 Welcome back to another acting analysis and tips for animators. And today I'm going to take a look at season two of succession. We're going to cover body language, subtext, and a bunch of really fun acting choices. So let's go. I'm going to cover episode one to four. I'm currently watching season three, which is great. But before I start, hi, my name is JD. And I do acting analysis tips like these. I do animation analysis tips. I do animation lectures. I do review reviews, product reviews. You know what this is. This is the pitch at the beginning. This is the channel. This is what I'm doing. If you like it, subscribe so you don't miss any of my uploads. And if not, maybe you'll do it later. That's OK, too. So no more pitching. Let's get straight to the clips. Now I'm actually starting with a moment from episode four and not episode one. But I wanted to talk about just his body language in terms of there's something that happened. I'm not sure, you know, we're watching this, I don't know what, you know, but something happened and he can't really do much anymore. He is a very compromised situation. And you can see this in terms of hiding behind the desk and always looking down. He can't really look up and tell his sister what's going on. Now, at this point, she asked him straight out what's going on. And he kind of puts his hand in the pocket again. He doesn't want to be exposed. He kind of hides always something, right? And he has a moment of actually looking and then that's it. He tries to be straight, like this is this is what's going on. And he tries to convince it with nodding. So a little bit of a moment of not being able to look at her, but goes back. But she doesn't buy it. And she has that great moment of really, I don't I don't buy this. And as she's confronting him, you can see that, oh, OK, she's not really buying this. And you can see that moment of curious. And you get that puppy tilt of, oh, I wonder what's going on. But he takes that little step backwards away from her. So as always, if you have multiple characters, this is these are my characters. Think about how close they are. And if you watch my channel, you know, I'm always harping about this. But if you have multiple characters, what is their distance? And is there a significance of them getting closer or potentially stepping away? Now, as this continues, you can see that he just really can't look at her for too long. There's always a bit of a problem in terms of eye contact. He's just very embarrassed. He's sort of in a very tricky situation. And again, she doesn't buy it and she pushes him. So what does he do? He goes back and starts to hide again behind the desk. And not only that, he starts to grab even this. It's almost like he needs something to occupy himself like a fidget spinner type of thing or just hiding behind whatever he can hide. As it continues, though, he realizes, well, I got to say something. And again, this whole walk looking down. So always consider the eye line is the character looking down. Yes or no. And why and how is this going to affect the other character? And how is this going to affect us watching those, you know, one or two or three characters? And this continues with him not being able to look at her, her pushing him and confronting him. And it's just there's a moment of a breakdown where he just he just can't tell her what's going on. And he just asks for a hug. This one is great, too, where he just it's about, again, successions in the title. Like he won't be the next CEO. And she has that moment of, oh, interesting. And just that readjustment as well. She's kind of leaning against that puppy tilt, that lean of interest. And now she heard something goes, oh, interesting. And she got a bit of a change, like, OK, OK, what's going on? And then it's this absolutely great moment of him asking her, give me a hug. And, you know, the siblings in the show, they're not exactly warm. And you can see that in this reaction of, really, really. And he gets really close to what's going on. And she's not, you know, it's not a warm embrace, kind of like what's going on with expression. It's a tap on the back. And then she realizes that he's kind of nestling in here. You can see this, he's rubbing his face. He really needs a hug. He's really broken down at this point. And it's this great moment. If you just watch her how she doesn't tap again, you got that change in her face. I love how just everything comes down. This you'll watch the hand here when she realizes, oh, something is really not good. And now starts the embrace, the hugging, the caressing. And if you're watching this, this great moment of just that moment here where he actually sobs, it's like one little sob. And then she really realizes this is not good. This is what's going on. Think about this in terms of if characters embrace in your scene, how do they again interact? Like anything where not just an expression, but is it a tap? Is it a hesitation? Is it a long hold? All of that is going to tell us how they feel. And it's going to add layers to your performance. So it's not just I'm moving and got to move my IKR or FKR and think about constraints and this is the move and that's it. But they always think about what does a gesture mean? What does timing mean? Like in this case, tap, hold, that hesitation and that look, that combination is all of that. It's always so super important to think about every single move, every gesture, every look and how long things are taking. And it's a pain to think about as an animator, but you got to go and think about that frame by frame and actually sticking with him. So this is episode one. He has an interview and this is a great thing of this massive imposing prop. And he is attended by tons of people. And this is something for you to think about in terms of sets. This is not what I want to talk about. But now that I'm seeing this is really great, that massive overtaking camera that leaves him really tiny and alone, but you can see it is later too. But the main thing I want to talk about is this. As we can see a certain area cut off, and that's all we can see of the character. But then as it continues, and it's a great moment through here, you can see this here. He sits down, gets ready, and we're starting to cover the character with her and him and then look at how we reveal