"You can't imagine how much muscle spasms and body tension can do to the process of making art. When these spasms and tensions develop in people's articulatory organs, even those who are born with a good voice will begin to become hoarse and even lose the ability to speak.

When the actor's legs are tense, he walks like a paralyzed patient, and if his arms are tense, he becomes a stick that lifts up exactly like a wooden railing at a crossing. Such tensions and the consequences they cause are also often seen on the backs, necks, and shoulders of actors. In any case, these spasms and tensions can scandalize the actors and interfere with their performances.

But the worst-case scenario is that this tension occurs on the face, which can distort and distort the face, making the expression numb and dull. At that time, the eyes will protrude, and the spasmodic muscles will make the face xiàn have an annoying expression, which does not match the feelings that the actor wants to express at that time.

Tension can appear in the diaphragm and other muscles involved in the breathing process, disrupting the normal functioning of these processes and producing difficulty in breathing. All of these conditions inevitably have a negative impact on the actor's experience, the outward appearance of the experience, and the actor's general sense of self.

...... Before creating, it should be left in a normal state so that the muscles do not restrict the freedom of behavior. If we fail to do this, then we will behave like the one described in the book "My Artistic Career" when we are on stage. In the book, it is written: because of nervousness, the actor will clench his fists and clench his fingers deep into the palms, or he will hook his toes and press his whole body weight on them. ”

- Stanislavsky, "The Actor's Self-Cultivation"

The afternoon sun shone on the grass in front of Wexford School of Art, and students were walking, playing, or chatting during breaks.

Ye Wei sat under a lush oak tree on the edge of the adjacent campus, looking intently at the book in his hand, the part about muscle relaxation.

Because he was admitted to the tenth grade as soon as he came, he fell behind in the basic theory of performance course, so he consciously made up for it.

It doesn't matter if you don't understand this thing, you can do it well with experience, but often it can only be like that, and the unenterprising actor will naturally disappear after eating his youth, maybe he has been a star idol, but he is a young actor for a lifetime. If you learn theories, extract the ideas of predecessors, and stand on the shoulders of giants, your horizons will be broadened more and more, and you will be able to find problems and find solutions to them.

He often acts ng, even if he good-take, he looks immature and jerky, there are a lot of performance traces, and he can barely pass the level when he plays a spoof comedy, and he is out of place when he plays a serious drama.

In addition to the lack of skills and the lack of perception of performance, it is also because of the shallowness of basic cultivation, as if how to relax and control the muscles, he has not done enough, only by doing this aspect well, can there be a mature performance.

People who don't know how to act don't know how important it is and how difficult it is. "The body is one's own", this is a lie, try to make a \ shape expression with the left side of the face raised and the right side of the face down?

That's why ordinary people/young actors even if they create roles and invest huge emotions, they also perform stiffly, giving people a very fake feeling, which is the control of muscles.

Performance is a kind of truth that transcends the real, and if you want to control it, you must first relax, not just the face, but every muscle in the body. If you want to relax, you have to find it first, and it is easy to find obvious high muscle tension, and it is very difficult to find a small tension that cannot even be felt immediately anywhere.

That kind of moment is like this, I know that I can't act well, but I don't know how to act well, I can't find a problem, let alone solve it.

The director is the one who helps the actors to do these things, so why a director who understands acting is a better director is just one aspect.

But in the end, no one knows their performance state better than themselves, and a great director can't make a small actor great, and a great actor can only be great because of himself.

"Hmm......" Ye Wei thought while reading the book, put down the book after reading another page, lay down on the grass, and started to practice according to the training method mentioned in the book, he relaxed his body, silently observed the condition of each muscle, let them relax, and then relax......

Fortunately, he is not a rookie in this regard, and it is the same as athletic training, he has experience in relaxation and using muscles.

Looking at the blue sky through the gaps in the branches and leaves of the big tree, gradually, the whole body relaxed, but there was still a faint tension, the diaphragm and the chest were the heart.

