Within Acting comes a what is often times neglected by many professional acting classes and that is discerning the difference between Emotions vs. Feeling. Or, typically known as emotional preparation.
This video does a great job explaining the differences between Emotions and Feeling. Ultimately, explaining that emotions is what the actor is portraying and feelings are what the audience experiences. Typically, a feeling is static and never changes, but emotions change rapidly within a scene, or while changing from one scene to the next.
The instructor from The Vancouver Acting School points out when preparing for a certain role it takes emotional preparation. Within the scope of emotional preparation comes from understanding your emotions. For example, what is like before your character gets angry, what happens when your character is angry, what happens after your character is angry.
Often times this can happen several different times in a scene, for example, in a romantic comedy it is typical to find several emotional changes in one argument. One point the protagonist is upset at the love interest, and then they all fall in love. Cliche but, it happens in almost every romantic comedy, therefore, a well trained actor must be prepared for such emotional rollercoasters via their emotional preparation.
Thus, in order to prepare yourself for a role, it takes the understanding of your “emotional circumstantial state”, as the Vancouver Acting School instructor describes allows you to produce the variety of actions associated with that state.
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