him. And you got this. He's this little boy. He's just it's always like he's on rollercoaster and he's just he's afraid. And I love that contrast of or kind of that reveal of while there's one way this is how we perceive him. But in reality, he's actually more like this. And I love this too. When he goes away and as this guy crossing the camera here, look at his eyes. He just looks at it's almost like a look for help. I'm alone. Don't leave me. Oh, such a great moment. And again, the differences of we are like this. That's what we see and you can pretend to be all OK. And then here does the blinding lights. This is almost Star Trek. There are four lights. Anyway, but I love this here, all of that, just seeing the different changes of how nervous he is, all of that, the preparation. This is something else for you to think about. Maybe your character is in an interview or somewhere with an audience and then your lip sync, right? You can have your lip sync here and then that beginning, as long as you have some ambient noise that matches the rest room tone wise and everything, you can start a shot like this. I love this all that getting ready. OK, and then he could cut to the interview where at the end he could be like this and now suddenly he's confident. But we know that's not really what's going on. You can see this later, too, is they make an extra point here of showing this, the nervousness. Oh, it's so good. But also, again, in terms of sets, I love how he is just so tiny in here in this massive, it's all fake, this empty room and just this watching him, that whole setup is great. But again, I love this as an idea for a shot. If you're doing a lip sync where we're showing something and that's, again, the face can lie, but the body is going to tell you the truth. So the subtext here and him being nervous, you can show it through something like this. And it doesn't have to be a tilt on revealing the hands. It could be just something like this as opposed where we go back and forth between, you know, people in the audience or someone in the set. And then we cut to this where we see the confident thing and go back seeing actually the full body language of what's really going on with him. This one is mainly about Roman, the character Roman here. He's just so great. That actor, Hulkin, is so good. It's this thing, it's a simple thing, but she goes, all right, let me show you around and look at him. Why? Why would you turn like this? He just has so many moments like this. There's nothing huge I want to talk about. It's just as an original idea of if your character is kind of quirky. Also, he does great listing all the time with his facial expressions. I love that little slight little tilt. And again, he does this for these eyebrows. So does in terms of like general, interesting acting choices or how you can go from A to B, again, this has to be in character. It has to work within the scene and the situation and the story. It's just a great moment. And there are actually a lot more than I want to show. This one with him being awesome and he's always so awesome in the show. This is purely about standing up. So you can see here he's flustered. He just wants to get out of here. And you can see this awkward bumping into the chair. And then that does that push off. And this is because I always show to my students, the big hero six character tests where they sit down and especially how they interact with the sets, the environment. It's just you can really show the personality in terms of how they interact and what they do. And you can do this again with a standing up. Is the standing up kind of awkward as he bump into this is maybe something spilling. And is this is frustrated, but he doesn't want to take it out on a person. So he takes it out on a piece of furniture. So just kind of thinking about that in terms of setup. That if you do a quote unquote, simple assignment where someone is sitting and then standing up, think about how far you can kind of push this in terms of personality and then how you can use sets and prompts to kind of push the emotion and kind of push the character traits. Again, this is purely about an awesome moment. She is not agreeing with him, but he doesn't really want to realize like, yeah, it's fine. And does that little, OK, it's kind of like an agree to disagree. But it's almost like he just overrules what he just heard. She said no. And he goes, no, no, we're going to do this. And I love her reaction to I just love this in general. But her reaction, OK, OK, what was that? And then he goes into because he wants to be politician. And it's this kind of this, OK, team, let's go, let's do this. And then this great anticipation of he does this with the sound. So before he actually gives her a kiss. So there's a lot of a lot of awesome stuff in terms of what could you do when characters are facing each other and there could be disagreement or something that is almost cute, condescending or just kind of off. And I love that where it's not. I mean, it's obviously weird and forced, but her hand is there. Like, yeah, I'm just going to use this to kind of make a point of it's a handshake and I'm only one shaking because you're disagreeing. But it's OK. It's OK with me. Just kind of think about that. And of course, character reactions when the lip sync is about one character, but you can always cut to another character reacting to whatever they're hearing or whatever they have just done to that person in terms of again, like an embrace, a handshake, whatever it is. And of course, my favorite in terms of anticipation, you can do something here before the actual action. Here's another one about a gesture. He just says orchestra quiet down or stop. Actually, I can't remember what he says. But it's something super simple in terms of just music stop. It could just be this. And I love that he continues with and just tone it down. And it's again, I have nothing you should say about this, but it's the thing of you have your lip sync and then your scene ends. And you're always tied to the rhythm and kind of, you know, you kind of have to do what the lip sync tells you to do. You can like we've shown before with Kendall holding the chair. You can show subjects, you can do a bunch of stuff. But the moment the audio ends, it's your opportunity to add a little button