hello welcome to organic acting I'm Chris Conway and this is method acting techniques in this video
I'm gonna break down method acting because I know it's quite confusing to some people be sure to
stay tuned to the end of the video where I'll break down what is method acting so when we're
talking about method acting we've really got to mention Constantin Stanislavski who is kind of the
Godfather of all this if you haven't checked out my previous video and Stanislavski I'll link it
below be sure to check it out because it gives you more background about him and his system
so Stanislavski wasn't looking for a more direct path to naturalistic emotion and real life organic
moments on stage as it was at the time after Stanislavski became successful with the Moscow Art
Theatre a lot of his techniques slowly started to bleed into America so here you had practitioners
and directors like Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner taking elements of his system
and making them their own now Stanislavski always said that his system wasn't a cookbook
it wasn't something that you take ingredients from it should be a complete package but they
took what worked for them and developed them into their own system really and this is where method
acting becomes a little bit confusing because there are these different practitioners using
different elements the the term method becomes a bit muddled so first off we've got Lee Strasberg
he really said that the original system and concentrating so much on the text would block
an actor from getting to this emotion he wanted even more direct route so he said that an actor
should use their own personal life to find these moments using things like emotion memory again
moving away from the character slightly but using what was a hand for the actor to get
to that place Stella Adler on the other hand was a little bit more faithful to Stanislavski
and that she said that a character and the given circumstances should be the thing that an actor
should really concentrate on they are the meat and potatoes have find in real emotion Sanford Meisner
believed that an actor should concentrate on the moment on their environment should be responding
to the actors around them and that should be the emphasis so what does all this mean what
am I getting at here basically method acting is so similar to stanislavski's method in the actors
are trying to find something real they're not pretending they're trying to experience that's
a similarity to Stanislavski the difference is that method has kind of pulled apart the
system what you need to remember is that method acting was really applied when it came to film
acting film being very different to stage acting in film acting you are looking to discover a
moment instantaneously so for example you might be shooting one of the scenes at the end of the
script right at the beginning of the shoot and you don't have that time as you would in a play
to find that emotion to build up to it and this is why method acting can help with that so very
in mind all these different ways of working within method so Lee Strasberg Stella Adler
Sanford Meisner we have examples of some of the greats using method acting we've got Robert De
Niro in taxi driver this is an actor who actually got his cab driver's license and drove around New
York picking up fares he's pulling himself in the characters given circumstances and he's
using those given circumstances to experience and to create something that's gonna be so real
on camera and it works we've got other examples such as William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist
this is a director who was rumored to be using shotgun blasts during a take to create reactions
from some of his actors let's really would piss me off then I told him I said never do
that again you know I'm an actor I don't need all these artificial stamina so he shot a shotgun did
this close to my head here's another example in The Godfather Marlon Brando was rumored to have
taped a piece of paper onto his tongue with a rude message on it then during the reverse he stuck out
his tongue and the other actor was surprised by this Don Corleone I am honored and grateful that
you have invited me to your daughter's wedding on the day of your daughter's wedding a real moment
so there we go there's some examples from method acting method acting is helping these actors to
create something real for the audience there's different ways of working within the method
and perhaps some of them on quite as true to Stanislavski but they work method acting helps
create something more visceral for the audience so we got there that was method acting in a nutshell
I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you got something out of it if you did be sure to LIKE
and subscribe please leave me a comment below I'll get back to you and I'll see you next time see ya