 Welcome back to the acting analysis and tips for animators and today I want to take a look at the movie Bad Education and there's going to be a ton to cover. I'm going to look at acting that you can do just with your body, going to be about character reactions, thought process, anticipation, prop handling, framing, imposing, contrast, and a ton more. So let's go. And before I continue, if you're new to this channel, hi, my name is JD and I do acting analysis clips like these. I do animation analysis clips. I do animation lectures. I do reviews, product reviews, feedback and all kind of stuff. This is YouTube. This is the pitch. Feel free to browse around, look at my channel. If you like it, you can hit like, you can hit subscribe, you can hit that bell button. But that's just the pitch. You know, it's YouTube. You got to pitch it. Other than that, let's go through the sequences because there's a lot to cover. And I'm going to start with this where it's mostly about the back. I love that this is how the movie starts. And I like this where it's not too often that you see it as in student clips or even in movies, actually, in animation movies, it's all about establishing the character without really seeing his face. So you can just see how he takes care of himself. This is a long sequence where it's just all about him. And you can see as he goes out, we barely see his face. And then he takes care of himself here. This gets all ready. We kind of notice it must be something, maybe about him. He has a speech, but this all continues. You can see how he kind of gets ready for this neck here. And this is cool too. Even if you don't do any of this, I like this moment here where you come in and it's all about the reactions for the character. It's kind of dark here, but you know, I can imagine he must be an important person, at least to those people. And it's kind of neat to kind of focus potential, your animation on characters reacting to a person that you don't really see face wise. You have this even here, someone is whispering something. And this continues on until we have the reveal. And this is something where you can put the character more in frame. And again, taking care of the hair, the suit, whatever you have until here. And then you can do something where like that, where it's kind of a reveal, camera turns, and now we see the character. And it could be something where maybe we think with the suit and the hair and people idolizing the characters might be a person that's really confident and maybe in your version, this turns into a scene where you see maybe characters really, really nervous and not confident or it's just not a face you would expect. It's kind of a neat reveal. It also kind of forces you to go more into gestures and body language and pantomime stuff without really relying on the face, which is kind of a cool and kind of a difficult challenge. Speaking of face, I love this. This is not really in terms of acting, but I like it in terms of a transition where she asked him a question about the character and he can't quite remember. I think, oh, that's a difficult thing. Who was that? Who was this? And then you can see as he goes forward, he goes, oh, wait, now I know. Cut to this. And now that he remembers, he says the name and then the scene continues where then he starts talking to them and he steps kind of into this framing here later on. But that's just kind of as a framing idea. I like this that any character is dressed differently and they're thinking about something. I mean, just taking the general idea of the characters one state, cutting to another where it could be he's pretending to be nice or he's confused and then, ah, has clarity or is whatever switch you have from one emotion to the next with the change of clothing, but there is a through line. And there's a there's a connection between this and this shot. That was a really cool way of cutting and continuing the scene with him. This little moment is short and sweet and it's purely about her. And all I want to show off is the Hugh Jackman character is asking who wants to volunteer and talk about what they want to do in the future. And she goes, me. And that's all there is. I love that money. You got some somewhat mirroring, but they're still fairly different imposing and how you can have a lineup like this. And I love her head tilt out. She's like the head up and pretending or not to be interested in what he's saying, but I love this immediate me. And just the contrast of this look at that. She brings up her knees and feet and such a stretch of me, me, me, me, while the other people here, the other kids are just slowly going, maybe I want to say something. I love this. I just love that. It's also nicely done. Send the framing going, it's just super cute. Nothing real to do with the rest of what I'm talking about here. It is a great moment of contrast and timing. This one is purely in terms of usage of your sets. As always, if you watch my stuff, you know, I like sets and props. What I like about this is as she walks, you see all those wipes. And what I would take from that is that what if your character and it's going to be someone, you know, a stealth thing where someone is stealing something or it's being confused or looking for something like her, but it could be this is one specific body post. I knew you would stylize this and make it me more extreme, but it could also be more of a close up. You could be also this close. We don't see the ground, but it's kind of like a waist up shop. But you still have foreground elements. But the main reason I'm saying this is that you could have a certain pose or face wipe to reveal another pose or face, wipe to reveal another one. And this could be a progression where character gets more and more confused or excited or anxious, whatever you have. But I like the usage of this as a wipe and then always kind of a new surprise in terms of posing for the face or for the