 Welcome back to the acting analysis and tips for animators and today I'm going to take a look at the Netflix movie The Devil All the Time. I got five sequences I want to talk about before I do. If you're new to this channel, hi my name is JD and I do acting analysis tips like these. I do lectures about animation topics. I do rig reviews. I do product reviews. I do animation analysis clips. I post my feedback. Animation news, all kinds of things. You know the pitch. This is YouTube, so I will tell you what I'm doing and I will love for you to subscribe. You don't have to, but it helps my channel grow. You can do whatever you prefer. Let's stop with all of those shenanigans. Let's go straight to the sequences. Let's start with this one where there is an uncomfortable situation where she's interested. He kind of realizes it but doesn't quite know what to do and it's all about gestures and fidgeting around. You can see how there's a lot of business here. There's a lot of business stuff there and she tells him, well, you have a nice face and he doesn't know how to react and it's more of a, okay, looking at, I don't know what to do and she realizes, yeah, that's not good. I love this almost twins reaction of almost the mirroring of posing with the same arm here doing this. But the main thing I want to show you is all those little awesome things of like scratching and little things and fidgeting around and doing things. She tells him, all right, well, I got to go and I'll see you later. Now look at what he does with his arm. An animation, a lot of people, especially students, they do a lot of gestures. But I like this on this because she leaves and she exits frame and he has that look down and leaves a lot of empty room. It's kind of re-emphasizes the emptiness there in his life. Now that is that dramatic. And then he goes, well, nice to meet you too. And it's this gesture that's more like hold on or I want to hold on to you. We just don't leave right now even though she's walking away and she won't see this. But this to me is just more like an added extension of, oh, I let this go. Don't leave. And it's to me a gesture that really means something versus traditional W gesture. So kind of hands fanning out that you see in a lot of animation. And at the end of this, he realizes that was not good. And it's not huge, just a little bit of a head shake there. But as always, if you watch the Akinawzi clips, you know that I'm a big fan of when the voice acting ends, any type of lip sync. It doesn't mean that your shot has to end. You can add something like this could be, this could be done. And this is your thing of the longer look to show I am interested. I got to go, but I'm interested in you. So I'm looking at you or the extra thing is, well, okay, yeah, sorry, I missed you. And it's, ah, crap, I missed that. Or the extra thing is, ah, that was stupid. Why did I do this? And you got that head shake there. So always something to think about once the lip sync is done, it doesn't mean that your shot is done. You can still add something that is creatively absolutely yours in terms of the acting choices. Pentamount, whatever you want to do. Continuing with her and him, actually, I like that when he comes in, you kind of see a bit of a glimpse that he's there. And he doesn't quite look back, but it's just enough in a profile to understand that you realize that someone's there. Get a little bit of a profile lip sync there in case you would do animation like this. But then he sits down and says, well, he's not in a hurry. And as he says that, she realizes, wait a minute, you're back. And it's this really cute look that she has here. And the flirting continues. And what are you doing here? And he tells her, well, I don't know your name. And she gets called back into what she has to do here in terms of the job. She tells him, we'll be right there with you, hun. I think that's kind of the line. If I remember, and you can see that extended long look and even that head up, it's really cute. Just a little rotation up in the head. It's not huge in terms of animation, but it's cute how she has that look right there. And then what I like is this, as he looks at her, again, he's kind of nervous. The eye line is kind of shifting. He can really look, but then he looks again just to show, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like you. And then you have this. I love that she's looking and she keeps on looking and looking and looking. And that is potentially, I mean, he knows that she's looking up until we run here. But this is almost more for the audience. So this is something that you can think about as you do two character setup where you see this face and you see her face. And you want to show that, well, I'm interested, but how I'm going to do this without lip sync or without him knowing, but you can just show that to the audience. I'm still looking because I'm really interested in you. And I can look as long as I can. And you can see his reaction to where he probably knows it kind of feels it. Yeah. And then he has that little cute little smile realizes. Oh, yeah, this could actually work. So once again, after lip sync is done, or this is a full pantomime shot, you can have something where they don't have to look at each other, but you can see an implied reaction or a look. And then you can end this with a thought process is looking and thinking, oh, yeah, you