at the end. That one more thing where that's just a great, a great expression, a great little thing that goes, OK, guys, because it's not really, it's not really, I won't say polite, but it's not really friendly. It's more like, OK, guys, it's not great. Come on, come on, pipe down. So again, are the gestures telling us something more about a character and how can you use this once the audio is done? And speaking of gestures, here's another one. She asks him, how are you doing? Everything OK. And he is in a horrible state of mind. You can see this here hung over a hair of the shovel. You got to put this clothes back in. He's not good. And he says, I'm not good. But while he doesn't, he gives it to a OK. Even here at the beginning, he goes, he knows, yeah, I'm not well. I'm not good. Yeah. Everything is not great. And it's a simple thing of doing the opposite. It's like what I talked about before in a previous clip where if your character says yes, you can do yes, or you can do no. So you have a gesture either through the head or whatever it is, and then you say and perform something else. The opposite. It's not a crazy idea, but I just like the contrast and it's exaggerated. And it's something you wouldn't expect. And depending on how you act and what the secondary action is with him putting in back to close, you just add extra nice little contrast that you wouldn't potentially expect. And actually, speaking of contrast, I love this here. If you look at them, you can see there's a specific height difference against a simple thing I want to talk about. But she comes in for a kiss and look at her. She gets on her toes and it goes back down. Just a little moment of up and down. And it's cute as you can feel it, even though we can't see the the feet or the legs. But it's something for you to think about. If you do have characters, is there a high difference? And then what can you do with this? Does the character have to lean down all the time? Maybe it's something annoying where the character is this tall and this character constantly has to talk down. Is something dismissive? Is it condescending because of the height? Or is it something where the character is small and the other character who's tall doesn't want to be threatening? So then you use that height difference for the character to actually squat down and talk to the character from a lower point of view. And in this case, just for a little kiss, they can just get on the tippy-toe if a cute little moment and do kissy-kissy. But if you have characters of different heights, think about that. But can I use this to my advantage? Once taller, once smaller, what can I do with this? And here's another one with a great expression where something happens. Spoiler's not going to say anything. And he tells him, good job. And I love that little subtle, huh? Really? He's telling him. And they all work together and she's probably expecting, well, he's going to tell me the same thing and he doesn't. And he just does this. So good. It's this moment like, yep, not you. Thank you. And then he still kind of looks at her to see what the reaction is. It's a great little turnaround and that I messed up. But I love this again, something that wouldn't expect from this character. This character is mostly angry, not mostly, but there's a lot of anger in this character. So for that moment of, hey, it's so great. And again, this is something where lip sync and a no lip sync and it's purely pantomime to give us something else. Also great for lip sync, which I've mentioned before. You don't always have to animate and see. I mean, you have to animate. We can see this, but we don't have to have a focus on the character talking. So imagine your whole scene is them talking. You see some blurry jaw movement up and down, but it's all about the third character. They're listening, I don't think they have eye darts, you never reactions. So that as a set up is cool, too, because maybe you're new to lip sync. You don't want to really deal with all the shapes here. Put that in there in a different layer, blur it out. And then it's all about a character listening and the thought process and how they're processing the information. Because again, for your characters, you always have to pay attention that they're listening and reacting and processing and reacting. Because you don't want your characters to just go through ABC like they are going down the list. I have to be like this, I have to look over there, I have to react. And it's especially difficult for animators because we're listening to this all the time, looping, going frame by frame. There's a spontaneity that's kind of gone because we just constantly have to analyze this frame by frame. Is the eyelid here and then here and so on. But as you do your performance, really try to make sure that your character is witnessing things for the first time. Obviously, the Koopi story point that it's not, that it's a repetitive thing. But generally, right, in most of the character pieces, the characters are talking or doing something or seeing something. And that character will be exposed to something for the first time and it will be listening to something and hearing something for the first time. So really make sure that that is visible in the character's face, in the body language, if they're multiple characters. So try to keep your characters from being animated by an animator, if that makes sense, because we know everything and we just we're too familiar with the whole scene frame by frame. So it's kind of that freshness and that reaction of the character that's a hard thing to sell. But that makes the performance that much more interesting because we get to see, oh, they're thinking, they're processing and that's a cool reaction and so on. Now, speaking of reaction, if your reaction to this is that, oh, this is interesting and maybe he, as in me, can help you with your shots. You know what it is, it's the end, it's the picture on the workshop. So if you like this and you want me to help, you can sign up for my workshop, link in the description. The signups are open and you can sign up at any time. And speaking of time, this is, I don't know how long, longer ish. So if you're still watching, thank you for watching. I appreciate your patience. 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