body. This example I love just because of the long pause. Basically, she has used money that she shouldn't have. And I love how she she's kind of pretending to think about it, but she kind of knows exactly what she did. And that's what she says is right here. There's one thing and then she goes and blah, blah, blah. She spent just a ton of money. And I love this in terms of when you have lip sync, you know, you're kind of stuck or you have to stick to the rhythm and timing. So they talk, talk, talk. And what I love is that when there's a pause and then either continues or totally ends, but if there's contrast and whenever there's that pause, you can do whatever you want with that moment. So as she says, what it is in this, you can see a lot of that face. She saw the good actors. I love it. She has that long reaction. Then that slight ever so subtle up and down nod into, OK, I get it. And you can see the reaction where she looks at the character. And once you realize what she has done, you can see that internal thought process of really was it's not just a blink, it's kind of a longer half blink. Then looking away, you can see that the emotional reaction through the jaw clench. And then she's got that change of this. I love that contrast of, OK, OK, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. You got that, that rhythmic bob of the head and then bam, you can see the blink to a different reaction, a bit more serious there. And then she turns around where she thinks, OK, how are we going to fix this? And I love that. Just that business and a complete disengagement from where the character is, right? She doesn't look at her anymore. She completely turns away going, all right, well, now I'm in a different headspace, I've got to think about, you know, all those problems that she has caused. And I love that progression of this with a slightly amused look to, OK, OK, all right. Well, let's do this. Now let me think about something else. It's so good. I love it. Speaking of all of it, this longer sequence, we're going to scrub through issues. Basically, he's come in because he has bad news. His bad news is about how much people have been spending and they don't really know about. And I mean, the whole movie is just fantastic in terms of performances. And there's so much in here that I love. And he has that in animation. You might argue it's twinning, whatever. You know, every now and then you can use it. Sometimes you can't just what I like about this is that he goes into this reaction of there's so much money being spent. We can't track it to this, that he goes into one pose that is not really a whatever, like an arm slam down or a big gesture. It's almost like a hold weight into this one. I kind of like that contrast of one pause to. Then as he continues, he explains what's going on. And he has, you know, he's starting to understand, well, wait, what's going on? What is happening right now? And he then explains what I like about this is that he knows what's going on. There's so much going on in his brain. That's why he's so upset because he knows the troubles that they're in. And you have all those things. You got him the reaction in the body before he says anything. And you have that pleading look, it's kind of this back and forth of we are in trouble. But he also looks a lot at him because he knows he has confidence. He finds things out and he unites us here when he waits. And he goes, okay, hold on. Say, he tells him to repeat, you know, I am in charge of this. And I love this. What was he keeps talking here? And he's very nervous. He goes, no, wait, wait, hold on. Now repeat after me. And I love this. It's almost like that long pause before he says anything. He forces the situation to calm down. Like we wait, okay. Now says repeat after me. And he has that and I love it. It's also not used too much in animation for my students where you would close your eyes for an extended period of time. And it's kind of this calming of the situation of, hold on, repeat after me. And I love this kind of the subtext of he is completely screwed. He knows it. Look at that. He's so anxious. He's just so closed off the face. Just so much panic. But then he says, I'm in charge of the situation. I'm the boss. But you can see he doesn't quite believe in it. He just comes down a little bit in the body. He says it. And then he goes back into, this is not going to be good. So it's just a great thing of the dynamic of a character telling someone else what to say. But they really don't believe in it. The whole subtext in this pose, in the way he delivers it. It's just so great. And then as the scene continues, it's a longer scene. It's just so good. You can see he asks him off-screen so what is going on? How much money? And you can see that. Oh, like he's so stressed out before he says anything. I love that too, that in your animation. Like I say, don't stick to your, you know, the lip-sync, like I said before, you got the rhythm that you kind of stick to. Think about what you can do before the dialogue starts or the monologue and what you can do in between so that you can kind of go within anticipation, right? You got that massive explosion of before he talks to take advantage of that. Again, he's super nervous. He got all those pulling at his ear. And this is kind of like secondary business for your main dialogue. And I like this because you can go from a standing position to a seated position. And then all the handling of the papers kind of reinforces the panic and the chaos. Instead of just having a character in an empty scene, just, you know, waving arms around and doing kind of the classic, a bit more stage-y performance that you can see sometimes in student work. Love all this. And again, his relationship with Hugh Jackman, the other character, he says all this, goes like that, and then he's got this there. It's always kind of like, please help me, help me do this. And this is great too. And I'm gonna