Spontaneous Background Acting

Background actors need to use a delicate blend of preparation and spontaneity, just like actors.

One of the skills I used while starring in a funny little CSUN student film A Taste For Danger last spring in Burbank and Northridge was making lines that we had rehearsed, shot several times and even altered seem to be spontaneous. It was also my job to make movements created in blocking look like they were inevitable. Those are common skills for film actors who must APPEAR to be thinking and speaking on the spot, for the first time. Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are. All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

There’s a lesson therein for background actors.

In the classes I teach for beginning background actors, I stress the importance of motivating your movement and understanding your place in the scene while making it look absolutely spontaneous and “in the moment,” ten or twenty times in a row.  Probably most extras never consider this level of involvement and, sadly, it shows in their performance. The reason we’re called background actors and not background furniture is that we are supposed to portray real people who are doing real things in a real setting in order to make the cohesive whole seem - ready for it? - REAL.

In order to appear real, background actors need to do some serious thinking about what they are doing. For example, I spent eight hours one day in summer 2009 shooting an episode of the FX drama, Sons of Anarchy. The Ron Perlman/Katey Segal motorcycle club series is a hot show (check it out) with a professional cast and crew who - on the day I joined them - were cranking out one setup after another.  My job in one scene in particular was to walk up the street and cross another.  Simple, huh?  But, in order to appear to be an actual guy in an actual town, I made some decisions before we started the first take.

I was costumed in what wardrobe calls a “Texas Tuxedo;” denim jeans, denim jacket and brown Rockport shoes.  A hasty conversation with the young woman who started from the same liquor store as me and walked the other direction created a “moment” and motivation that served to make our walks seem spontaneous and real. When they called “background,” we walked out the door, paused for a beat while she kissed my cheek and we bid one another farewell, and I started my walk. While walking, I thought about the date we were going to have at the end of the week, smiled to myself at the scent of her perfume on my cheek and headed up the street to my job at the hardware store.

Was any of this in the script? Of course not. Was any of this evident to a casual viewer of the episode? Nope. Did the director even notice? Not on your life.  What it did was give me the motivation to make that walk 18 times in the next hour and make every time look like it was happening for the first time. That’s my job.

Michael Caine: “The greatest advice I can give to someone who wants to act in film is to listen and react. Movie acting is a delicate blend of careful preparation and spontaneity.”

There is, of course, the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine.  Frankly, most background actors don’t even consider spontaneity. They just show up and cross in the back or speak silently at the restaurant table without regard for whether their background acting looks spontaneous or not.

Probably the prime example of a lack of spontaneity is the young boy background actor in the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece North By Northwest who stuck his fingers in his ears BEFORE a shot rang out.

During the scene at the Mount Rushmore visitor center - when Eva Marie Saint is just about to shoot Cary Grant - a little boy in the background sticks his fingers in his ears because he knows the blanks that are about to be fired are going to be loud. How did he know? Obviously there were several takes before the final “shot” was right.

Another special aspect of creating a spontaneous background performance on camera is what Wing Chun fighters call “economy of movement,” taking the straightest possible path to the target. In other words, don’t make a move unless it is inevitable from what is going on in the scene. Improperly motivated movement is anathema to good film acting. You’ve all seen them in the background: those lackluster extras who walk six steps to the right and then turn because that’s what the director asked them to do. Obviously, you should do what the director asks you to do but there’s no reason you cannot furnish your own motivation for doing it. No body gives a shit why you do it, except you.  SO do it well.

“Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet, essayist and lecturer.