away.

Quickly reaching out the old man tries to reassure the little boy and in the process he trips and falls over. The fall causes the old man to have a massive heart attack and he dies. The bloody career of the godfather ends while pretending to be a monster that many would have said he was all his life.

There’s very little dialogue throughout this short scene yet it has a multitude of layers and depth, imagine what this would have looked like with animated characters!