VAM 237 | The Secret To Great Acting Is Mastering Subtext
Welcome to episode 237 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
In the previous episodes of this podcast, I’ve encouraged my listeners to discover, study, and emulate the best acting out there. I’ve interviewed numerous guests to help figure out how they achieved success in the industry. I’ve even answered questions from my podcast audience about the challenges they’ve faced in their pursuit of a professional voice acting career. Over and over again I’ve emphasized the importance of developing professionally competitive voice acting skills, and I’ve shared a variety of resources and suggestions about how to improve your performances to make them more authentic and believable.
But what actually is good acting? How can we define it? I used to think that the average person recognized good acting when they saw it, but these days, I’m not so sure. You see, the world has changed quite a bit since I first started this podcast way back in 2011. In those days, online algorithms didn’t tend to completely dominate the type of content we consumed. In fact, back then, we didn’t even refer to it as “content”, we called it media, or entertainment, which usually meant some kind of storytelling, whether that narrative was happening in movies, television shows, or cinematic style games.
In an environment where compelling storytelling is the primary means of attracting an audience, believable acting becomes the engine that makes that story go. Without authentic performances, a story can feel stale and lifeless. With great acting, a story can be emotionally moving, even if the plot isn’t as well structured as it could be. An audience wants to find characters in a story sympathetic so that they can enjoy the characters’ journey vicariously. Since long form narrative storytelling used to dominate the media landscape, people in the past were exposed more often to truly great performances, especially those with a lot of emotional nuance and subtlety.
Nowadays, the lure of the algorithm, and the addictive nature of scrolling on your phone means that fewer people are taking the time to enjoy long form storytelling. The popularity of short form video apps like TikTok demonstrate that the average attention span for people is getting shorter and shorter. In addition, mobile games and other smart phone distractions are designed to imitate the gambling tactics used by casinos to retain people’s attention. Long form narrative storytelling is being crowded out by these addictive dopamine loops, a topic I explored at length in the previous episode! This means that fewer and fewer people are actually exposed to and experience the kind of sophisticated, nuanced acting that previous generations took for granted in their entertainment. This also means that today’s audiences are often unfamiliar with what great acting actually looks like.
I want to share with you the secret to what makes an actor’s performance truly remarkable. It’s not just their passion, or their personality, or their looks, or their comedic skills, although all of those are great attributes to have! I believe what truly makes performances stand out is when they are rich with subtext. Subtext occurs when the emotional intention of an actor’s performance differs from the literal interpretation of their dialogue. If an actor plays their lines of dialogue straightforwardly, doing their best to simply say the words as honestly and directly as possible, that can result in a sincere, if simple, performance, but it will lack any subtext. However, if the actor realizes that there’s probably more emotional nuance to their dialogue than a simple, literal reading would indicate, now they’re thinking subtextually.
The best actors are always reaching for subtext in their performances, trying to wring the most emotional impact out of every line. I’d like to spend this episode exploring the value of subtext and how it can vastly improve your performances. For some of my listeners, this may be completely new territory for you, and I hope to open your mind to this new realm of expressive possibility. For others, you may already be sensitive to the goal of bringing subtext to your performances. I have a feeling though, that even those who are familiar with subtext will find value in taking a rigorous look at how subtext can affect every single line of dialogue you speak as an actor.
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