can see the eye darts here and then going, huh, that little cute reaction at the end as a kind of a button at the end of your shop. This I thought was really neat in terms of composition where you have different type of focus where it's on her slightly out of focus, really out of focus. And I like the breaking of the frame with him caught off here and taking up all that space. And he's kind of in the middle of the two. And she has her line and she goes out of frame here. And you can see then how the focus shifts. He goes down and it goes to him. Now, this is just as the general thing as always with those clips that I'm having on Thursdays here is that just kind of a springboard for ideas. And I like this in terms of just the general composition of three characters, one leaving exiting frame like this, however you want to do this in your shop. And then you can decide will it be on him or on him. And in this case, it's going to be on him. And you can do profile lip sync or kinds of acting where he looks at him. He looks at him. They can do a kind of things. Actually, when you continue and it goes back, you can see this. He has a line here and then it switches to him. He has a reaction to what he just said. So this could be full pantomime. This could be lip sync with him. This could be lip sync with him. The options are endless there. But then he gets back up there and grabs her and again has that extra look. But I like that too where it's kind of they are together. He is going to help her and he's separate. He's separate in terms of focus. He's separate in terms of they're not together. There's a separation between this separation between the focus. Of course, I'm also reading way too much into this, but I like it as a setup for something that you could have with three characters where we still see the profile because they're all focusing on something out there. You can still do lip sync for all of them if you want to show the shapes. You can obviously do lip sync if he turns towards him and we don't see really the face. I just like this as a general setup with three characters where you can put the focus, where the acting choices or the acting focus is going to be of your three characters. This one is a tricky thing to pull off in animation because it's so subtle for your shot, for your reel. To linger, you can see it's going to scrub through. This is really, really a long shot to go forward. But this is for me as a general thing, as a note where your reactions don't have to be really big. So he comes in to give him bad news. Again, I'm not going to spoil anything. And what's interesting too is that he never really blinks. They're like a tiny little blink at one point, but he's waiting. He's bracing himself for the news. And as he hears this, you can see a little bit here. That's not really there as a cue that we can see that he looks no darts. He's just waiting and waiting. He knows something bad is going to happen. He's just waiting for this. And you can see the reaction right there. Just goes back, step back, turns away from him to be a bit more shoulder there. But he still keeps the focus on him, no blinking. But you can also see how he already has a tense face, a tense jawline. But still, you can see little things going on in there. So as you watch this, you can see that, no, no, this is not true. But no blink. There's nothing going on. No blinking. Just really, really focused. And then you can see as it progresses, as the cop that's off screen is talking, he realizes, okay, this maybe this is true. And you can see the change again in here. The change again in just not the posture, but how he faces him. So first he was at him, goes away back to him. So that's with the shoulder. It's all very subtle and long. Again, very tricky to do the animation if you have such a long shot. But again, the change is in here. And as he realizes, he swallows. Then you can see the change there. The heck goes up a tiny bit, tiny bit. And he realizes, all right, this is not good. And now you can see the shift. Still no blink. You just have a little bit of an eye dark down going, all right. Yeah, this is probably, it's probably true. And then you have that bigger shift. And now you have a blink and a look away. And now he's probably already in his thoughts, not listening to the cop anymore. The wheels are turning. All right. What does that mean? What do I need to do? There's something that needs to happen, but still no blink. There's one blink on the turn right there. That's what you have with a slight way shift. So again, this is really, really long. So tricky to put into your animation. But just as a thought where if you get bad news, you don't always have to have crazy blinks, crazy reactions, sometimes less is more. It also tells you something about the character, how he's contained. And he wants to maybe bottle it up. There are many reasons why you want to have just a solid reaction like this. But I think it's a cool example of just less is more. And continuing with less is more with this sequence where Tom Holland is back there. Hitchhikers, they took him in. You can see I can scrub for a little bit. You got him and then you got her. That's kind of the setup. But I like the progression here. And again, this is longer. It's going to be tough for you to put into an animation shot that short. But look at this. He got the hat and he's sitting straight. He