actually leave the audio and there might be some copyright strike. I hope it doesn't get taken down but he basically tells him, this is what's going on. This is the amount of money. And you can see his reaction. I love this whole progression here. So watch this. He listens, he hears, right? From what he's been saying, the amount of money. And then he goes, oh, okay. He repeats that to himself. That's the amount. Then he looks back at him just to kind of confirm. Kind of like, okay, okay. Now let me think about this. Okay. And I love this again. He closes his eyes. Look at that. He just goes, okay, okay. He's gonna have an idea. And then he says, and then he got that pause. And then he says the line without looking up. He's just still in his brain. It's almost like visualizing. This is how we're gonna fix the situation. And he goes, wait, what do you mean? And then he looks up and he starts to explain the situation. And the great part is this is that he interrupts him and tells him, no, no, no. This doesn't work. But the shock cuts to him listening. That's where he says it, right? He starts to explain it to him. And it's all this into that. I love this. I'm gonna leave the audio for this. This is the moment, right? So I'm gonna play this. The receipts are gone. They're in the bin of a shredder probably. But she could have misplaced them. So great. And why is this so great? Just because for you, again, you might have chose the lip sync of this character. And this could be a whatever scene where the scene is actually, we always see this character. But what if you have a two character piece, maybe you imagine it's gonna be an over the shoulder, blurry. And we just do the lip sync for this character. But what if this character starts talking? But then we cut to this character listening and listening and thinking and processing and then interrupting this character. I think this is also super important that you can do a character that can listen, process and react. And then you can still do your lip sync versus just sticking to one character. I think this is a really cool moment of this could be shot number one and go straight into shot number two where you focus on thought. I don't think this whole sequence, this whole movie is just full of stuff like that. It's just really, really cool. Totally switching around from character stuff to props because you know, if you watch my channel, I love props. And this whole sequence to me is prop heaven. How he uses the, can see this here. Hey, you got this behind the ear you can grab to write stuff down. And this could be pantomime. This could be this character delivering a line. As I said before, this could be another character talking and this character is listening. All kinds of stuff. But I love all of this, puts it back in here. I love this here. The drop of that, how he brings that back up because this is now your chance to go. Well, it's going to go really fast. He's super confident. Maybe he zips up, the arm goes up here and then it goes back into this. Super confident. Or it goes up and slams into his face. Or it kind of goes up, sticks a bit weight, goes up, sticks a bit weight. Again, that prop can tell us something about this character and this continues on. I mean, this is prop heaven. So again, this could be pantomime, this could be in combination with the lip sync. But the sizes, right? The different size and proportions and just the materials, whatever you have here will give you an opportunity to grab those things in a completely different way. So this could be stuff like that. Just the way he turns this and uses the credit card. All of this, the way he grabs this and the way he grabs that here, right? And then the lift here. All that stuff could just be this is technically a weight assignment. But I love elements like this. Just the composition is great with the foreground elements. It's kind of your background stuff you can use as well. But think about if your character is in an environment with something like this, how do they grab things? Because it's not just arm up and then arm down. Is are they excited about it? Are they, you know, this is maybe he loves building things. He's really giddy about it. Or is it just secondary action while he delivers an audio line? I don't know, to me, this is really, really, I don't know, I get excited when I see stuff like this, right? Even just that turn, there's so much you can do. And even if you make this smaller and your character is like this, you see the head and you see the arm, you see the credit card thing, all of that can kind of enhance your scene. So it's not just, let me go back here, not just something where it's a character talking, which is totally fine. And I'm saying this in terms of how else could you enhance your demo reel? Because imagine all your shots in your demo reel are like this, but then you're missing out on something like that. More of a full body shot, some, you know, maybe some comedic element with a prop, just think in terms of variety. And this is why I'm always showing you all those clips here in these acting analysis tips is that you wanna think in terms of what else can you show off in your shot? There's could be an interesting walk, interesting prop handling, just one more thing you can show off in your overall skill set in your reel. This one I'm actually only including because of one shot. He looks at her, this is when things are unfolding and we realize how much trouble she's in, what she's done. And I love how he gets in there and then we frame on this. I love that she is not a success. There's no respect for her. I love that this is up there. It would be even worse if A, the camera would just go away from her and those things would be angled this way. It's almost like it foreshadows, she's gonna go to prison. I just love that moment. Nothing potentially for you to use. I just wanted to bring that in there. It's just a great movie. With this sequence, I