There are two important secrets, connected with the psychology of screen acting, which every beginner should know, even if he never makes use of them. The first is that of Preparation; the second, that of Auto-Suggestion.
A movie actor or actress is in a more difficult position, so far as the artistry of his work is concerned, than the players of the spoken drama. In the movies the scenes are nearly always taken out of sequence, the first last, the last first, and so forth. For that reason the motion picture stars have great difficulty in working themselves up to the proper "pitch" to play a scene, inasmuch as they have not been through the action which leads up to it.
The movie directors know this, and in most studios try to help them up to this "pitch" by employing small orchestras to play during the important scenes. In nearly every large studio where more than one company is working there are to be heard the faint strains of Sonata Pathetique, where some melancholy scene is being taken, or livelier music for a bit of comedy in another set. Also the directors are always behind the camera to guide their actors with spoken directions as the scene is made. This orchestra business has always seemed to us pure buncombe, but if the director or actor gets any fun out of it, it doesn't do any particular harm.
The wise movie actors of to-day are borrowing these two tricks of Preparation and Auto-Suggestion from their brethren of the stage.
Preparation consists merely of spending a little time before the scene is begun in going over the part, in thinking about it, and in trying really to feel all the emotions of the character in question. This seems a simple matter; but it makes the difference between real acting and routine work. Once an actor has carefully worked out the part for himself he can easily conform to the director's ideas; and once he has let himself feel his part he need waste no emotion upon it when on the "set," for his mimetic powers will reproduce his feelings of an hour before.
Auto-suggestion consists in working oneself up to the part before going before the camera by various expedients. For example, one actor, before playing a part calling for extreme anger, spends some ten minutes in clenching his fists, swearing at the handiest fence post, setting his jaw—and so making himself really angry. It is not hard to reproduce emotion by these tricks of auto-suggestion. Try thinking of something sad—draw your face down—and before long you will be in a very glum mood. That is the way such stars as Norma Talmadge and Mary Pickford produce tears on short notice. Most people think they are tricks of make-up, such as drops of glycerine; as a matter of fact, it is a matter of puckering the face and a few gloomy thoughts.
All this sort of thing sounds very intricate and unnecessary. And yet it is the really practical side of screen acting. The psychology of each actor is different and his manner of preparing for a scene and of enacting it will be different. The important thing is that he be aware that there is such a thing as psychology, and that if he will only understand it as applied to himself he can improve his work as a film player.