A woman in the wakes up in the morning, takes her kids to
school, come back home and she is bored and lonely. Up nepa! The power is back. She rushes to the video club center,
purchases a nollywood movie, gets back home, slots it in the DVD, gets a bowl
of chin chin, rest her back on the
couch and begins to watch. Why did this woman go through all these troubles just
to see you? What does she want? What does she expect from you?
It is an established fact that the most influential
actors are those who are able to get into the emotions of their audiences. If
that woman watching you doesn’t feel for you, you don’t have a career. But how
does an actor make an audience feel emotions. How does an actor deliver an
audience’s expectations?
First, you
must understand your character role
Before you even move into trying to deliver expectations,
you need to understand fully what your character is all about. Is he or she a
student, servant or worker? Is she rich, poor, intelligent, creative, stupid,
lousy, quiet, caring or wicked? Knowing the character you’re playing is the
first step into walking into the heart of your audience.
Be natural
One of the biggest mistakes new and established
nollywood actors make is trying to “act” in front of the camera. Acting is just
a word used for descriptive purposes, and is not meant to be adopted into your
system. In other words, being aware that you’re acting, when you’re in front of
the camera, is the first step to delivering a terrible performance.
Once you’re in front of the camera you must forget everything
about your natural self and assume the life of your character. Be natural.
Don’t fake it. If you’re playing the role of a prostitute while you’re a
virgin, you need to make us believe that you’re a dirty-lowlife-disgusting
prostitute. If you are the head of the youth group in your church and you’re
playing the role of a thief you have to make us hate you so much we want to
turn off the TV. That is being natural.
Put them in
your shoes
If your audience do not empathize with you by being
worried about what will happen to you at the end, then, you haven’t done your
job as an actor. They must feel for you. They must scream when you want to open
a door with a gunman hiding behind it. They must be sad when you lost your
mother or your job. They must hate your wife when she cheats on you with your
friend because of money. You must make them feel like “God help this guy now,
this suffering is too much”. If you cannot do this, the woman will just sit
there, eat her chin chin and yawn.
Make them
sad when the movie ends
One of the most interesting things about good movies
is the way audiences imagine what happens after the end of the movie. “Oh thank
God they finally married, I would love to see their kids”. “So happy he finally
gets the job, I would love to see him buy a car and show off to that evil
mother”. If your character doesn’t make the audience feel like this, chances
are they may not be so eager to want to see you again in another movie.
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