doesn't quite know who they are. He could potentially be nervous, but they start asking him questions about where he's from. And you can see that, oh, well, maybe it's a bit better. They're not that bad. So he takes the hat off. It's almost like the hat is a protection. It can be, you know, you can look down to cover those eyes. It could be something that protects you. And to me, I'm reading almost into this where, all right, I'm a bit more relaxed. I can take the hat off. It's going to be okay. And then, all right, well, you know, I'll make sure that it looked good. And then, well, let me just relax. And then the arm goes up. So all this kind of cues of relaxation and being a bit more okay with what is going on. And he asks then a question. And he doesn't look around. By the way, this is for later. So this is just focused on the two people. Relax. It's to me, the progression of a bit more tense to, all right, it's going to be okay. So he's asking them questions. Then he has all those things. I'm not going to spoil, but you can see in his reaction, something's odd. And you can see how he's a lot more tense. He still has that lean of, I'm interested in this whole thing with the puppy tilt here and the arm up. But if you look at his face, you can see this here. Where nothing is moving really. I mean, you got the secondary action stuff here or the influence from the car. But you see just the eyes going, huh? And that is a very, wait a minute, something is odd here. And it's continuous. He's got some weird comments. He's not really into this whole thing anymore. And you can again see his reaction looks and then look over there. And it's not, it doesn't quite work. You can see his back and forth is intensifying. It's a bit more left, right going on. So again, he has this weird thing, a very specific spot where he wants her to stop. And then you can see this. And it's not really on screen, but his arm that used to be up here is now back to down here. So it's already less relaxed. And now you can see the progression of, okay, something's going on. And now he's looking around. And you can see the looks, the darts. He's kind of readjusting his posture here as he sits. So he gets more and more nervous. You can see changes there in the facial shape, so you get a little tongue. All of that stuff shows you there's a real ramp up of, okay, this is not so good. And they're getting off the road here. And then you can see in his look, okay, this is, this is not good. What is going on here? And he got fast looks. He tries to keep it cool, but he's still looking. He's still checking the environment. You can see faster looks, tries to look around, see what is going on. Where am I going? You can see a lot faster darts, eye darts and head darts. Then you can see again, all right, this is not good. And that's, this is his reactionary of, all right, this is not good. I got to prepare myself for something. This is not good. And now it stops and the car stops and he immediately looks. I mean, at this point, it's either the driver a little bit or whoever is in front of him, the other guy to the right, but you can see that change again of stop and then all right, sums up, I'm ready. And again, a longer thing that is tricky for you to put into your animation. But thinking about the broader aspects and the ideas of progression where it's all right, I got my hat. Let me just relax. It's okay. Arm up here. All right. This is good. I'm leaning. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Towards. Okay. Well, this is not so fine. So look at how do you show this in your character with sharper looks? Not a lot of smooth motion where it's a bit more tense. The eye darts are a bit sharper, progressing into changing the posture. Arm is back down, looking around. How do you look around? Are they fast head turns? Are they slow head turns coupled with facial expression where it's a bit more worried changes in the mouth or like, all right, a bit more tense. Again, you can show tension in the jaw clench. You can show tension in the facial shapes here. And even when something changes, again, you go into a stop where it's a bit more. All right. Let me focus on the threat in front of me. So that whole progression I thought was really, really cool to see. No lip sync. Just him looking relaxed and then, you know, slower movements to faster movements, arms down and just that progression of, I'm fine too. This is not good. And that progression I thought was really, really cool with just subtle cues of head turns and the mouth shapes. Now, speaking of progression, if you feel like this is cool and you want to progress your shot into something like this and you want me to help you with that, you know the drill. I got workshops and you can sign up at any time. The link is in the description with all information you can check out the FAQ. If you have any questions, let me know, but you can sign up and start whenever you want to. And speaking of time, there's a starting. And we're ending the shot. If you're still watching, as always, thank you for your patience to watch this whole clip in full. I appreciate it. And if you like this, this is really cool. You don't want to miss any of these. You can, of course, subscribe and hit the bell button so you don't miss any of my uploads. But that is that for my pitch. You can do whatever you prefer. I will end this now and I'll see you in my next upload.