Today is September 14th, two months ago.

The two months of youth are so precious.

The face that was not blurred in front of him flashed in front of him, and he closed his eyes slightly, concentrating on imagining a cat curled up and asleep, and then mimicking its sleeping position.

It's like a 1+2 math problem for Meryl Streep, but it's not easy for him, the muscles have movement, the muscles can't be tense, none of them!

Observing which muscle is tense, he tries to eliminate its tension, but like a marmot, he succeeds in eliminating one piece, and finds that there is a second and a third block, and he faces all the slightest changes, trying to bring the body to a state of use but overall relaxation.

Find, determine, eliminate, the other side, determine, eliminate, and ......

After a while, Ye Wei made himself a little dizzy, as the book said, he began to be unable to distinguish which muscle was which, as if his nose had grown to his stomach, like his neck and ankles were connected together, and even his consciousness was blurred, and a sense of sleepiness came to his heart.

Damn, isn't it just acting, I won't be stumped!

......

"Look, Nina, look over there, your freak neighbor boarder!"

"Huh? yes...... It's him. ”

"He looks so painful, it can't be that he has eaten some poisonous weeds and been poisoned, right?"

Nina was shocked when she heard this, and shrank like that, looking like that! Although she was completely disheartened with Yunik, at this time, she still hurried over, and saw that there was a copy of "Actor's Self-cultivation" next to him, and there was no painful look on his face, he suddenly opened his eyes, and hey.

She rolled her eyes, walked back to a few friends who came and said, "He's fine, he's just doing some kind of acting practice." ”

"Yes, I don't take a break at noon, I work really hard. ”

Nina agrees with this, hard work may be the only advantage of Yunik as a person, he doesn't know how to live at a relative's house in Aijing Pavilion, when he lives in her house, he always tries too hard, rarely goes out to play, watches the Sunday childish drama on TV, and spends the rest of the time reading, training, drawing or something.

He seems to know how to draw, and often holds a strange book of thin drawings, as if he is drawing comics, a hobby.

She could see from the window of the room that he was busy until 10:30 every night and went to bed on time, and got up on time at 6:00 the next day.

Because after that time, there was no morning sports together, she didn't know what was going on, his football level was really improving, he was playing in the woods this morning, she had no intention of watching it quietly, this nerd was either a football master or a football genius.

His footwork is simply ...... The school team is like that, but football is not table tennis, it is a team game...... How can you be a coward, sissy nerd?

......

"Viy, I'm in Toronto, there's a show, do you want to come out for a drink?"

"Oh I want to go, you are such a beautiful girl, how can I refuse? But I can't keep busy, I have to do homework, I have to work, sweetheart, I'm sorry. ”

"Oh okay, these days, call me when you have time. ”

The night shrouded Toronto, in the elegant small room, Ye Wei put down his mobile phone, continued to immerse himself in the painting work on the desk, and called a female model he had met at New York Fashion Week, eighteen or nineteen years old? He didn't remember her age and name, and it was all because many models exchanged numbers with him that day.

Some things are different, it's okay to be friends, and others are not interesting for the time being.

And he's really busy, and the first creative meeting with the art department is going on at the end of the month, and he has to prepare enough concept art for the meeting, such as scene illustrations, important images (keyframes), and storyboards.

Scene illustration is the drawing of some empty shots, showing the appearance of the interior and exterior scenes, which is very important for all surreal films that need to set up; the key frame is to take the most important node of the story, depicted with fine light and shadow, it is usually not the size of the normal storyboard, the role is to show, to attract investment, various lobbying, and to provide the crew with a precise painting atmosphere and film style, and in the end it may not necessarily be filmed that way.

In fact, these tasks can be done by others, generally like this, hire one or more original painters, draw some conceptual sketches, and then the director decides which sketch to use, after use, the director then explains his ideas and requirements to the painter, and the painter then renders the sketch into the original painting and provides it to the art team and film crew.

Thank you, I'll do it myself!