love it. This is actually the continuation of what I showed before, is the framing and staging. So I love that she is low. There's a lot of empty space. It's kind of like she doesn't have that much power anymore. She's small in frames. There must be chaos elements around her. But there's just a lot of weight around her. Now, as she comes in, her friend, as the friend comes in, she gets a bit more like, okay, now you can help me. And then you get the reveal of each character. Even that I like as a shot idea that you could do where one character comes in, that's the pose. The next character comes in, that's the pose. And so on. I can continue with, and this is continuing here, lots of different characters. So this is for you a chance to show contrast imposing, demeanor, how they walk, and so on and so on. It stays within this framing though. And she's at this height. And then it goes to him. So he is kinda, if you go back and forth, at the same level, right? You can see the height is the same. But he brings other characters into the room. Again, I love that if it poses in this way he is very nervous. He also got some finger stuff going on there. But this is basically, I'm not just alone here. It's almost like an ambush where I have all those other people as a backup, towering over you. I love that staging and how he goes back and forth. Now content-wise what I love is just the stuff that he says, where I don't wanna spoil too much. I've been going kind of through the whole movie here. But he just starts to explain like this is what's gonna happen to you and it's not good. It's just, you know, and as it dawns on her, we cut to, he says it here, and then he cuts to bam. And now we have a close-up. Where you really wanna see the reaction where she realizes, oh, this is what you guys are doing to me. Like, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Let's repeat this. And I love that. Even as she does this, it cuts also back to him closer. Again, because they're kind of in the same trouble, but she's just the first one to get it or to get into trouble. But I love, again, the back and forth where we can see same level, kind of the same status, but he still has this. And I love that you got the crossed arms and all of this kind of this wall of support behind him. And actually, as this continues, it's a bit trickier for you to animate. I just wanna bring that up just because I love it in the movie. He lays out so many things that are wrong with her. And she goes, really? Like, it's really shocking, all the stuff he says. But it's kind of like enabling this character. Because he says so many things where it's almost, you can pick and choose something that is quote-unquote wrong with her to use as an excuse. And basically kind of spoiling the movie here. And as he does this, you can see this. He's almost looking over to go like, are you not getting what I'm trying to give to you? And then he finally gets it. And he goes, you know, you're a sick person. There's something wrong with you. And as he says all this, look at him. He starts to be like, is she getting it? Is she getting it? And she's slowly getting it. She looks at him and goes, wait, just that dart right there. What are you saying? And I love this moment. Again, this is tricky. It's super subtle. Tricky to put that into your shot. But I do love this. I'll do love the center framing. This behind. Also, they don't see what he's doing. He's not communicating. Look at him. Ah, it's that moment of, don't you get it? I'm giving you a chance to use an excuse. He goes, come on, come on. Look at that tiny nod here. Look at this. Come on, come on. And then, and then she realizes, oh, okay. Yes, this is wrong if he's wrong. And then he has this reaction. Okay, good. She gets it. She gets it. Yes, like he almost gives her the permission or the nod or he just reconfirms. Okay, this is good. This is good. Continue with the charade. And no one can see me because they're all behind me. Switching to this, which is totally different. She is about to, let me go back here. Where is she? Where is she? She is about to expose this whole situation. She's a journalist for her school. But what I'm keeping here is that he realizes what she's about to do. She's, you know, not really happy. And I like this. I like that moment of anger into that. Why do I like this? It's because you can use this where imagine. I mean, he doesn't want to make a scene, but imagine this is an environment where you have to be really, really quiet and you can't really slam down your fists but your character is still really mad. So it's this moment of, I want to do this, but I can't because I know where I am. So I have to contain my rage or whatever reaction there is. Then you continue on with the scene. I just like this idea of the environment is going to force the character into a specific reaction because they are aware of the environment and they don't want to disrupt the environment or whatever is going on there. Then actually continuing with her, he starts to figure out what she's about to do. So she's out there alone on the bench and this is more about kind of status and kind of a relationship and threat where right now he's taller than her but he wants to be on the same level. You can see this, she's going to hide the potentially discriminating elements and now he sits down. And you can see this as they go back and forth and you just go and frame back. They are on the same level. So he sits down. So they are on the same level. It's status wise, it's the same, they're looking at each other, it's great framing. And as this continues, he realizes that she is probably not going to back down. She's going to make or do something that's going to get him into trouble. So he stays in this position and as he realizes, okay, just this break from, I'm looking at her and that's going, okay, I realize this is not going to be good. What does he do? He starts to lean forward and the camera