 Today we're gonna talk about the movie Midnight Special directed by Jeff Nichols who also did Take Shelter Which is fantastic, which I want to talk about at a later point and mud as well, which is great But now let's get to Midnight Special There's a very specific scene with two actors. I want to talk about that is kind of a mix between acting choices moments that you can change depending if you have a very specific audio file that you're animating to and Specific character traits and behavior based on environment the characters awareness of his or her surroundings, so let's start the sequence so they are going through this destruction field and The first thing I want to point out is this poem in here when he gets in that look it cracks me up every time So he asked him a question. Let's go back here He asked me a question and he responds with what go ask an engineer The reason I'm pointing this out is because this is the moment his reaction here That happens outside of the audio So if you are animating to lip-sync, you're gonna be tied to his delivery his question You can potentially change the environment, you know kind of where they are You have some sort of freedom given that audio file But you're still kind of bound to that rhythm to obviously the lip-sync and kind of what they're saying So it's kind of you to be as creative as you can within those limitations But what I love about audio files and this is going to be a whole potential F&A or future or subject You know about picking the right audio file. What I like is silence pauses between sentences Why because this is the moment where you can create your own performance You can deviate from the auto you can add subtext you can add a whole new world the whole new world Nevermind to your shot So stupid and take control of the acting choices and in this case what is neat if you go back here He has his response and for this Just like in here you could potentially cut to a close-up and get into more facial acting a bit more advanced facial acting or Staying kind of a medium where you can show more broader Body mechanics with facial acting, but he can react Like this really you're gonna give me this answer really or he could laugh He could smile he could have a little bit of a or look at someone else like did you hear this and do a gesture so this is your moment where you can take control of this acting choice and Do something original that is not bound to the audio file Continuing on he tells him well something has happened here, but it tells him something and I love this here So he has his reaction to something that we don't know what it is He knows and as an audience we're wondering what is he seeing? Why why is he reacting like and this is something that I don't really see that often in student work It's in movies here and there, but in student work It's usually very presentational where you want to show your acting choices. You want to show your animation It's all very clear to the camera And there are moments where the character can just look and take in information and just react to something where as an audience We're wondering what's going on and you're creating some sort of anticipation in the audience where they want to see well Show us show us what's happening. So in this case it cuts to this which is You know a destruction which again, I don't want to spell too much. It's interestingly frame We don't really look at anything. So I know what they were expecting with potential CG work up there What I like about this is that you have a reaction in your character and this could be like, whoa What is this and it could be some sort of disgust it could be shock it could be whatever you want And again, this is something where you're in control of the acting choices and it's outside of the audio Elements or the lip sync or the timing so this is all you and then in this you can technically Sneak in an exercise So my thing is always you want to take exercises and kind of mask them as just shots shots as if you've taken them out of a movie It's out of a sequence. It's a standalone thing But it's not an an assignment where it's a box lift right or a specific gear change We always kind of know that that is an assignment So in this case you could sneak something in and what if the whole background thing is about destruction something land And something broke you could have something broken in here crater something and something is sticking up We meteor it could be something I would have object and then you got your characters in my fantastic drawings here They're trying to pull this out one person is pushing and now suddenly this becomes your weight assignments Now it makes sense within the story where someone says what this happened and this is some sort of destruction here And he is reacting to this every morning what's going on? And now you're showing what this character has talked about and you're showing why this character is reacting The other character is reacting to this destruction Whatever it is you want to show but you sneak in potentially a weight assignment What I like about this part two is the relationship between these two he doesn't seem to really like him He doesn't really care How he gives him these documents he doesn't look at him like always a big fan of I align eye contact how long do you look into someone's eyes and you look away or you don't look into someone's eyes at all And in this case he just kind of Hands those documents back to that come on take them and then he kind of checks like really come on And he has to hurry if you look at him Let's go back here and he goes. Oh, and let me see this that tells us something about their relationship It's an interesting moment where you can have contrast and movement where he's doing his walk And you can put in a walk cycle with some changes He looks around he was oh it has to go forward that to me is an interesting change in the character could be fun thing to animate and I like just that Again his expression he cracks me up Then we get to this moment, which is probably one of my favorite moments here And you're wondering why why am I pointing this out the awesome thing here is that if you look at driver's performance here. He is completely Fascinated by this is concentrating on this is mesmerized whatever you want to read into this But he's definitely focusing on that part and he's completely Unaware of what's in front of him because he's not looking in front of him And the thing is he's acting this out because he's seeing this for the first time He turns around and if you look at him Well, he has that moment of what I almost walked into you Now this could be their first take. He had no idea. They're rehearsed this. That's what he wants to do weird. That's a weird Smiley something face anyway But it's a moment where to me it shows spatial awareness or the lack of spatial awareness and by spatial I mean what's around him what are the characters around them what they are doing in the scene So that is just a cool moment that just feels unrehearsed and it's not so planned out where a lot of times in Animation again, not saying movies are generalizing But like certain acting choices in for student work is sometimes a bit too simple Not that you want to throw in a lot of complex stuff just to make it too complicated just to be complicated But I think this is a really cool moment Just that where he has that slight little whoa, I'm too close slight reaction there I change there and then they continue and the scene ends So it's a little thing but it could be a really fun thing to animate. It's something else that to me Grounds this character into this environment is that so if that's a way to explain it But you want to get out of this idea of having a character in the scene on an empty background Or just like a bland background and the characters kind of performing Somewhat to the camera not looking into the camera But kind of performing like this with a lot of hand gestures, which is kind of a the cliche student acting work I'm a big fan of putting the character into an environment and having the character be influenced by that environment And that could be temperature It could be how they have to walk because of what the environment is made of or the characters looking at environments But at the same time the same with characters characters being surrounded by other characters or another character does something and they React to their acting choice or a sound or whatever it is and that is going to be part of another lecture of having the environment Effective character. That's a whole different subject. I want to get into was that's really important to me But in this scene, it's just a really neat little detail and again He waits for him he turns and he waits and he waits and and also he doesn't care He doesn't get it is about to bump into him again. It kind of shows their relationship It's just a small little detail that just kind of in that scene. That's really neat to me There's a lot more in this movie. There are actually a couple more scenes I want to get into but they're part of a different subject like secondary action and close-up detail But that's for another time, but just for that sequence I think there's some really really cool stuff with again their relationship little moments where you can take control of the acting You're not bound to the audio There are moments where you can create anticipation in the audience where they're wondering what is going on And then you can have a payoff where you can do whatever you want with that scene And again, you can take control of the acting choices There are maybe different than what you would expect when you listen to the audio by itself And then you have a moment like this here where again just by how they're handing their document How they're doing a certain gesture or handing off props or whatever it is that you want to do in your scene Think about when you have two characters how they relate what their relationship is in terms of do they know each other For how long do they like each other or not and then having the characters be aware of their environment So in his case he is completely focused on this and then for a moment Just has this little whoa, I'm too close to this so little details that to me They they ground the characters in their reality. They they perform in character It all makes sense within that world and I think it's an extra detail that could be really interesting to see in your performances So when you do your shot and you act it out and you shoot reference or you have a friend of yours Do reference you film them think about those choices think about who are they who are those characters? What are they doing? Where are they? How is the environment going to affect them? And I'm going to talk about that later on in length. That's a whole separate long topic I want to get into with more examples, but that's going to be another clip If you want to get notified by all the daily updates I highly recommend that you subscribe and hit that bell button so you get all the notifications And thank you for watching until the very end and see you next time