 Welcome back, it is Thursday and that means acting analysis and today I'm actually gonna talk about Star Trek Voyager. This is episode 4 from season 2 an episode called Illogium, I think that's how you pronounce it and technically I'm a massive Star Trek fan, not a huge Voyager fan, the first couple seasons are okay, I'm more of a deep space nine, next generation tap guy and the classic Star Trek episodes, I do like also Discovery, I like pretty much all of it, but Star Trek Voyager, some of the stuff I don't know, some of the character stuff though is great, especially with the Doctor. That being said, despite not being a huge fan, there is a moment in here that's also kind of a mix of bad acting and I know it's just so cheesy, but there's a certain moment that's kind of neat and what I want to talk about is how you can use props to kind of emphasize certain emotions. This is a longer clip, I don't want to talk about the whole thing, it's just a specific moment that I like, but I'm going to upload the whole thing as always, link in the description if you want to watch the whole thing with our log and all that good stuff. So this section I want to talk about is about Nelix, Nelix is the chef on board of the Voyager and he has this kind of an argument with Kes, so let's just look at the sequence, I'm going to scrub through a couple things and stop on that moment that I want to talk about. So as this starts, she realizes that you know he's kind of grumpy and he's fairly obvious about how he acts and she gets kind of mad, this is technically about Nelix being mad that Kes is friends with Tom Paris, I know this is all very silly. So Nelix overheard that Tom and Kes are talking and blah blah blah, so he's kind of mad. So if you look at what's going on, Nelix is clearly upset, Kes doesn't want to have it, she realizes he's just being silly and they continue and continue and continue and it's kind of this weird creepy thing of how he says how I used to look at women and he does that. So this is already funny, only because they have a relationship, it's visually where he's kind of in the middle, right? It's kind of the wedge between this relationship, it's kind of a fun, to me I had to giggle, it's kind of a fun visual thing of he's in the middle of those two. There's one thing that he does that cracks me up, it is not what I want to talk about, but if you look at this, as he goes away that look, he looks at Nelix and lifts his eyebrows and he knows that he can't see him, it just cracks me up. It's one of those funny moments where I don't know if something, if you do animate something like this, think about moments where I know you can add funny expressions, it could be something that's part of the character, something to add a bit more fuel to attention and whatever you want to do, but it's just kind of a weird funny character moment, but also during that moment there, the thing happens that I want to talk about. So going back, you can see how Nelix breaks this, right? So let's go back without my commentary here. So Tom shows up and he goes, and breaks it. Push up to get her. And of course, he's really mad and he tells her to get away. And there's one, I just keep talking because I want to show you this absolutely horrendous acting here where he breaks it and then he pretends that it hits him because he's so flustered and everything. It's so silly, the overall thing is so silly. But let's go back to this breaking moment. He takes this and breaks it. Now, this is simple, but still, if you do have props in your scene, think about is it a prop that kind of enhances the character? Is it part of the character? It's not just a typical thing where a character is smoking or a lot of the typical things where someone takes something and maybe brushes it off because it's dirty. I mean, that's not really a prop, but it's kind of a common character thing that people do with something on the character or characters using and picking up things and touching things. But let's pretend again that your character is a chef and the chef would technically like food or like to handle food. So the fact that he takes something that he likes, that he loves and breaks it, kind of enhances and shows how angry he is. So maybe you can extrapolate that for your shot and maybe your shot is handling something in a zoo or the sports person with like something, I don't know, maybe like a skier that breaks the ski sticks or I don't know, someone works in a store, in a record store, or maybe she loves to listen to records and then she's mad and she breaks her favorite record. I don't know, there are all kinds of weird examples or whatever you can come up with. But think about the next time you use a prop. Is it just there because you want to use a prop? I mean, it's always interesting to show off your constraint skills, how someone picks something up and puts it back. But think about it in terms of if I do this, if I use a prop, how is that going to enhance the character or help the story? Or is it going to show something more about the character? So ultimately, because it's character animation, you do want to show things about character, which reminds me that M1 of the future FNAs is going to be all about adding character. But again, have a prop? Well, examine what is the prop. Is it useful for the character? And if I use it, don't just use it for moving things around or just touching something. Is there a way that you can use the prop to enhance the character? Maybe it's something where character has a hat and something specific that he does with the hat or character is shy and then just uses the hat to kind of go down. Or maybe if it's, that's kind of hard to do, I thought about the hoodie. Maybe someone puts on the hoodie and then pulls the strings and that could be a funny moment of, I don't want to be here, don't look at me, puts down the hoodie and goes to us kind of like a pulling. Again, it's kind of hard I don't know how you would rig this whole thing. But just as a prop idea, again, it doesn't have to be a prop, a piece where you hold something. It could be something where it's a piece of clothing. So whatever you have, be a clothing or a prop, whatever it is, can you use it to enhance your character? Is it there to enhance a specific emotion? And so on and so on. So short and sweet, again, not a massive fan of voyager, but I did want to bring it up and I do show this a lot in my classes just because it's an interesting usage of a prop. If you know of any examples of a character using a prop to enhance the emotion or to have us know something more about the character, let me know, let me know in the comments, maybe you have a link to it, that would be awesome. If you like this, hit the like button and if you want to get the notifications to all of my uploads, as always, subscribe and hit the bell button and if you watch the whole thing till the very end, as always, again, I appreciate the time that you take and I will see you hopefully tomorrow for FNA and there's going to be a bit of a surprise because I lied. I'm going to leave it at that. You will know what the lie was tomorrow.