The Nigerian Mvies

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Saturday 14 July 2012

Improving Your Acting Audition - Improve Your Audition By Addressing the Needs of Your Character

By Kirk Baltz


Conflict is typically avoided by the majority of people. Anxiety, fear, and chaos can often be the result of conflict. However, during an acting audition, conflict is essential to delivering an impressive reading. In order to have a good audition, it is necessary for an actor to find the conflict within a story and within a character.

The majority of persons and characters have internal conflicts between desires and feelings. Persons and characters can also experience conflict externally with fate, the environment, the world, and God. Relational conflicts can also plague a person's life. Typically, an actor is only given the dialogue, a brief outline of the character's personality, and a story overview when they are asked to read. Some form of conflict always exists in a story and personality. The actor has the responsibility of finding the conflict and demonstrating it's effects in their audition reading.

There is no doubt that conflict is interesting. Instability in a character or story adds depth and movement. Once the desires and needs of a character have been discovered by the actor, obstacles are inevitable. That is life. Our life's hurdles must be overcome and manipulated until they become collaborators in our lives. "Midnight Run" is a perfect movie to consider. In the film, Robert De Niro is a bounty hunter who has the responsibility of finding Charles Grodin's character. Jack (De Niro) is required to track down Mardukas (Grodin) in order to collect his bounty. Jack is met with a number of conflicts including his personal insecurities, rival bounty hunters, and the infamous Mardukas.

All of the answers may not be provided to you in the material provided to you at the audition. It will no doubt be necessary to use your imagination to give depth to the character you are portraying in your audition. Doing so will add more dimension and life to the character, thereby grabbing and holding onto the attention of the auditor and improving your chances of making a good impression. There is nothing worse than performing a one-dimensional reading of a character with no emotion and conflict. If you are able to flesh out a character in this way, your auditions are sure to be more successful.

Keep in mind that conflict typically has more than one dimension. Most people are constantly struggling with numerous inner demons. Keep this in mind when doing your reading and you will be sure to add intrigue to the character you are portraying. Despite what many actors believe, the most important thing is creating a character not merely the lines in the script.

Although your character may be the only live person in the scene, there are doubtless other hidden forces affecting his or her life. To have a successful reading, you as an actor must know how to draw these emotions and circumstances out of the text and take the character to the next level. There is another aspect of conflict to keep in mind. A small amount of comedy should also be present within any conflict. Comedy is present even when the conflict is dark and deep-rooted. Neglecting to add comedy will make the reading unwatchable. In short, conflict and comedy are both an integral part of a successful and impressive reading.




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