reframes. But again, he's starting to not invade a personal space because there's still enough room, but still it's an inclination of, all right, hold on, let me get closer to you and explain this. And you can see how slightly uncomfortable she is. She's starting to switch around. As this continues, he starts to get up and you think, okay, well, that's it. He realizes, yeah, I can't do anything about this, but no, he starts to sit down. You can see her reaction to like, okay, what are you doing here? And this is not a friendly chat. This is now a threat. And you can see as he starts talking, he's kind of leaning more and more. And you can see if you scrub this a little bit of a camera move too, but as you do this, realize that's the lean and that's the lean away. So it's kind of, I'm closer to you. I'm still technically on the same level. And even with the expression, I'm starting to threaten you and you got to be careful about all of this. And this continues on, continues on until you bring something up like here. You know, this is something that happened to you. And it's something about her parents again, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. But once we get in that situation, we cut to this, because it's all about her reaction now. We don't care about him anymore because he has really brought out the threat there. Cut to that. It's just, again, it's a longer sequence. I highly recommend you watch it. I mean, not just that sequence, but the whole movie, because it's just full of stuff like that, including the music, which is awesome. But anyway, it's not about music. It's about reactions and just the acting. And this goes back into props, because I love it. This, at this point in the movie, there's so much stuff going on. It's just really frustrated. And then this character comes with more news, bad news, actually. So as he lays out, listen, I found this, this and this. He tells him, well, I'm going to take care of it and you take care of it. It's going to be okay. And you can see how he grabs his glasses because it's almost like a sign of I'm done with you. I'm grabbing something. It's almost like a shield. I'm reading way too much of this. But to me, it's like, I'm putting this on. Hey, I know I have to read this, but it's almost like, this is something in front of my face because I'm done with you. I'm using this conversation, it's done. And then he goes, there's something else. And then look at how he handles the glasses. I love that. Just that we know he's frustrated. We can tell by this expression, the tone of his voice and everything, but this is the extra accent of, okay, it's the way he drops it. Really? What else is there? Okay, with the squint and then the scene continues. So to me, it's just, why would you have props? To me, it's just something where you can accentuate, emphasize, just push a moment more. This could be confusion, could be anger, frustration, whatever it is, but that's why I like using props and that's why I like talking about them. And actually ending with the sequence is nothing to do with props. This is more about a move before it actually happens. He's really mad. He told the other guy, blah, blah, blah. It's a lot of threatening back and forth power play. And at the end, yeah, okay, knock it out. And he says it only here. And this is the thing of, I'm gesturing, then I say it. It's a simple thing. Also, I love this just as a setup. If this is your shot, you can still have this, you can still have foreground element, which again, could be a wipe to reveal to a new expression, but you could have off-screen dialogue where he just listens. This could be a two-person dialogue scene, but it's all about him, his love, this whole thing. I mean, I love him as an actor, but this is great just because it leads into this thing of you don't always have to be in sync with the audio where some would say you do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or like the classic thing of no or yes. Think about what you could do, either gesturally or with the head or whatever. That is an anticipation of the audio. Like the classic thing is where you would say no, or you go, yeah, or you do something where it's no. Where you start with something, whatever you're saying, you're gonna act that out earlier. It's like a long anticipation. It's like with lip sync, you don't have to go, what's that? It could be what's that? Where you form that shape as a long anticipation, so it's not always so in sync. Because it sometimes ends up being a bit too post-to-posed and on the nose where you're really following the rhythm of the audio too much. And it doesn't feel as natural as it could be. And sometimes it's also fun to do something earlier and completely mislead the audience by going no, where you do one thing and you say something else. Anyway, I thought this whole movie is just absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend you watch it. Speaking of watching, this is already going into a huge amount of time which my camera is actually gonna stop recording. So that is that. Thank you for watching. You know my pitch though, right? So if you feel like you wanna anticipate your work with emailing me for a workshop, I actually have no segue because I was distracted by the camera that's about to turn off. So I got workshops, so you want me to help you to make those shots like this and make them awesome. You can sign up at any time. You know the drill, you can sign up and work with me whenever you want. Schedules are super flexible. And if you like this, you don't wanna miss any of those clips and tips and anything, feel free to subscribe. Hit that bell button so you don't miss any of those. And that is that. It's a longer clip. It's also an awesome movie. So please watch it. If you have, let me know in the comments and curious what you think. And that is that. Thank you for watching. Thank you for your time. And I will see you in my next upload.