Ye Wei held a pencil and drew on the drawing paper, not to save money, since he has this ability, what effect, style, and tone he wants, he paints it best.

But this time is really different from "Dance of Angels" and "The Wedding is Coming", even if he is a control maniac, he has to work with the art director, and some storyboards will have to be determined together in the future, and the detailed storyboard will have to be done by the storyboard team, or not.

Because storyboards (black and white, not yet color) are not very important for a low-budget reality project, and they are a bit extravagant.

I'm going to be extravagant. Ye Wei thought, this is his real feature film debut, so difficult and lucky to get the opportunity, there is no reason not to do the most and the best!

Compared with acting, these jobs are too easy for him, full of passion and inspiration.

The pencil is drawing lines, doing what he has learned, doing his best, he is sketching one by one, and rendering it carefully......

......

"In this acting training class, we're going to play a game called puppet play. ”

Time passed, and the 29th Toronto International Film Festival came to an end, and it was late September.

Wexford, in a performance room on the first floor of the school building, there were more than twenty students sitting on the floor, in a circle, and Rochelle, a white female teacher, was laughing and talking about something in the middle.

The puppet game combines the stretching, control and relaxation of the imaginary body, the change of form and posture with the necessary tension and psychological feeling of the muscles, and the relationship between the body state and the vocalization.

Teacher Rochelle said, "Now, let's stand up first, relax your shoulders, your hands droop naturally, your feet apart, shoulder-width apart, your cervical and lumbar spine naturally stand straight, your body relaxed, your eyes naturally closed, your face relaxed, your mouth slightly open, and your chin relaxed. ”

The students around me are following the instructions, but not everyone can relax their whole body, and the green faces are more unnatural, and the more you pay attention, the more nervous you become.

Ye Wei didn't, after this period of hard training, if he didn't perform and just stand, he could lightly let himself enter a state of relaxation of his whole body. Looking at the people around him, although he was directly in the tenth grade and often asked for leave, he thought that he was not much behind.

"Now, imagine that you have a thread on the top of your head, elbows, wrists, fingertips, knees, and ankles, and I hold it in my hand, and my head feels like a balloon around your neck, very light, very light, fluttering, okay?"

Teacher Rochelle looked around at the students with a smile, raised his hands, and waved his fingers, "I'm a puppeteer, you look at my gestures and follow my instructions." ”

The students nodded their heads in response, and suddenly at this time, Gu You, who was originally standing there relaxed, twitched all over his body as if he was going crazy, and his hands and feet kept moving.

Everyone immediately looked at him in astonishment, even Teacher Rochelle was stunned, and then some boys and girls laughed: "Haha!", "What is he doing?", "Gu?"

The teacher's hand stopped, Ye Wei also stopped, if Teacher Rochelle had enlightenment, his right hand was raised slightly, Ye Wei's right hand was immediately pulled up, and the teacher made a gesture to pull his face, Ye Wei's face was immediately pulled, although he could not control his muscles completely freely, the corners of his mouth, the corners of his mouth, etc., were pulled along with the line......

"Great! Great!" Mr. Rochelle understood, and couldn't help but praise it, and laughed with everyone: "Look at Yunik-Gu, what do you think he is doing? ”

Only then did everyone understand, they looked at each other, and their eyes looked at Gu You again, it turned out that this was the case, it was not that he was crazy, it was that they reacted slowly......

"Yonick, thank you for your presentation, and let's listen to my instructions with you. ”

The teacher signaled to Ye Wei that not every student is a genius, take your time. She nodded her fingers, and Ye Wei's head fluttered and nodded. The teacher continued to demonstrate, "Now, imagine that your hands are lifted by the thread, and your arms are slowly straightened—"

The students raised their hands according to the command, and the person who acted most like a puppet was Ye Wei.

Teacher Rochelle walked around, helping those students who were extra nervous to find and eliminate, she walked around, only glanced at Ye Wei a few times, praised it and walked away.

Ye Wei prefers a sentence, no hard work, no gain.